Guest Blog: FAA Special Issuance Medical Expiry Dates (Clarified)

The FAA is charged by Congress with issuing certificates to qualified persons. These certificates are federal licenses. One such license is the medical certificate, issued by the FAA's Office of Aerospace Medicine ("AAM") under 14 CFR Part 67, Medical Standards and Certification. In accordance with Section 67.3, a person who meets the medical standards in Part 67 is entitled to the applied-for medical certificate. Part 67 does not provide for an expiration date on medical certificates; instead, medical certificate validity periods are listed in Part 61, Section 61.23(d) specifically.

Sometimes, medical certificate applicants find themselves outside the "four corners" of Part 67. Such persons can still apply for (and be issued) medical certificates under the discretionary issuance Section 67.401. However, such persons are typically then subjected to an alternative set of eligibility requirements that exist only in a policy document called the Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners ("GAME"). While the GAME is publicly available, it is directed at AAM designees, and AAM changes it regularly without advance notice to the public.

AAM sometimes issues a “drop-dead” date in the Limitations section of some "special issuance" medical certificates. Typically this limitation takes the form "Not valid for any class after..." AAM seldom explains to the certificate holder the basis for the imposition of this limitation. Nor is there any basis in Part 67 for a date limitation on a medical certificate. (Section 67.401(d)(1) states that AAM may “Limit the duration of an Authorization.” It does not provide for limiting the duration of a medical certificate).

These date limitations are a relatively new phenomenon, begun without public notice. And their use is not documented anywhere, including in the GAME, which has led to wide variability in their application. As new civilian pilots, we learn that medical certificates are issued without expiration dates. Instead, we were taught to refer to 14 CFR Section 61.23(d), a Flight Standards rule, which contains a table that sets forth medical certificate validity periods and describes the way a first class medical certificate, for example, becomes valid for second class privileges after a period of time, and then third class.

“Drop-dead” date limitations on medical certificates directly interfere with the regulatory validity periods listed at Section 61.23(d). These Section 61.23(d) regulatory validity periods are even referenced on all medical certificates: standard text included on all medical certificates states “The holder of this certificate must ... comply with validity standards specified for first-, second-, and third-class medical certificates (14CFR § 61.23).” 

Indeed, the holder of such a medical certificate may wish to comply with these validity standards, as required by both the rule and the text on the medical certificate; but be prevented from doing so as a result of AAM’s unexplained imposition of this undocumented and extra-regulatory limitation. By imposing these “drop-dead” date limitations, AAM is interfering with the Section 61.23(d) regulatory validity periods, which are applicable to all medical certificates.

For these reasons, I have applied for a regulatory grant of exemption that provides that medical certificates issued under it will not contain “drop-dead” date limitations but will instead comply with the uniform regulatory validity periods at Section 61.23(d).

Clarification: subsequent to the publication of this blog post, the author received credible information that AAM may have begun applying "drop-dead" expiration dates to some medical certificates as long ago as 1995. Because the practice of imposing such dates has never been documented by AAM, it's difficult to pinpoint precisely when it began. Regardless of when exactly AAM began imposing drop-dead dates as limitations, the key point remains that the practice is unsupported by anything in part 67; the applicable Federal Register preambles (which refer repeatedly to the 61.23(d) validity periods); or the GAME. In addition, the author is unaware of any instance where AAM justified or explained a drop-dead expiration date in the context of the actual physical condition of the medical certificate holder. What is clear is that drop-dead dates on medical certificates interfere with the uniform section 61.23(d) validity periods.

The author is not the only person to have observed this. In a letter dated March 18, 2024, three members of Congress (Jack Bergman, Jake Ellzey, and Pete Sessions) asked former FAA Administrator Whitaker to (among other things) "Prohibit the FAA Aerospace Medical Certification Division (AMCD) from limiting Medical Certificate validity periods. Limits shall be those listed in 14 CFR section 61.23." To the best of the author's knowledge, AAM did not provide the members a substantive reply.