The Two Rules That Decide If Your Airplane Flies Today
Here's a rule most private pilots have never even heard by name, but violate the exact spirit of constantly: there's a whole category of federal directive that doesn't even live in the same rulebook as the FARs we've been covering, and ignoring it isn't a one-time violation, it's a fresh violation every single time you fly the aircraft afterward. Meanwhile, there's a completely different mechanism that lets you legally fly with something broken, on purpose, without fixing it at all.
Today we're covering Airworthiness Directives, the FAA's mandatory "this must be fixed" orders, and Minimum Equipment Lists, the FAA-approved "you can fly without this for now" system. They sound like they might be opposites, and in a sense they are, but understanding both is exactly what separates an owner who genuinely knows their airplane's legal status from one who's just hoping the mechanic caught everything.
Subscribe free to keep reading, what an Airworthiness Directive actually is (and why it's not technically a regulation) is coming up next.
