Still more news, more details, more of a bunch of things, all coming up at a speed that makes it hard to keep up.

Because of that, we thought it would be worthwhile to go directly to the members through a Facebook Live session, which we did on April 1 in English and April 2 in French.

Prior to the sessions, we invited members to send us their questions. I went over about 20 questions ranging from ADS-B, what COPA is looking for in my successor and, obviously, issues relating to COVID-19. One such query was if there will be an exemption or delay introduced for instrument proficiency checks, as there are for medical certificates. The simple answer is no for the following reasons:

• An Instrument Rating (IR) does not expire.
• There are a number of ways to meet recency as specified in section 401.05(3) of the CARs, including the conduct of an instrument proficiency check, pilot proficiency check, etc.
• Given that instrument proficiency is a perishable skill and acknowledged by the Transportation Safety Board to be an issue, Transport Canada (TC) is not considering removing the requirement for recency from CAR 401.05(3) at this time.

Another member asked if there will be an exemption for the 12-month annual inspection of our aircraft and, again, the answer is no – because AMOs and AMEs are considered essential services. You can read the list of essential services sent to COPA by TC here.

The Facebook Live sessions were recorded and are available on our Facebook page; the English session is available here or on YouTube.

To keep this article readable, I would invite you to read the minutes of these meetings between TC and industry (they are unclassified and don’t contain any sensitive information). The meetings started out for Northern Communities but have now morphed to a broader scope: Industry Conference Call from Civil Aviation and COVID-19. Notes are here for March 23, March 25, March 27, March 30 and April 1.

Last but not least, be responsible and do your part to avoid spreading the virus. We strongly encourage you to follow the guidelines from Canada Border Services Agency and, obviously, your local health officials’ recommendations as well.

Best of all, you should stay at home and catch up on all your COPA Flight magazines or TC’s Aviation Safety Letters.