LODA (Letter of Deviation Authority)

A Letter of Deviation Authority is the instrument the FAA uses to allow paid flight training in categories of aircraft whose airworthiness certificates otherwise bar carrying persons for compensation or hire. Experimental aircraft are limited by 14 CFR 91.319, limited category aircraft by 14 CFR 91.315, and primary category aircraft by 14 CFR 91.325 — all of which restrict operations for compensation. Because instructing for hire looks like a commercial operation to those rules, a formal deviation is the mechanism that reconciles legitimate training with the certificate's limitations. The current legal home for both the exception and the LODA is 14 CFR 91.326, supported by AC 91-94, which lays out the application and issuance process.

The path to today's rule ran through litigation. In the Warbird Adventures matter (2021), a federal court of appeals upheld an FAA cease-and-desist order against paid instruction given in a limited category warbird, reasoning that the training violated the compensation-for-hire prohibition. The FAA then applied that logic broadly across the experimental fleet, effectively announcing that almost any flight training in an experimental aircraft — including an owner paying an instructor to teach them in their own airplane — required a LODA. The reaction from the homebuilt and warbird communities was immediate. Congress responded in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, whose section 814 directed that flight training, testing, and checking in limited, experimental, and primary category aircraft not require a LODA under specified conditions. The FAA codified that direction in 14 CFR 91.326, effective December 2, 2024.

Under 91.326 the analysis now turns on who supplies the aircraft and whether it is advertised. The rule is self-implementing — no LODA required — when the authorized instructor is not providing both the training and the aircraft, no person advertises or broadly offers the aircraft for flight training, and the only compensation for the aircraft is for the expenses of owning, operating, and maintaining it. It is likewise self-implementing when no one gives or receives compensation for the training or the use of the aircraft at all. That is the change owners had wanted: bringing your own experimental to a CFI, or a CFI teaching in the customer's airplane, no longer needs a deviation.

A LODA is still required, and must be requested in a form and manner acceptable to the Administrator at least 60 days before the intended operations, when those conditions are not met — most importantly when a single person or business provides both the aircraft and the instruction for compensation, or holds the aircraft out for training. This is the classic commercial posture: an operator that owns experimental or limited category aircraft and sells transition, tailwheel, aerobatic, formation, or endorsement training in them. Warbird and experimental transition-training providers are the archetypal LODA holders, because the whole point of their business is to furnish both the rare airframe and the qualified instructor.

The LODA is not an airworthiness approval and it does not change the aircraft's certificate; it is a written deviation from specific operating prohibitions, granted to a named holder, and carrying the conditions and limitations the FAA attaches to it. It is distinct from a letter of authorization, which is a broad class of FAA permissions used for many unrelated purposes.

For US flight schools and specialty training providers, the LODA question is really a question about the business model rather than the airplane. A conventional Part 61 or Part 141 school teaching in standard airworthiness Cessnas and Pipers never touches this rule. It becomes live the moment a provider builds a program around experimental, limited category, or primary category aircraft and sells seats in them — Van's RV transition courses, warbird checkouts, and formation or aerobatic clinics flown in experimental airframes. If that provider furnishes both the aircraft and the instructor for money, or advertises the aircraft as available for training, it needs a LODA under 14 CFR 91.326(b), applied for at least 60 days ahead.

The 2024 rule also changed the paperwork burden for owner-flown training. A customer who owns an experimental and hires a CFI to teach in it, or who receives instruction with no compensation changing hands, is now covered by the self-implementing exception and needs nothing from the FAA. Schools that field questions from experimental owners can give a cleaner answer than they could between 2021 and 2024, but they still need to read their own arrangement carefully, because the line the FAA draws is precisely whether one party supplies both airplane and instruction for compensation.

Aviatize's Compliance & Auditing module holds the authorizations a school operates under — including any Letter of Deviation Authority — with its conditions, limitations, named holder, and expiry, so the deviation is visible alongside the operating certificate rather than buried in a filing cabinet. When a LODA carries constraints on which programs, aircraft, or instructors it covers, those limits can be recorded against the specific tails and courses they apply to.

Aviatize's Training Management module ties each experimental or limited category course to the aircraft it is flown in and the instructor delivering it, giving a school a clear record of which training activities depend on a LODA and which fall under the self-implementing exception. That distinction matters at audit time and when the 60-day-advance LODA request has to be renewed or amended before a new program launches.