The FAA should return all of its test questions to the public domain, so the aviation industry can help to review and revise the knowledge required of pilot applicants, an FAA rulemaking committee said this week. The recommendation was one result of a six-month review of the FAA's knowledge tests. The committee also said the FAA should do a better job of communicating with the aviation-training community about changes to tests, and should modernize the technology used to administer them. By the end of September, the committee said, the FAA should create a stakeholder committee to help develop questions and to review standards and handbook content.
The GA fatal accident rate has stalled at "an unacceptable level of … approximately one fatal accident per 75,000 flight hours," the report states. "Many of these pilots did not court risk, but inadvertently exposed themselves and their passengers to risks they did not fully understand. … because the system through which they are trained and tested currently has limitations." The committee says that revising the training and testing methods used in GA "likely will improve safety among all affected categories of flight."
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