AeroCopilotHelp Center

Airworthiness Directive Compliance

How AeroCopilot tracks open ADs, recurring inspection countdowns, and the ARROW documents that make an aircraft legally airworthy under 14 CFR.

Airworthiness Directive Compliance

Airworthiness is a binary state in the eyes of the FAA, but the inputs that determine it are continuous. AeroCopilot tracks the open Airworthiness Directives (ADs) against your tail, the recurring inspections that keep the certificate valid, and the ARROW documents that have to be on board. The /compliance/maintenance page is the consolidated read; the AI tool getAirworthinessStatus exposes the same picture in chat.

Recurring inspections we track

The Airworthiness card on each aircraft surfaces the inspections required by 14 CFR with countdowns and color-coded time-remaining:

  • Annual inspection — §91.409 for aircraft operated under Part 91.
  • 100-hour inspection — §91.409 when required by use (for-hire carriage of persons, flight instruction in an owner-provided aircraft).
  • Transponder check — §91.413 every 24 calendar months.
  • Altimeter and pitot-static system check — §91.411 every 24 calendar months for IFR operations.
  • ELT inspection — §91.207 including battery replacement on the schedule defined in the rule.

Each row carries the CFR citation, time remaining, and a green / amber / red status badge. When any inspection is overdue, the aircraft Safety State Banner flips to NO-GO.

ARROW documents

The ARROW checklist on aircraft detail tracks the documents required by §91.9 and §91.203:

  • Airworthiness certificate
  • Registration
  • Radio station license (where applicable)
  • Operating limitations (POH / AFM)
  • Weight & Balance

A missing item drops the airworthiness state and is annotated with the relevant CFR citation.

Airworthiness Directives

ADs are the recurring or one-time fixes the FAA orders against a specific make / model / serial. AeroCopilot maintains:

  • Open AD tracking per tail with countdowns to the next compliance deadline.
  • AD compliance badges on aircraft cards — open ADs visible at a glance alongside 100-hr / Annual / XPDR / ALT / ELT countdowns.
  • AI chat AD compliance check through getAirworthinessStatus, which returns the same structured state.
  • Public Airworthiness Directives Directory (/tools family) — a searchable index of FAA ADs, scheduled for the regulations.gov bulk rebuild (5-year rolling backfill).

For Part 135 operators, AD compliance is one of the seven evidence sections in the § 135.63 Inspector Bundle — the one-click CSV export ramp-check inspectors expect under the NTSB AIR-24-03 expansion.

How airworthiness gates dispatch

Airworthiness is not advisory. It participates directly in the GO / HOLD authority on the pre-flight briefing:

  • An overdue inspection or missing ARROW document hard-blocks GO and is called out in the briefing's Airworthiness section.
  • For Part 135 operators, the dispatch release engine BLOCKS dispatch when the aircraft is MEL-grounded or has an overdue AD. The cross-CFR validator inside the Dispatch AI Verdict checks §91.417(a)(2)(v) (AD overdue) before the dispatcher commits the release.
  • The Safety State Banner on the dashboard reflects the airworthiness state in real time.

MEL drift — the silent failure mode

MEL deferrals are a separate but adjacent risk. Category B / C / D deferrals carry hard calendar-day expiry and manual tracking misses them. AeroCopilot auto-calculates due dates excluding the day of discovery and blocks dispatch when overdue. MEL deferrals also appear in the § 135.63 Inspector Bundle (500 rows) so an inspector can see what was deferred, when, and when it cleared.

Life-limited parts

For operators tracking life-limited parts, status flows through installed → status_* → removed | scrapped with audit log entries on every transition. Removed and scrapped rows are soft-deleted and preserved per §135.439 retention so the inspector chain remains intact.