Originally Posted by
cub builder
Let's step back about 35 years ago and see how we got here. Prior to 1979 there was no such thing as a "Repairman Certificate". Additionally, A&Ps and IAs could not sign for inspections on E-AB aircraft. Only an FAA Airworthiness Inspector could do inspections on E-AB aircraft. As one can well imagine, that was quickly becoming a problem for the FAA as the E-AB movement took hold and more and more people began building aircraft. The local GADO (General Aviation District Office) started having Inspection meetings where you could fly your E-AB aircraft in to get it's annual inspection. The Inspectors would often times have to inspect 10 or more aircraft in a day. Otherwise, they would have to travel into the field to do the inspections one by one. Obviously, the quality of the inspections in this scenario weren't the best. (Has anyone actually seen an FAA Airworthiness Inspector get their hands dirty?) This was really becoming overwhelming for the GADO offices and something had to change.
I went through one annual inspection with the GADO office under this scenario. I had to fly my non-electric biplane into an ARSA (now class C) airport to the GADO (now FSDO) office so the Airworthiness Inspector could spend 15 minutes looking it over and endorse my logbooks. The inspection was a joke, and quite frankly, having a lot of homebuilts, many non-electric, flying into busy airspace where the GADO offices are located and trying to land with light signals from the tower mixed in with plenty of passenger jet traffic probably wasn't a really great way to operate.
The reality was that the builders were doing their own maintenance, so the FAA decided to issue a Repairman Certificate to give the owners an official blessing to do their own maintenance and sign their own logs. But then there was the issue of how to deal with E-AB aircraft that were no longer owned by the original builder. The FAA decided that since A&Ps possess sufficient knowledge of general principles of aircraft aircraft construction and engine maintenance to perform E-AB inspections, so decided to allow any A&P to perform condition inspections on E-AB aircraft rather than restricting inspections to only A&Ps with an IA (Inspectors Authorization) rating. The FAA didn't have to do this but chose to do this based on he difference between one type of plane being signed off as airworthy vs the other type being signed as serviceable. They could have forced the E-AB community to use mechanics with an IA rating, which would have constricted the E-AB community significantly.
The testing to obtain an A&P license is centered around the technical aspects of performing the job. Knowing and understanding the mechanics of the job is the vast majority of the emphasis. Testing for the IA rating is centered around knowing and understanding the FARs and associated paperwork.
-Cub Builder
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