The FAA should have titled the Practical Test Standards (PTS) replacement Pilot Certification Standards, not Airman Certification Standards (ACS).
Regardless what you think of the new standards for awarding (or earning) a pilot — see there it is — certificate, the title is wrong.
Never have I been asked, “Are you an airman?” And I’d hazard a guess no one outside of the U.S. Air Force has either.
I’m a pilot. It says so on my certificate. Commercial Pilot. It doesn’t read Commercial Airman.
Dictionary.com defines airman as (1) an aviator; (2) U.S. Air Force an enlisted person of one of the three lowest ranks; (3) a member of a military aircrew.
The origin dates to 1870-1875, “for an earlier sense; air + man, on a model of seaman.”
Hmm. I wonder about “aviator.” While cool, it doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy as pilot, but it is better than airman. Simply put, I don’t like the term airman, especially in this context.
And if you happen to be female, the FAA has just reinforced the stereotype that pilots are men.
To be fair, a good many women pilots probably don’t care what the FAA calls the certification standards. But many do. And words do matter. We should care about the impression we are making on those young ladies who’ve yet to join our ranks.
Chances are, they dream of being a pilot… not an airman.
It’s just legalese. A group I’m part of has a Constitution and Bylaws. Article 2 of the Constitution says, in part:
“Any masculine form shall be inclusive of the feminine form.
Any feminine form shall be inclusive of the masculine form. ”
This is common in legalese. It simply says that “even though it uses one gender, it is inclusive of the other.” This, airman and airmen are both inclusive of both men and women.
The FAA is responsible for issuing certificates to pilots, instructors, mechanics, dispatchers, flight navigators, and more. Collectively, all of these certificates are referred to “airmen” – there will ultimately be an ACS for all certificates and ratings currently referencing a PTS. The title of the ACS was intentionally chosen to reflect this.
Try “air-person”?
The term “airman” has two definitions in the US Air Force. One is as Ben Sclair used from dictionary.com. The definition is similar to how the FAA is using it for the Airman Certification Standards.
As a retired officer in the US Air Force and current member of the Civil Air Patrol, the term airman applies to all personnel in the Total Force from 4 star general to cadet not just to the ranks of Basic Airman to Senior Airman.
So knowing the FAA is upgrading all of the Practical Test Standards (PTS) to a new name to reflect the need to make the evaluation of airman more in line with scenario based training and reflect the way pilots, instructors, aviation maintenance technicians, flight engineers, parachute riggers, and inspection authorization holders apply the knowledge and skills they will use, in my humble opinion, the correct title for the standards.
Lets get TODAYS version; “Air-Persons or Pilot-Person”?????
Maybe it would have been better if they used the old term “Aviator”, it covers all the modern genders they have now days.
Sorry, the feminine form of aviator is “aviatrix” so that term won’t catch all in today’s ambiguous world.
The joke is that a pilot is someone who piles it here or there or anywhere! The other favorite very old joke is that a light twin (for many unfortunate accidents) has two engines so that when one of them fails, the second engine is there to ensure that you as the pilot and whoever else is with you are the first ones at the scene of the accident. I know, not funny.
Why not call it “Aviation Certification Standards” while continuing use of the word “Pilot” on the Certificate?
When you get right down to it, the certificate is really an operator’s driver’s license albeit for an airplane. For years I drove heavy DC-8s (aka Diesel 8s) and said so when asked what I did for a living which would sometimes draw a chuckle from the uninitated. Have you ever whipped out your pilot’s certificate when asked to show your driver’s license? I have. Some FAA line check riders back in the day with a sense of humor (which was always appreciated) would ask: “gentleman, your papers please” or “may I see your driver’s license (and medical)?” Political Correctness has taken a lot of the joy out of life.
The certification standards will ultimately apply to all airman and FAA certificate holders: pilots, instructors, aviation maintenance technicians, flight engineers (the few that are left), parachute riggers, and inspection authorization holders. The term ACS was used as a comparable counterpart to the Practical Test Standards — a universal FAA document that applies to the FAA-defined airman. The FAA needed a single, universal title to group these documents together — in the same way the PTS is. The term “airman” wasn’t selected to disengage anyone (it had already been defined by 14 CFR part 1; changing that definition or term was beyond the scope of what the ACS set out to do) — women or mechanics — in fact, it was selected intentionally to imply the all-inclusive nature the documents will have in terms of application application to all FAA certificate holders. I hope this helps clarify.
I’m sure with you on this one, Ben. Very good reasoning. When I was flying airline, though my airline required 24 hours between bottle & throttle as opposed to the FAA’s 8 hours, sometimes we’d go have a beer between the 8 & 24 hour rules and if someone asked what we did for a living, we’d tell them we were Heavy Equipment Operators. I difinitely think it should be Pilot instead of Airman Certification Standards. An A&P Mechanic, ooops Tecnician that is, is also called an Airman.
Some of us still do consider ourselves a Mechanic, 🙂
Yep, that is true. Real mechanics fix things that are broken. Technicians just replace them.
I thought that a Pilot was the person that drove the little boats that docked the big boats.
charlie
These new standards will cover a range of topics that encompass many more functions of aviation than just pilots. The new standards I believe are properly labeled under the broader definition of airman; so that so many of the important parts of our industry are included: air traffic controllers, dispatchers, mechanics, etc — they too are an integral part of the airman community and likely deserve to be included in the new airman hierarchy under the ACS. I believe it’s a good label.