The FAA Suspended My Pilots License

well uh i don't really know how to go about making this video but uh before i get into it i do want to quickly say that this video is sponsored by squarespace so thank you squarespace more on them later but um i guess i'll just come out and say it the faa has suspended my license for 60 days and now we are appealing that decision so i'm currently able to fly but this has been about a two and a half year process that i've been holding off sharing with you guys because i i've been wanting to wait to see how it played out before i went talking about it but even though we aren't completely done with the entire process i think this is a probably a pretty appropriate time for me to fill you guys in and while again i'm not exactly sure the best way to explain this i think i should probably start right at the beginning so about two and a half years ago this was on november 24th of 2019. i was out playing in the kit fox and on my way home i made a inspection pass on a friend of mine's property basically an area just north of where i live it's a very sparsely populated area i mean it has a minimum lot size of 10 acres but a lot of the lots are much larger than that a lot of them are vacant as well and the area to the north of them is all blm so there's thousands of acres of public land and they're the first kind of very sparsely populated residential area to the south of that now my friend and neighbor has a very open large backyard that he has a an airstrip that he had made for flying radio controlled aircraft off of and both my friend as well as his son had been asking me if i could come and land there so i went ahead and made an inspection pass and on what would have been a short final for that inspection pass i realized that i wasn't really able to identify the touchdown point for that landing spot that as well as like the intended center line or the direction that the runway would have ran or where the end of it was it was just a lot harder to see from the air so i opted to move on now a few days later i got a call from an inspector at the reno fizdo which is the local faa branch asking if i would come in for a meeting i said sure and the next day i went in for this meeting at the fizdo now while i was there they showed me a video that the neighbor of my friend had provided from his surveillance camera basically it was an angle facing up in the sky that had me flying through on my inspection pass now this video was was interesting because it wasn't the actual surveillance video what it was was a cell phone recording of a tv screen playing the surveillance camera video so it was kind of funky in that nature because we all know that the the angle of view or field of view of a surveillance camera is extremely wide and with that comes some distortion and then you add the cell phone filming the top corner of it it really wasn't the clearest video but the faa inspector made it very clear that i would be losing my license and that he was recommending a suspension of 210 days or seven months to the faa legal team now at that meeting i did not deny that that was my aircraft or that that was me i admitted to both of those and that that was me making a inspection pass on a friend of mine's property that i was given permission to land at now the inspector uh didn't seem to care about that so then it was forwarded on to the faa legal team so after that initial meeting it was pretty clear that i needed to seek some legal representation so i got myself an attorney and then nothing happened for a few months i think the next thing that happened was an informal conference that we had being my attorney and myself with the faa's attorney on the legal enforcement team now this was just a an informal conference so it was a phone call to discuss my case now before i go any farther i should probably explain what regulations the faa say that i violated the first is a regulation that pertains to flight at a safe altitude it's 91.119 uh parts a and c are the ones that they state i violated and now i don't have this regulation in front of me but we've been discussing it a lot so i can give you at least a rough idea of what it says again this isn't verbatim but it's pretty close but basically it states except when necessary for takeoff or landing and then part a says that at any time a flight must be conducted at an altitude that in the event of a power unit failure an emergency landing can be conducted without undue hazard to persons and property on the surface now this is basically saying that you need to be at an altitude that if your engine quit you could navigate to somewhere relatively safe to land basically you can't create undue hazard to other persons and property so you can't be you know at an altitude that if your engine quit you're going to center punch a school bus now part b of this regulation pertains to populated areas or congested areas that didn't pertain since i was over a sparsely populated area part c does pertain for non-congested or sparsely populated areas and this part doesn't state a specific altitude it's it's actually a distance so it states that at any point you need to stay 500 feet from vehicles vessels persons and structures now this you could kind of picture by like a straight line that you would draw from the aircraft in any direction or kind of think of it as a 500 foot radius to a bubble that would surround the aircraft now again both of these rules are predicated with the exception that except when necessary for takeoff or landing so as long as it is part of a necessary landing procedure then you are able to be within 500 feet of vehicles vessels persons and structures and you're able to be at an altitude that if your power unit failed you wouldn't be able to guarantee undue hazard to persons and property if that makes sense basically you're accepted from those rules when it's necessary for takeoff or landing now the other regulation they stated i violated was 91.13 or 9113 careless and reckless which is when they can argue that you endangered the life of another person now this is kind of faa's rubber rule this is one that they'll throw out on pretty much anything because if you think about it really anytime you're carrying a passenger or if you're flying above or near any persons they could argue that you endangered the life of another now this regulation doesn't normally stick unless there's a another violation involved now back to this informal conference my attorney and i were explaining how this inspection pass is a necessary part of an off airport landing and you guys have seen in past videos of mine my process for landing somewhere near that i always am going to make multiple inspection passes