#137 “What will GET YOU IN TROUBLE with the FAA?” HOGS Member Question

Hey, welcome to day 137 Coffee with Kenny. Today I want to talk about compliance philosophy. And this comes from a member that asked a question last night about the big bad FAA and talk and asking about enforcement action. I am Kenny Keller, creator, Helicopter Line Ground school. I'm gonna tell you at the end of the video about how you can get either one of Our Amazon Number 1 Best selling books for just shipping and handling. So this question last night from a member, that's a great question. And his name is Van and he is a certified flight instructor unlimited member. So he's got all of our training plus unlimited on the instrument. So he is one of our good members, unlimited on both packages. And last night he said, hey, Kenny, just a quick hello to tell you that I continue to enjoy the daily videos and to reinforce the idea of how much knowledge you pick up by hearing helicopter discussion on a daily basis. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes. That's why we're doing those or that's why we're doing these videos. Right? It's to help you stay fresh in a lot of different areas. And we actually, each day we answer questions from our ground school members, the general public, our YouTube viewers. We're just covering all kinds of stuff, ground training, flight training, a little bit of everything. He said. I have another idea for a topic. It's one I don't think you have discussed before, but it's what will get you into trouble with the faa. Great question, right? I know if you violate airspace restrictions, that's bad. And you've already covered this, which is what they, that is what they tell us the number one violation is, right, is airspace violations. But what if you have a rough landing, skid off the Runway, call for help, get lost in bad weather? Anyway, just thought I'd put it out there for your consideration. Keep up the good work. Awesome question, Vance. Thank you. So what I'm going to tell you about is compliance philosophy. Have you heard of this? I spoke on this a few years ago when I got invited to heli Expo to speak at a flight instructor refresher clinic. I was kind of a bomb, by the way, man. I'm okay talking to a camera, but talking to a whole great big room full of 60 of my peers, 60 flight instructors. Whoo. That was tough. I said, thanks for the opportunity, but I think I'm gonna stick with making videos. So anyway, the compliance philosophy, this is something you need to know about as a pilot. And the idea behind it is very simply, I'm gonna try to explain it simply is instead of the FAA just coming out and violating you every time you make a mistake, they want people to fess up to what they've done. They want to look into the reasons things happen. And I'm going to put a link below for the PDF on the compliance policy where you can take a look at this or compliance philosophy. Instead of just immediately violating you, they can take some different actions like remedial training or other things that can go on versus just immediately violating you. They're trying to get away from just oh, bad mistake, you're bad. Violate you. That's not what they're trying to do here. And I just want to mention a couple things from the PDF. Compliance Action. The FAA's compliance philosophy emphasizes non enforcement or compliance action where appropriate. A compliance action is the FAA's method for correcting unintentional deviations that comes from things like flawed systems and procedures, simple mistakes, lack of understanding or diminished skills. Okay, all sounds fair and sounds very reasonable. I think this is a very reasonable thing that the FAA put out there as a philosophy and kind of a method of operation. And then just one other thing I want to read to you, however. An airman who indicates that he or she is unwilling or unable to comply or shows evidence of an intentional deviation, reckless or criminal behavior or other significantly safety risk would be ineligible for compliance action. Okay, I think this is reasonable and makes sense. Why just go out and violate someone every time something bad happens? I've talked in the past about the different few times I've had interactions with the faa. They've been awesome with our helicopter ground school, helping us out with the FA Wings program and all those things. Me personally as a pilot, I had a helicopter accident. They were awesome. They were more worried about me getting healthy and getting back to work. And they're like, fill out the report when you get feeling better. We know you're home, we know you're hurt. They were very cool to deal with there. I've had dealt with FA on a noise complaint when I was flying ems. No big deal there. They showed up one day for a surprise inspection and lo and behold didn't have my medical. Were they jerks about it? No, they're just like, we know you can't fly. Where's your medical? And I go, well, I guess I left it at home. And of course they're like, well, you can't fly. And I'm like, well, luckily it's IFR and I was on duty but I couldn't Go anywhere anyway, because it was ifr, right? Made some calls to my family. They hurried up and got my medical to me. And the FAA said, just, hey, when you get it, when somebody brings it up to you, just fax us over a copy or just send us a copy over so we know you got it with you and don't fly until you get it. So the faa, you know, we have this. Oh, I don't know, it's kind of like the hype around the check ride. There's a lot of hype around the faa, too, right? The one time I had a ramp check and the guy was a little bit stern when we got started, which is why I harp on, you know, making sure the aircraft's good to go and your seat belts are buckled up nice and your cockpit's clean and everything ready to go. He was a little rough on me on this surprise ramp inspection, but by the time we got done, he even said, well, you know, his face kind of changed. He's like, he was fairly new to it. And he said, I just kind of. I wanted to make sure you had your act together. And then we stood around for another half an hour and just talked about all kinds of stuff. So the big bad faa. I think the FAA is more willing to work with you than what people think. I think there's just a lot of hype that builds up around it. I think if you're being smart and you're doing the right thing, you're doing all your pre flight checks, you're learning everything about that flight, and you're doing everything right to the best of your ability. I don't think you're ever going to have a problem. And just because you make a mistake doesn't mean immediate violation. And this compliance philosophy kind of helps reiterate that and let you know that, look, the FAA's not out just to take every single person's license, right? It's not like that. And I have to think in my 20 years, only couple times I know somebody getting their license pulled, they deserved it. I mean, they were doing stuff that they shouldn't have been doing. Hands down intentional stuff that anybody would expect to lose their license over. So to answer his question, I think if you're. If that's all you're worried about, I think you're worrying too much. It's just like when I went to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy and a lot of guys got upset in the legal, you know, section of the academy, and everybody's like, oh, my God, we can't do anything. You know we're gonna get sued for this, we're gonna get sued for that. And you kind of take the attitude, look, if you go out and you got to do things right, apply yourself, be knowledgeable and always do the right thing and have faith that you're going to be okay. So thanks for tuning in. Day 137. This has been awesome. Hey, I want to mention the books again. You can get either one of these. We have a whole pile of them. We bought them, we paid for them. They're right over there on our shelf. We ship them to them. Heather that works for me, that's her number one job Monday through Thursday to ship out book orders. We bought them, we ship them to you for just shipping and handling. That link is down below Helicopter Checkride I did myself top 10 checkride tips I did with Taz Christman 2018 flight instructor of the year. Good stuff. And for helicopter land ground school. If you're new to this and you haven't seen us before, heard of us. We have private pilot, commercial pilot, certified flight instructor and instrument training courses. You can take any course for 24 hour test flight. Check it out, decide to keep the training or remove your credit card before the end of 24 hours. Be build nothing. Then we have a 30 day money back guarantee on top of that. So it's a great deal that you just about can't beat. Please subscribe to the channel and click the bell and you do that so you can be notified of the daily video every day. We're doing content on all kinds of stuff helicopter training related. It's been awesome. We're enjoying doing this for you every day. Keep the questions coming in just like Van's question and we'll see you in day 138. Thanks everybody. See you tomorrow.