Expired medical, lapsed proficiency check: the FE who is asked to sign the technical log
You are the flight engineer on a Kenyan-registered three-crew freighter due to depart JKIA at 22:40 for a 6-hour sector. Forty minutes before departure the crew scheduler hands you the file. Your Flight Engineer Licence is valid to 31 March next year and carries the aircraft type rating. Your medical certificate, in the class required for the licence, expired 9 days ago; the renewal appointment is in 3 days. Your last proficiency check on type was 13 months ago. You have logged no flying on type in the last 90 days because you were on ground duty. The operator's approved training and checking programme requires a proficiency check within the preceding 12 months and 3 sectors within 90 days before line flying. The load is 11 tonnes of perishables. A replacement FE is 4 hours away by road. The commander, who has flown with you before, says he has 'seen this sort of thing before' and asks you to sign the technical log as flight engineer so the sector can go.
1. Which of the four items bar you from acting as FE tonight, and in what order of seriousness?
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Three of the four bar me; one is fine.
The licence itself is valid and the type rating is on it, so that item is clear.
The medical is the hard bar and ranks first. Once the certificate of the required class expires, the privileges of the licence are not exercisable - the licence document still looks valid, which is exactly what makes this dangerous. There is no waiver, no commander's discretion and no MEL that fixes an expired medical, and the date is not negotiable because it falls 3 days before the renewal.
The proficiency check at 13 months breaches the operator's approved training and checking programme and, in practice, the licensing requirement for a current check on type. It is a second independent bar: even with a valid medical I could not fly tonight.
The 90-day recency is the third: 3 sectors within 90 days, and I have none. It is the least severe of the three because it is curable with sectors under supervision, but it is still a bar.
So: medical, then proficiency check, then recency. The commander's familiarity with me is irrelevant to all three - that is the trap in this request.
2. What legal options exist for tonight's departure, and can you occupy the jump seat?
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The legal options are narrow and all operational rather than documentary.
One: delay the departure until the replacement FE arrives, roughly 4 hours plus the necessary rest and the licence and medical verification. Two: cancel or consolidate the load onto another service. Three: if the operator has another qualified FE at base, crew the flight with him. What is not available is a special flight permit, a ferry approval or an MEL entry - those are tools for aircraft defects, not for crew licensing, and none of them can override an expired medical certificate.
The jump seat question has a defensible answer: yes, as a supernumerary or passenger, with the commander's and operator's approval, provided I perform no crew duty, do not sign the technical log, do not operate any FE panel and am not counted in the crew complement. The moment I am briefed as a crew member or touch the panel the flight is being operated with an unqualified crew member and the whole exercise collapses. Practically, the safer answer tonight is not to travel in the aircraft at all, so there is no ambiguity at a later ramp inspection about what my role was.
3. Who carries the accountability, and what records and reports must follow?
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Accountability sits in three places, and 'the commander said so' does not shift it.
Mine first: a licence holder has a personal duty not to exercise privileges that are not valid, and signing a technical log as FE when not qualified is a false certification regardless of who asked. That is the item most likely to end in enforcement action against the individual.
The commander's: he has final authority for the flight, and that authority is a power to refuse, not a power to waive licensing requirements. Directing or accepting the flight with an unqualified crew member exposes him directly.
The operator's: as the AOC holder, it must crew its flights with qualified personnel and maintain the training and checking records; the postholder responsible for crew training and the nominated person for flight operations both own the programme that was breached. The scheduler who presented the file also needs to answer for how an expired medical reached the flight 40 minutes before departure.
Records: the refusal and the reason go in the operator's SMS, with the crew scheduling record showing why the flight was delayed. If the flight departed with me aboard, the occurrence is reportable to the KCAA and the operator must also assess the insurance position, because a flight operated with an unlicensed crew member can void cover. Finally, my own logbook should not contain any entry for a flight I did not legally crew.