The pilot medical certificate classes and who issues each one

01 Three Classes, One Question: What Keeps You Legal in the Left Seat

The FAA issues three classes of medical certificate, and the class you hold decides which flying you may do and how often a doctor has to look at you again. On the FAA’s pilots and medical certification page the three certificates, the examiners who conduct the examinations and the paperwork that surrounds both are laid out menu by menu, and what follows takes that structure and walks you through it.

02 Your application starts on a screen, not in a clinic

Before an aviation medical examiner sees you, you answer the questions yourself. FAA MedXPress is the web application pilots must use to submit items 1 through 20 of FAA Form 8500-8, the certification applicant information. A valid email address is all you need to create an account. The FAA says MedXPress is designed to speed up the processing of your request and shorten the office visit with the AME. So the sequence is fixed: you file online, then you sit the examination.

03 What each class actually buys you

The first class certificate belongs to the working flight deck. It is what an airline captain or first officer holds, and it comes with the tightest review interval of the three. The second class covers commercial flying that is not airline flying: the charter pilot, the crop duster, the banner tow, the instructor whose certificate is being used to earn a living rather than to fly for pleasure. The third class is the private pilot’s certificate, the one you carry when you fly yourself and the people who come with you, not paying passengers. Hold the wrong class for the work you are doing and the certificate that lets you fly the aircraft no longer covers that flight.

04 Who signs off, and how an examiner differs

Examinations are conducted by aviation medical examiners, and the FAA offers a locator to find one. A separate category exists for a particular kind of case. HIMS AMEs, standing for Human Intervention Motivation Study, are trained in evaluating airmen for substance- or alcohol-related conditions or other mental conditions, and the FAA notes that they can provide sponsorship and monitoring for those conditions when the agency requires it for medical certification purposes. That distinction matters if your history includes something an ordinary examiner would have to send upward rather than sign off.

05 The sport pilot and the medical certificate

The pilot information list on the medical certification page includes entries for Sport Pilot and for BasicMed, alongside questions and answers about BasicMed and a page dedicated to the deaf pilot. The FAA also keeps documents that tell you what to do before the examination itself: an AME guide titled Know Before You Go, a Medical Examination Bill of Rights, a list of over-the-counter medications, and a page on pilot mental fitness. There is a pre-flight your exam page, marked new, and a breakdown of top medical conditions by age group, also marked new.

06 Vaccines, medications and the duty to stand down

One policy on the page is unusually specific, because it touches a question pilots ask every year. Holders of FAA-issued airman medical certificates or medical clearances may receive the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax COVID-19 vaccines, but a 48-hour no fly and no safety-related duty interval must be observed after each dose. The FAA applies that interval to first doses and to booster shots alike. The same section reminds certificate and clearance holders that they are prohibited from performing flight crewmember duties or air traffic control duties if they do not meet medical certification requirements, and it points to 14 CFR 61.53, which applies to all certificated pilots whether they hold a medical certificate or not.

07 What happens if you fly while you should not have

The medical certification page carries a reference to an amended prompt settlement policy for legal enforcement actions involving medical certificate related fraud, intentional falsification, reproduction or alteration, effective 31 January 2022, with a separate page explaining how to take part in that policy. The same menu links the DUI and DWI program and the industry drug and alcohol testing program. None of it is a warning to read past; it is the part of the system that decides what a certificate is worth when it is used to keep flying anyway.

08 The medical side is one certificate among several

A pilot certificate and the medical certificate that goes with it are separate documents held for separate reasons, which is why the FAA keeps medical certification on its own branch of the pilots portal rather than as a note under certificates. If you are still mapping the paper before you ever reach a doctor, it helps to see how the medical requirement sits beside the certificate it supports. Pilot certificates and ratings sets out what each pilot certificate and rating allows, so you can see which class of medical goes with each one. The same logic runs through the way the FAA builds every flight crew role: the path from a first flight lesson ends at a commercial certificate, and a second class medical is part of what you carry when you get there. All of it sits inside careers and certificates, the section that maps the paper a working pilot, mechanic or dispatcher actually holds.

09 You do not have to guess about your own history

If you have ever marked yes on a medical question, wondered about a medication someone handed you at a pharmacy counter, or let a certificate lapse because you were unsure whether you would qualify again, the FAA keeps a route for the record itself. You can request a copy of your medical certificate, request medical records, and locate a HIMS examiner rather than an ordinary one if your situation calls for it. The contact list on the bottom of the page names the Aerospace Medical Certification Division and the regional flight surgeons, which are the offices that answer when a case travels past the examiner’s desk.

10 The certificate is not the same thing as the person

Everything above is issued, recorded and checked by name, and every route in it eventually passes through an examiner’s office and a form. The FAA page that holds these rules ends with contact information rather than a conclusion, and that is the honest shape of it: the certificate you hold today says nothing about the one you will need next year, or about the condition a physician might find at your next examination.

About the FAA medical certification page

The FAA’s Medical Certification page sits under the agency’s Pilots portal and gathers the rules, forms and policy memorandums that govern airman medical certificates and clearances. It lists MedXPress, the AME locator, HIMS examiners, aeromedical brochures, drug and alcohol programs and the prompt settlement policy, and it names the Aerospace Medical Certification Division and the regional flight surgeons as contacts. Policy memorandums cover subjects from color vision testing to COVID-19 vaccine use. The page is a directory of where a pilot or controller goes for a medical decision, not a substitute for the regulation it cites.

11 Where to continue

The pages below take the pilot medical certificate classes and who issues each one a step further inside careers and certificates, beginning with Which aviation jobs are entered through a certificate rather than a degree, then move on to the next trade. Each one names the agency that holds the rule it describes.