2.7 FAA Forms, MMEL/MEL, Inoperative Equipment & Parts Effectivity

2.7 FAA Forms, MMEL/MEL, Inoperative Equipment & Parts Effectivity

Subject AM.I.I of the Airman Certification Standards is the largest regulatory block in the General section — 23 knowledge elements. Sections 2.1 through 2.6 covered the biggest ones. This section closes the remaining elements that prep courses routinely skip: the FAA forms other than the 337 (AM.I.I.K5), manufacturer publications and minimum equipment lists (K11), FAA databases and supplemental type certificates (K12), FAA-approved airworthiness limitations (K17), the legal weight of warnings, cautions and notes (K18), inoperative equipment (K19), discrepancy records and placards (K20), effectivity codes and serial-number effectivity (K21, K22), and the mechanic's own address-change duty (K23).

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1. The FAA Forms Beyond the 337

The ACS names four forms explicitly. You are expected to recognize each one on sight and know what it does.

Exam trap. Do not confuse Form 8130-3 (a part tag) with Form 8100-2 (an aircraft certificate). Also do not confuse the voluntary Part 91 Malfunction or Defect Report with the mandatory Service Difficulty Report obligations elsewhere in the regulations: a certificated repair station must report a serious failure, malfunction, or defect of an article to the FAA within 96 hours after discovery under 14 CFR § 145.221(a).

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2. Manufacturer Publications and the MMEL/MEL Chain

AM.I.I.K11 lists maintenance manuals, service bulletins, maintenance alerts, and master minimum equipment lists as the manufacturer-publication family.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                 MMEL -> MEL -> DISPATCH DECISION CHAIN                   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                          |
|   MMEL  (Master Minimum Equipment List)                                  |
|   • Developed for an aircraft TYPE by the FAA Flight Operations          |
|     Evaluation Board with the manufacturer                               |
|   • Generic; covers every configuration of that type                     |
|                        |                                                 |
|                        v  operator tailors it to ITS fleet               |
|   MEL   (Minimum Equipment List)                                         |
|   • Specific to ONE operator's registration numbers                      |
|   • Must be EQUAL TO or MORE RESTRICTIVE than the MMEL                   |
|   • Requires a Letter of Authorization from the responsible              |
|     Flight Standards office; MEL + LOA together act as an STC            |
|     (14 CFR 91.213(a)(2))                                                |
|                        |                                                 |
|                        v                                                 |
|   DISPATCH with the item inoperative, deferred, placarded, and           |
|   entered in the records the flight crew can see (91.213(a)(4))          |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Two limits from § 91.213(b) that show up as distractors: an item may not be placed on an MEL if it is required by the airworthiness requirements the aircraft was certificated under and is essential for safe operation, or if an Airworthiness Directive requires it to be operable (unless the AD says otherwise).

Service bulletins and maintenance alerts. A manufacturer service bulletin — even one stamped Mandatory — is not legally binding on a Part 91 operator unless an AD incorporates it or an operator's operations specifications require it. FAA Maintenance Alerts (the Aviation Maintenance Alerts publication) are advisory trend information built largely from submitted Malfunction or Defect Reports.

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3. Inoperative Equipment Without an MEL (§ 91.213(d))

Most general-aviation aircraft have no MEL. Section 91.213(d) is the alternate path, and the mechanic owns two of its steps.

1. The aircraft must be a rotorcraft, non-turbine-powered airplane, glider, lighter-than-air aircraft, powered parachute, or weight-shift-control aircraft for which no MMEL has been developed — or a small aircraft in those classes for which an MMEL exists but the operator is not using it.
2. The inoperative item must not be part of the VFR-day type certification equipment, required by the aircraft's equipment list for that kind of operation, required by an AD, or required by any other rule of Part 91.
3. The inoperative instrument or equipment is either removed — with the cockpit control placarded and the maintenance recorded per Part 43 — or deactivated and placarded "INOPERATIVE."
4. If deactivation or removal involves maintenance, it must be accomplished and recorded in accordance with Part 43. That is the mechanic's job, and it is why a pilot cannot simply put a sticker on a dead gauge and depart.
5. A pilot or a certificated mechanic then determines that the inoperative item does not constitute a hazard.

Discrepancy records and placards (AM.I.I.K20) live in this same space: the placard is the visible half of the deferral, and the maintenance record entry is the legal half. One without the other is a violation.

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4. Warnings, Cautions, and Notes (AM.I.I.K18)

Maintenance and operating manuals use a three-tier hierarchy that is standardized across the industry. The ACS asks you to know the definitions, and AM.I.I.R4 asks you to manage the risk of ignoring them.

Memory hook: Warning hurts Workers; Caution costs Cash; a Note is just News. The ordering is not a stylistic choice — mixing them up in a written procedure is itself a finding during an FAA audit.

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5. Effectivity: Making Sure the Part Fits This Aircraft

AM.I.I.K21 and K22 cover "usable on" codes and serial-number effectivity — the single most common source of a wrong-part installation.

• Usable-on (effectivity) codes appear in the manufacturer's Illustrated Parts Catalog (IPC) as a short alphanumeric tag in a dedicated column, for example A, B, AB, or ALL. A legend at the front of the IPC maps each code to a block of aircraft serial numbers, model variants, or post-service-bulletin configurations.
• Serial-number effectivity is established by cross-checking the aircraft or component data plate serial number against the effectivity legend, the Type Certificate Data Sheet, and any applicable service bulletin or STC. Two airframes on the same ramp with consecutive serial numbers can legitimately take different part numbers.
• FAA databases (AM.I.I.K12). Type Certificate Data Sheets, Supplemental Type Certificates, ADs, and advisory circulars are published in the FAA Dynamic Regulatory System (DRS) at drs.faa.gov, which consolidated the older Regulatory and Guidance Library. An STC belongs to its holder; installing under someone else's STC requires their written permission, and the STC paperwork becomes part of the aircraft's permanent records.

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6. FAA-Approved Airworthiness Limitations (AM.I.I.K17)

The Airworthiness Limitations Section (ALS) is a discrete, FAA-approved part of the Instructions for Continued Airworthiness. It contains mandatory replacement times, structural inspection intervals, and related procedures. Its defining property is that it is not optional and not adjustable by the mechanic or owner — no field approval, no "acceptable data" substitution, no engineering judgment. Compliance is required by § 91.403(c), and the current status of life-limited parts is one of the permanent records under § 91.417(a)(2).

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7. The Mechanic's Own Paperwork: Change of Address (AM.I.I.K23)

14 CFR § 65.21 is short and gets tested precisely because it is easy to forget:

Within 30 days after any change in the permanent mailing address, the holder of a certificate issued under Part 65 shall notify the FAA Airman Certification Branch in Oklahoma City, in writing, of the new address.

The clock runs from the change of address, not from the date you notice it, and the notification must be in writing to the Airman Certification Branch — not to the local Flight Standards office, not to your employer.