We expect to have the first draft of the course ready in the March timeframe and we hope to be able to show this to you at the Air Care Conference in April. From this draft, we will refine the content and presentation to maximize its impact and effectiveness. After that is complete, the writers, videographers, and computer graphics artists will set about completing the project and finalizing the presentation. We should be ready to go live with the course in late June....just in time for Oshkosh!

Many of you have been so kind to donate material and your expertise to this project. As we progress through this project, we will be calling on many of you to review the drafts and provide feedback for improvement. Thank you all - this has truly been a team effort.

Last October, the FAA revised the exemptions that it previously granted to Wings of Mercy, Inc. and Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic that allow pilots to accept reimbursement for expenses of volunteer medical patient transport flights. The FAA placed less onerous conditions on both the organizations and pilots seeking to implement the exemption. The requirements to take advantage of the exemption are still substantial and the exemptions only apply to the specific organizations that applied for and received them. The FAA has recently denied a similar request from HelpFourPaws, Inc., which provides volunteer flights to bring animals facing euthanasia to a permanent shelter.

In considering an exemption from regulations, the FAA requires that the applicant demonstrate that its request is in the public interest and that an equivalent level of safety can be achieved under the exemption.

The FAA has often expressed its support for volunteer pilots providing ambulatory medical patient transportation. Therefore, up to this point, the focus has been on issues of safety and it was assumed that the FAA would deem fostering these flights to be in the public interest. That assumption was correct, but the issue of public interest has remained an essential element in FAA's consideration of exemption requests.

HelpFourPaws learned this when the FAA determined that its mission, although worthy, was not compelling enough to grant an exemption from the FAR's. In its denial letter dated January 11, 2011, the FAA stated:

[Previous] exemptions have been limited to situations in which human life and health have been the primary considerations. Although providing similar assistance to animals may be a good cause, we find it is not sufficiently in the public interest to justify exempting such operations from the regulations. We note that, although the FAA is denying this petition, HelpFourPaws' volunteer pilots may continue to conduct these operations without reimbursement for expenses.

Thus it is not enough that the flights would presumably have the same level of safety as flights transporting human patients. In the FAA's view, the public interest would not be "sufficiently" served by allowing a pilot to receive reimbursement for fuel and other costs for these flights under an exemption from FAR §61.113. In other words, the FAA determined that what HelpFourPaws requested was safe and good, but not good enough.

The FAA's position that human patient transport is of higher public value than animal transportation may be supportable, but basing its decision on degrees of public interest (as opposed to the exemption either being in the public interest or not) seems ill-defined and arbitrary.

There are a multitude of reasons why a requested exemption might be contrary to the public interest and there may be unarticulated reasons to justify the FAA's decision in this case. But how does one know what is "sufficiently in the public interest" to justify an exemption? I guess we will just have to wait for the next Exemption Du Jour.