to assess the surface quality and the feasibility of the landing spot but you guys don't just have to take my word for this now this right here is the off airport ops guide it's a publication from the faa now page three of this guide is going to outline the techniques for off airport operations and it recommends making high level intermediate and low level inspection passes and it states very clearly that each pass should result in you becoming more comfortable with your chosen landing area if you're becoming less comfortable abandon the site and seek a more suitable landing area so this document the off airport ops guide is what we presented to the attorney on the faa side to argue hey look this was a necessary step of a landing procedure at a new location obviously i was given permission to land there the faa had spoken with my friend who owned the property they had gotten that statement and after explaining our side of things the faa attorney replied with something along the lines of well that's all good and well but i don't understand why that landing is necessary i think we're going to need to go to a hearing and at that point i don't think my lawyer had anything else to say and the phone call ended there now after the phone call my attorney called me directly and stated he had no idea what uh what the faa attorney was arguing with that because obviously uh there is no requirement for the necessity of a landing i mean honestly the the only landing that in my mind would be absolutely necessary it would be an emergency landing or if your engine had quit other than that we're taught that we should always be able to do a go-around so at this point uh it was clear that the faa attorney wasn't going to work with us so it started the beginning of the legal battle of the administrator vs palmer now the next part didn't happen quickly i think it was another year and a half or more until they even scheduled our hearing and now the hearing which we did just a couple weeks ago we went into with my lawyer telling me he was estimating it was probably going to be a three-hour hearing i mean it's a pretty simple case from the start you know i had never argued that i was within 500 feet of vehicles vessels persons and structures so the argument was never that the argument should have been if they didn't believe that it was necessary for takeoff or landing or if it was not an acceptable landing site but neither of those points were ever mentioned in in their their case against me so we figured it was going to be a pretty cut and dry hearing now this hearing that we expected to go on for a few hours ended up running the course of i think five days and now the backbone of the faa's case was this video that they had received from the neighbor of my friend and now the problem with this video was that it was never received in its original form and there is a law that's called the best evidence law that requires that any photo or video that is used as evidence has to be an original or an exact duplicate of the original and since this video was a cell phone recording of a security camera's footage being played back on a tv screen it was definitely not an original it was a video of a video so that video was never admitted as evidence now in addition to that the faa had provided a bunch of diagrams and photos with measurements and stuff that was directly based on the video that they had received and again because the the video was not admitted as evidence none of the other documents or most of the other documents weren't admitted either so this hearing turned into hours and hours and days of the faa attorney interviewing eyewitnesses because there were two neighbors that were outside when i made my inspection pass and she was trying to uh figure out down to the exact foot how far i was from structures and persons and all that and obviously the rule states you cannot be within 500 feet of vehicles vessels persons and structures so it doesn't matter if you're at 499 feet or if you're scraping your tires on something if it wasn't as part of a necessary landing procedure then you would be violating that regulation now so this hearing like i mentioned we spent about five days going back and forth about the exact distance i was from objects and and also there was the discussion of uh in the event of an engine failure or power unit failure uh could an emergency landing be conducted and as i mentioned uh this was over a very sparsely populated area with a minimum lot size of 10 acres so when you're talking a single family residence on a 10-acre lot if your engine quit over that i mean you would have to intentionally aim for the house to hit the house i mean all you'd have to do is turn 10 degrees in any direction if your engine quit you're going to be able to land out in the open desert so there was no point during this flight that i wouldn't have been able to conduct an emergency landing if my engine had quit but at the end of this entire hearing the uh judge when he came to make his initial decision he basically stated that since i didn't land that it wasn't necessary for takeoff or landing and also since there wasn't a wind sock or any sort of runway lights or runway markers that it wasn't an acceptable landing site so he ruled against me on all fronts and suspended my license for 60 days and now i don't really know how to put this um look a 60 day suspension for me is not the end of the world i'm a you know i'm a private pilot i fight recreationally this is just for fun for me of course i will be fine if i go two months without flying the problem here is the the precedence or the the case law that is established by this decision and for those of you that don't understand how case law or this kind of precedence works basically now if this sticks from here on out anyone else that's in a similar situation to me the faa will be able to look at the administration versus palmer and based on the ruling of this alj administrative law judge they will be able to say well this is a past case this was a legal ruling and that is case law being this is how it works and the problem with that is that by the judge or the alj stating that because i didn't land it wasn't a necessary landing procedure now that would basically mean that any time we want to land in a new place that would require inspection passes to assess the feasibility of that spot if there were any chance that you were within 500 feet of a vehicle vessel person or structure knowingly or unknowingly you would need to go land there for it to not be a violation meaning there would be external pressures making us change our aeronautical decision making like and i don't know if i'm putting that clearly enough but basically