A complex airplane is defined by the United States Federal Aviation Administration as an aircraft that has all of the following:
- A retractable landing gear (land aircraft only; a seaplane is not required to have this)
- A controllable pitch propeller (which includes constant speed propellers)
- Movable or adjustable flaps.
In the U.S., students generally train for their first pilot certificate in an aircraft with fixed landing gear, a fixed-pitch propeller. It may or may not be equipped with flaps.
Before or after earning the private pilot certificate (PPL) (usually after), a pilot can be trained in complex aircraft operation by a flight instructor. When the pilot has demonstrated proficiency in complex aircraft, the flight instructor endorses the pilot's logbook and the pilot is said to have a "complex endorsement".
The FAA requires a pilot to have experience in, and take the practical test in, a complex airplane in order to earn the commercial pilot certificate (CPL) and the flight instructor certificate (CFI).
Famous quotes containing the words complex and/or airplane:
“Instead of seeing society as a collection of clearly defined “interest groups,” society must be reconceptualized as a complex network of groups of interacting individuals whose membership and communication patterns are seldom confined to one such group alone.”
—Diana Crane (b. 1933)
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)