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BasicMed and Class Medical Tracking

How AeroCopilot tracks First, Second, Third Class medicals, BasicMed, and Sport Pilot driver-license medical fitness with class-aware operational limits.

BasicMed and Class Medical Tracking

Medical class is not just an expiration date — it dictates what flying you are allowed to do. AeroCopilot captures your medical class during onboarding, tracks expirations, and gates operations the regulations gate. The five classes we model match the FAA's: First, Second, Third, BasicMed, and DriverLicense (Sport Pilot).

Class capture and operational scope

The MedicalClassStep in onboarding presents five medical-class radio options with class-conditional fields. The operational scope each unlocks is enforced downstream:

  • First / Second / Third Class — standard FAA medical certificates issued by an Aviation Medical Examiner.
  • BasicMed — capped at 18,000 feet MSL, 250 KTAS, and 6 occupants per §61.113(i). The user must acknowledge these limits; the acknowledgement is stored on User.basicMedLimitationsAcknowledged.
  • DriverLicense (Sport Pilot) — blocked from IFR, night, and commercial operations per §61.303. When a user selects DriverLicense, the Sport Pilot operational-limits panel appears and those gates engage everywhere from briefing GO authority to AI tool answers.

BasicMed cadence

BasicMed has two recurring requirements that AeroCopilot tracks separately:

  • Comprehensive Medical Examination Checklist (CMEC): every 48 calendar months with a state-licensed physician. This replaces the AME visit a Class III pilot would otherwise schedule.
  • Online Medical Education Course: every 24 calendar months through an FAA-approved provider (AOPA, Mayo Clinic). Course completion certificate is what proves currency.

If either rolls past expiration, BasicMed privileges are suspended until the missing item is renewed. The /compliance/medical page surfaces both countdowns; the Compliance Status Widget on /dashboard shows the nearer of the two.

Expiration math by class

Medical certificate duration depends on class and age at the time of exam:

  • First Class — for ATP/Part 121 PIC privileges, 6 calendar months under age 40, 12 calendar months age 40 and over. Drops to Second-Class privileges after 12 months and Third-Class privileges after the longer Second-Class window.
  • Second Class — 12 calendar months for commercial privileges regardless of age.
  • Third Class — 60 calendar months under age 40, 24 calendar months age 40 and over.

The class-aware countdowns on /compliance/medical use these rules and roll forward by calendar month — not by calendar day — consistent with lib/aviation/calendar-month-math.ts and §61.23(d).

Drone medical attestation (§107.17)

Part 107 has its own medical-fitness gate. The drone module enforces §107.17 medical fitness attestation at the planned → briefed mission transition. The attestation is not a checkbox alone — DroneMission.medicalAttestationDetails (JSON) captures lastAlcoholAt, restHours, medicationsTakenLast48h, and fitnessNotes. A boolean alone is unfalsifiable on post-incident review; a structured record is not. The <BriefMissionButton> on /drone/missions/[id] is what surfaces the attestation modal.

How medical status gates flying

Medical state participates in the unified GO / HOLD authority on the pre-flight briefing:

  • An expired or class-mismatched medical hard-blocks GO and is called out by section.
  • Sport Pilot blocks IFR / night / commercial regardless of weather or fuel state.
  • BasicMed beyond 18,000 MSL, above 250 KTAS, or with more than 6 occupants triggers a GO block with the §61.113(i) citation in the message.
  • The AI getComplianceStatus tool returns the same picture — Medical, BFR, IPC, currency — so chat answers stay in sync with the page.

Renewal workflow

/compliance/medical/new accepts a new certificate; /compliance/medical/[id]/edit corrects an existing record. AeroCopilot does not contact AMEs for you, and we do not maintain an AME directory — designee.faa.gov has no bulk feed and the ToS bars scraping. We will revisit when an AMAS or AOPA partnership is available.