it would force us to land even if we didn't think it was safe to try to avoid being violated and i mean this could even be someone say you had just bought a new airplane and you live on an air park that has a grass strip and it's your first time that you want to go and land at your air park and on approach you decide i don't like how long the grass is or one of a million other reasons maybe i'm not comfortable in this airplane yet with uh landing in that short of a distance or on this narrow of a runway and you opt to go around and carry on and you don't come back and land you would have just violated this regulation because there are plenty of air parks that have a runway with houses well within 500 feet oftentimes within 100 feet of the center line of the airstrip that if you didn't land then you would be violating this regulation now on top of this the the statement that this was not an acceptable landing site based on the fact that it didn't have a windsock or you know runway lights or other identifying markers on the runway makes it not acceptable that logic would basically make every single off airport landing illegal and obviously that has not been the case off airport landing is legal that's why they have the off airport ops guide explaining the procedures and techniques to land there so i hope this makes sense to you guys and why why i'm stressing this but there is a precedence set with this case should this decision be upheld that could be very bad to not only me and my future backcountry flying but everyone else and i feel horrible because obviously i don't want to be any part of us losing some of the freedoms or rights we have as a pilot and yeah so that's why i think i felt it necessary to make this video um to fill you guys in and obviously i think we have a pretty strong case for our appeal i think there were definitely some some good things that my my lawyer will outline that were errors on the judgment side of things but for those of you that haven't been involved with the faa you know as far as i have as far as going through a hearing like this um all i can say is it's frustrating the reason being if this was a civil case let's say i had robbed a bank at gunpoint it would be my right to a trial in front of a jury of my peers meaning other citizens or civilians now the faa they don't have to do that they don't allow you any jury or any unbiased opinions the the judge himself is the jury and the judge and he makes the decision based on what the faa and fa's witnesses which are other faa employees bring to the table against me so the idea that you feel like you had any sort of fair trial or fair judgment in a case with them is unfortunately uh not possible and herein lies the dilemma going forward now with this appeal i'm going to try to argue to the ntsb that the ntsb judge or the alj made an error in his ruling against me so i'm basically telling the ntsb that one of their own didn't do his job right so it's obviously going to be an uphill battle at the end of the day the alj is always going to rule with the faa whenever possible and the ntsb on the appeal side is going to rule with the alj whenever possible so that is uh currently where we stand we are beginning the appeal process which i am able to fly during so that's one thing i should mention so they are going after a suspension of my license which all that means is that when the time comes i send in my license after the time they send it back to me now this is a lot different than an emergency revocation which is when the faa will when they see fit if it's a matter of national security or if it's an immediate threat to others they will take someone's certificate which is effective immediately so if you ever get a letter of an emergency revocation your flying privileges are gone they're revoked you cannot fly and in those cases everything happens very fast i think you have like 48 hours to appeal and then you have a hearing within 10 days obviously mine took you know two and a half years to come to that point so mine is not a revocation it's just a suspension um i don't have to take a check ride like i would with the revocation afterwards to get my license back they'll just send it back and again the faa had originally requested a 210 day or seven month suspension and it's now down to 60 days which is better so yeah and uh i know this probably isn't the best video to say thank you to squarespace but thank you squarespace for not only sponsoring this video but being such a huge supporter of me and this channel and for those that don't know squarespace is the ultimate way to build a website and run your business you start with one of their award-winning templates crafted into your own beautiful professional website that works on both desktop and pc and i honestly mean this when i say that anyone can do it it's a super easy to use and intuitive interface it's all drag to drop click to change it's as simple as anything can be on a computer but you're able to build your own professional working and looking website and they have integrations for pretty much everything so whether you're trying to insert a professional photo gallery or an online store have integrations to book clients for whatever business it is that you run you're going to be able to do that with squarespace as well as a ton of other things that are too long for me to list so if you have yet to build a website or if you have an outdated one that you've been putting off updating you're running out of excuses and because squarespace also sells domains they truly are the one stop shop for everything websites so if you haven't yet head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to purchase make sure you use code trent palmer at checkout that'll get you 10 off thank you again squarespace for sponsoring this video and uh yeah after this one hopefully we will be back to flying i am due for a condition inspection on my plane as of next week i believe so that's probably gonna be the next thing on my mind and then i'm gonna get back to flying the weather here has been gnarly we've had like two plus weeks of 30 mile an hour winds non-stop so as soon as we get a break in the weather and i have my plane out of annual or maybe before it goes out i'll be back to making flying videos so you guys know the drill like this video if you do subscribe if you haven't come be my wingman we'll see on the next one peace

Channel: Trent Palmer

Views: 1,007,377

Keywords: trent palmer, bush plane, bush pilot, aviation, airplane, pilot, flight, FAA, pilots license, suspended, suspension, trouble, violated, FAA investigation, faa oral exam, FAA violation

Id: RpFDRoStcd4

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022