TSA/BCA

More paperwork for my Canadian student.

According to the TSA, aliens can get fingerprinted from "any local law enforcement agency."

Technically, that's not quite correct.

My Canadian tried finding somebody at the Minneapolis Police Department to handle the fingerprinting. No dice.

I called the TSA and was told "check the list on our website." Well, the list on their website doesn't include any law enforcement agencies and the nearest places listed are in Fargo or Mosinee, Wi.

I figured the local TSA outfit at MSP must do fingerprinting but there's no phone number for them on the TSA website.

By now I was getting frustrated so I called the FBI, figuring if anybody would fingerprint somebody who wanted to learn to fly airplanes it would be the local FBI. No dice.

In a lovely bit of irony, the local FBI office stopped doing fingerprinting after 9/11 because of staffing shortages. (Unless you're arrested, I assume, in which case I'm sure they'll be happy to print you.)

The woman on the other end of the phone was nice, so I supressed my urge to scream "But the entire reason we're going through this was 9/11!"

Thankfully, I kept my mouth shut and she suggested I contact the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Sure enough, the BCA does fingerprinting for folks and they had actually heard of the TSA and the Alien Flight Student Program, although they weren't familiar with the details.

So, we made an appointment and drove out to the BCA offices, carefully filled out the required information on the fingerprint cards, got the Canadian printed and handed over a pre-paid FedEx envelope so they could ship them to the TSA.

Finally, I think all is well.

A student.... and red tape

My first student is all lined up and ready to start training.

That's the good news.

The not so good news is he's Canadian (that by itself isn't bad news) so we need to get approval from the TSA before I can start training him.

So far, the process has been fairly smooth, but the delays are starting to grind on me.

I registered as a flight training provider with the TSA the day after I passed my checkride. Much to my amazement, I got a call from an inspector at the local FSDO that same day just verifying I was an actual person.

Once he'd done that (we worked it out via a series of voicemail messages) I was listed in the TSA's database as a bona-fide flight training provider. Woo hoo!

Next up, my student registered and selected me as his flight training provider. Again, pretty quick and painless.

Then I acknowledged that I would be providing his training, which cleared the way for him to get fingerprinted and send in an application for training (and $135).

A few days ago I received notice from the TSA that they'd issued preliminary approval for the Canadian to begin training.

Of course, "preliminary approval" doesn't mean he can actually start training so now we're waiting on "permission to initiate training" from the TSA.

When we'll get that is anyone's guess.

In the meantime, we're in a holding pattern and every day we wait is a day I don't get paid.

I spent all of last week on jury duty, so there wasn't any time to start drumming up business. That's the goal for this week: Get more students.