Warbird Information Exchange

The original post is not accurate. FAA regulation 91.315 does not prohibit charging for flights in this category of aircraft, it does prohibit carriage of persons or freight for compensation or hire. The FAA for years has interpretations stating flight instruction is NOT considered carriage of persons or freight for compensation or hire. You can read these interpretations for yourself on faa.gov. ( see below )
Protecting the ability to get instruction in these aircraft is of vital importance to the preservation of these airplanes and to the pilots that fly them. I hate to see the FAA change policy( without changing regulation) to shut down a particular operator. ( my opinion) Everybody else that provides quality instruction in these aircraft will pay the price.
If this change goes through ,it could open up a can of worms for flight schools. If instruction is considered carriage of passengers or freight for hire or compensation it would require all instructors to have 2nd or 1st class physicals. ( presently you can instruct with a 3rd class and in some cases no medical) The biggest worm would occur for cross country instruction. Point A to point B operations for hire require a 135 or 121 certificate. Essentially making a flight school an airline. This would be a disaster.
I wish the instructors and businesses luck in this battle with the FAA . I believe if they lose, the whole warbird community loses!

We operated a B-25, a limited category aircraft, for many years selling rides on the Exemption, often referred to as Living History Flights. We obtained a similar FAA Exemption to sell flight instruction in the B-25. Maybe some people don’t know that is available. We could if desired, sell instruction in our two Experimental category aircraft, the T-33 and A-26 Special Kay without an Exemption, but rather a simple Deviation from the regs to do so from the local FSDO. Only the high cost of operation and insurance prevents us from pursuing the idea.

We operated a B-25, a limited category aircraft, for many years selling rides on the Exemption, often referred to as Living History Flights. We obtained a similar FAA Exemption to sell flight instruction in the B-25. Maybe some people don’t know that is available. We could if desired, sell instruction in our two Experimental category aircraft, the T-33 and A-26 Special Kay without an Exemption, but rather a simple Deviation from the regs to do so from the local FSDO. Only the high cost of operation and insurance prevents us from pursuing the idea.

FYI...I didn't see this posted anywhere.

https://news.yahoo.com/ntsb-pilot-error ... 21769.html

The FAA said in a statement Tuesday that it has a number of initiatives under way to improve the safety of vintage aircraft flights offered to the public. It has issued new guidance to safety inspectors, required them to inspect all operators of such flights by Sept. 30 and will be issuing new rules for operators' safety management systems.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, called on the FAA to immediately implement the NTSB's recommendations.

Look at the Stallion 51 website...been doing it for 30+ years.

As I understand it, a lot of air racers got their type ratings on Mustangs with them.
Retired Chief astronaut of NASA and winner at 2015 Reno 'Hoot Gibson' confirmed to me that this is where he got rated on the P-51.

Stallion has been an invaluable resource to all warbird owners. I would venture to say most Mustangs aside from a select few fly more than 50-100 hours a year. Racing guys in particular. Going to Stallion for recurrent or general currency has saved a lot of lives.

The pilot that had to force land TF-51 'Miss Velma' in the field short of the runway at Flying Legends 3/4 years back, went on record to say that the training he received at Stallion 51 was invaluable in dealing with the situation he faced that day.

Interestingly, I think his major error was also putting the gear down to early. It must be something pilots are worried about forgetting so they drop them early. Be a neat angle to study in power loss situations in any retractable wheel type.

Sean

You have a point. I can see where as a pilot, I might want to get through certain parts of the checklist early in the emergency so I have more bandwidth to fly the (troubled) aircraft to a safe landing at the end. Unfortunately, there are examples where that thought process lead directly to the accident. I would argue that the Dover C-5 crash was <partially> a result of the pilots prepping for the emergency landing (dirtying up the airplane) before they had the field made.