Misdemeanor conviction

[Stephen Brawny]

I've recently taken an interest in flying at the age of 35. Maybe a little late in the game, but still interested nonetheless. I took my first private pilot's lesson down at the local airport and was getting ready to apply for a student pilots license.

16 years ago when I was fresh out of high school with my own apartment and still very immature and clueless, I had an incident with a party at my apartment where some friends under 18 were drinking and got caught and I was nailed with a misdemeanor corruption of minors.

Fast forward 16 years and I now have a successful career and a family. I have no aspirations of flying professionally. I just want to know if this will affect me from obtaining a private pilot's license and flying leisurely.

Thanks for any input

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

You're right, it's the same type of thinking. A pattern that applies to the way rumors spread and old wives tales are founded, not in a way that is consistent with science or logic. And all are correct, these are the rules we have to play by.

I suppose it's fortunate that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane in the early 1900's, rather than the 1600's, or they'd be using Navy dunk tanks to see if we were possessed by evil spirits before we were issued our certificates.

It is particularly ridiculous given there is no good evidence that requiring a medical certificate for private pilots improves the safety of flight (some weak evidence based on HIMS that it does and evidence from sport pilots that it does not).

So in that sense all of this is much ado about something the FAA likely cannot predict with any degree of accuracy. Yet we have a huge money and time consuming bureaucracy devoted to trying to make such predictions.