17/08/2026
In most professions, you qualify once and you are qualified. Aviation does not work that way.
In this industry, the licence is not a certificate you hang on a wall. It is a standard you have to keep proving you still meet, for as long as you want to keep working.
People outside aviation are often surprised by how much of that there is. Here is what staying current actually looks like across the industry.
Pilots renew their medical certificate on a recurring cycle, and the requirements tighten as they get older or as the class of licence demands. They return to the simulator regularly for recurrent training and proficiency checks, flying scenarios most of them will never see in a career, engine failures, system malfunctions, degraded approaches, so that if the day ever comes, their hands already know it. Line checks. Route and airport qualifications. Type currency requirements that lapse if they do not fly the type often enough.
Engineers and technicians carry their own version. Continuation training to keep the licence valid. Type training and refreshers as the fleet evolves. Human factors recurrent training. Fuel tank safety, EWIS, and other specialist areas depending on the work you are authorised for. And the authorisations that many people never think about, like engine ground runs and aircraft taxi, which are separate qualifications that have to be granted, maintained, and periodically requalified. Being licensed on a type does not automatically mean you are approved to run its engines or move it under its own power.
Cabin crew have annual recurrent training and checks. Air traffic controllers hold ratings, unit endorsements, and their own medical requirements. Dispatchers, ground handlers, refuellers, and inspectors all carry recurring competency and safety training. Everyone in the chain has something they have to keep renewing.
And behind all of it sits the reason. Aviation is one of the most heavily regulated industries on earth, and deliberately so. Every requirement in that list exists because at some point, somewhere, something went wrong and people worked out what would have prevented it. The regulations are not bureaucracy for its own sake. They are the accumulated memory of an industry that has learned expensive lessons and refuses to forget them.
So the work never stops being a student. Thirty years in, I am still training, still being checked, still proving I meet the standard. And I would not want it any other way, because the moment we decide we have learned enough is the moment this industry starts going backwards.
To everyone across aviation: what is the recurrent requirement in your role that people outside the industry would be most surprised to learn about? 👇
Raymond D. Johnson
Founder and Author, GroundTruth Aero | Technical Director of Maintenance and Engineering, AATI
groundtruthaero.org
