In the US, a student pilot certificate is issued to a pilot in training, and is a pre-requisite for the student to fly alone in the aircraft, or solo. It is usually initially issued by a medical doctor who is also an authorized aviation medical examiner, in conjunction with the student's first medical certificate. The doctor will issue a combination medical and student pilot certificate if the applicant meets the medical standards, and the flight instructor will later endorse the certificate when the student meets various training endorsement requirements (including the requirements for solo flight).
Obtaining a student pilot certificate authorizing solo flight requires 4 steps:
- be 16 years of age or older (14 years for gliders and balloons)
- pass a flight physical administered by an aviation medical examiner (for powered aircraft only, excluding gliders and balloons)
- receive ground and flight instruction
- earn an endorsement from a certificated flight instructor
Read more about Student Pilot Certificate: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words student, pilot and/or certificate:
“To be born in a new country one has to die in the motherland.”
—Irina Mogilevskaya, Russian student. “Immigrating to the U.S.,” student paper in an English as a Second Language class, Hunter College, 1995.
“With two sons born eighteen months apart, I operated mainly on automatic pilot through the ceaseless activity of their early childhood. I remember opening the refrigerator late one night and finding a roll of aluminum foil next to a pair of small red tennies. Certain that I was responsible for the refrigerated shoes, I quickly closed the door and ran upstairs to make sure I had put the babies in their cribs instead of the linen closet.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)