Paperwork Surprise

I had been planning a little afternoon flight today, taking advantage of the slightly slower pace of the quasi-holiday to complete an Instrument Proficiency Check. Anyone who had spent much time in aviation knows that airplanes only appear to fly because they're sitting on a 30,000-foot stack of paperwork. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for what was lurking in the flight school's business office.

She Who Puts Up With Me and I own an airplane, and we're both instrument-rated pilots (though She hasn't been flying since the twins were born). Since 1997, we've kept our airplane parked at a local flight school, which we also use for maintenance and flight training. A comfortable, longstanding business relationship of the sort you don't expect to surprise you.

Today, when I arrived for my flight with the instructor, I was greeted with an unfamiliar two-page form, filled with checkboxes and spaces for three different signatures--none of them mine.

"Apparently nobody ever gave you this paperwork before," the instructor said. "When we do flight instruction in an airplane not owned by the flight school, we need to have one of these on file." This policy had apparently been instituted nearly a year ago, but the flight school had neglected to inform me--despite the several training flights I had taken since then.

A review of the form showed that it mostly covered obvious stuff: the airplane was in airworthy condition and legal to fly, required maintenance was up-to-date, and so forth. The only new requirement--other than the form itself--was that I include the flight school as an insured party on my insurance policy.

Fortunately, our policy is with a company which specializes in airplane insurance, and is very good about making these sorts of changes. Five minutes on the phone, and the change was made to the policy with a faxed certificate of coverage on its way. We pay a little extra for this level of service, but it is worth it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to actually meet the flight school's requirements. Before we could fly, we had to secure the necessary signatures. An hour's worth of trying to track people down only yielded one of the three required signatures, and four of the checkboxes marked off.

So, in the end, we did not fly today. A shame, but flying as a hobby always demands some flexibility in scheduling. There are many things which will keep a careful pilot on the ground. Paperwork is just the most frustrating.