Flight time
For aeroplanes, flight time is the total time from the moment the aeroplane first moves for the purpose of taking off until the moment it finally comes to rest at the end of the flight. Annex 6 notes that this is synonymous with the everyday terms block-to-block or chock-to-chock time. Both edges of the definition are examined. It does not start at engine start, nor at the take-off roll, but at the first movement made in order to take off, so the whole taxi out counts. And it does not end at touchdown but when the aeroplane finally stops after taxiing in.
Why so precise? Flight time is the currency of two different ledgers: the hours entered in a pilot's logbook towards licences and ratings, and the flight-and-duty-time limits that cap how much a crew may fly. The limitation rules themselves are a later lesson of this course; they all count time by this definition.
Compliance and operational control
An airline's aeroplanes cross borders daily, and Annex 6 makes the operator responsible for what its people know when they do. The operator shall ensure that all employees, when abroad, know that they must comply with the laws, regulations and procedures of the states in which operations are conducted. For flight crew the bar is higher: the operator shall ensure that all pilots are familiar with the laws, regulations and procedures pertinent to their duties for the areas to be traversed, the aerodromes to be used and the air navigation facilities relating to them. Other flight crew members must be familiar with whatever of these is pertinent to their own duties.
The same section settles who runs the flight from the ground. Operational control is the exercise of authority over the initiation, continuation, diversion or termination of a flight in the interest of the safety of the aircraft and the regularity and efficiency of the flight. Responsibility for it rests with the operator or a designated representative, and it may be delegated only to two people: the pilot-in-command, and a flight operations officer or flight dispatcher if the operator's approved method of control and supervision requires one. Nobody else can be handed that authority, and the exam likes to offer plausible extras such as the senior cabin crew member or the aerodrome authority.
The safety programmes
Two obligations in chapter 3 look like paperwork and are anything but. The first is the flight data analysis programme: the routine downloading and analysis of recorded flight data from everyday operations, hunting for trends such as unstable approaches or hard landings before they become accidents. The operator of an aeroplane with a maximum certificated take-off mass (MCTOM) in excess of 27,000 kg shall establish and maintain one, as part of its safety management system. Both halves of that sentence are exam answers: the mass that triggers the obligation, and the system the programme belongs to.
Around that core standard sit three refinements. For aeroplanes above 15,000 kg a flight data analysis programme is a recommendation rather than a requirement. Newly certificated aeroplanes above 15,000 kg carrying more than 19 passengers must, from 2027, be equipped to support such a programme, and an operator whose aeroplane is so equipped must run one. And the operator may contract the analysis out to another party while retaining overall responsibility for the programme. The data itself is protected: the programme must contain safeguards for its sources, because crews only fly honestly past a recorder they trust not to be used against them.
The second obligation is the flight safety documents system: the operator shall establish one for the use and guidance of operational personnel, again as part of its safety management system. Annex 6 defines it as a set of interrelated documentation established by the operator, compiling and organising the information necessary for flight and ground operations, and comprising as a minimum two named manuals: the operations manual and the operator's maintenance control manual. The point of the definition is the word interrelated: the documents are developed and amended as one coherent system, not as a pile of unrelated papers. The operations manual itself has a whole lesson later in the course.
The maintenance release
Before an aeroplane flies, someone must certify in writing that the work done on it was done properly. The maintenance release is a document containing a certification that the maintenance work to which it relates has been completed in a satisfactory manner in accordance with appropriate airworthiness requirements. Who signs it depends on who did the work. Maintenance carried out by an approved maintenance organisation is released under that organisation's own procedures per Annex 8. Where the work was not done by an approved organisation, the release must be completed and signed by an appropriately licensed person certifying that the work was completed satisfactorily, in accordance with approved data and procedures acceptable to the State of Registry.
For that second case, Annex 6 lists what the release must contain:
Basic details of the maintenance — including a detailed reference to the approved data the work followed.
The date — when the maintenance was completed.
The identity of the signer — the person or persons signing the release.
The document matters to pilots because of where it sits in the flight-preparation chain: a flight shall not be commenced until a maintenance release has been issued for the aeroplane. It is one of the items the commander confirms before departure, alongside the load sheet and the operational flight plan that later lessons walk through.
The lights an aeroplane displays
Annex 6 approaches lights as equipment: what must be installed and working. All aeroplanes operated at night shall be equipped with:
The lights required by Annex 2 — for aircraft in flight or operating on the movement area of an aerodrome: the navigation lights and anti-collision lights of the rules of the air.
Two landing lights — a single light with two separately energised filaments is accepted on aeroplanes outside Annex 8 certification.
Instrument illumination — for all instruments and equipment essential to safe operation and used by the flight crew.
Passenger compartment lights — in all passenger compartments.
A portable light per crew station — an independent light for each crew member station, the torch every checklist reaches for when the cabin goes dark.
The navigation lights themselves have fixed colours and fixed sectors, and the geometry is pure exam material: a red light on the left through an angle of coverage of 110°, a green light on the right through the mirror-image 110°, and a white light projected rearward through 140°, which is 70° either side of dead astern. Each light covers its sector both above and below the horizontal plane, and together the three close the full circle. From any bearing an observer at night can therefore read an aeroplane's orientation from colour alone. When the lights must be shown is the rules of the air's business, taught in the Air Law course: by night as the rules define it, between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight.