The FAA medical

Can You Be an Airline Pilot With a Criminal Record?

✓ Reviewed against current FAA sources on October 28, 2026

This is the question that gets answered wrong most often, because people assume it is the same question as whether the FAA will certificate them. It is not. Three different bodies decide three different things, and you can clear two of them and still be stopped by the third.

Three separate gates

• The medical certificate. Decided by the FAA under 14 CFR Part 67. No criminal offense appears anywhere in those standards.
• The pilot certificate. Also the FAA, and it answers this one in its own words: you can get an FAA certificate if you have a felony conviction, unless the conviction is for a drug or alcohol related offense. The machinery is 14 CFR 61.15 (opens in a new tab)(a), which allows denial for up to one year after the date of final conviction.
• Access to the airport. Not the FAA at all. This is the one that catches people.

The rule that is not the FAA's

Most airline flying needs unescorted access to the secure areas of an airport, and that requires a fingerprint based criminal history records check. The rule is 49 CFR 1542.209, and paragraph (d) lists the convictions that disqualify. Unlike Part 67, it does name offenses, 28 categories of them.

Alongside aviation specific federal offenses such as aircraft piracy and interference with a flight crew, it reaches murder, assault with intent to murder, kidnapping or hostage taking, rape or aggravated sexual abuse, extortion, armed or felony unarmed robbery, felony arson, distribution of a controlled substance and a felony involving a threat. It also reaches a felony involving burglary, theft, dishonesty, fraud or misrepresentation, possession or distribution of stolen property, aggravated assault, bribery or willful destruction of property.

The same test appears a second time in 49 CFR 1544.229, which is the aircraft operator's version. That one covers unescorted access together with the authority to perform screening functions and checked baggage or cargo functions, with the same ten year window and the same categories. Being employed by the airline rather than the airport does not route around it.

How far back does it go, and from when?

Ten years, and this is the detail people get wrong. The rule reaches a person convicted, or found not guilty by reason of insanity, of a listed crime during the 10 years before the date of the individual's application for unescorted access authority, or while the individual has unescorted access authority.

It runs backward from the day you apply for the access. Not from your release. Not from the end of parole. Not from the end of probation. A conviction in June 2015 is outside the window for an application made in October 2026, even if probation only finished in 2021.

That matters in both directions. It means the clock may have run further than you think. It also means completing probation does not restart anything, because probation was never what the clock measured.

What is not on the list

Two absences are worth as much as the entries. An ordinary DUI is not on it. Neither is simple misdemeanor assault. Only aggravated assault, as a felony, appears. Both of those can matter a great deal elsewhere, a DUI especially, but neither is a listed disqualifier for unescorted access.

Does a conviction stop showing up after seven years?

No, and this belief is close to universal. The Fair Credit Reporting Act does limit how long some adverse information may be reported, but 15 U.S.C. 1681c(a)(5) expressly carves out records of convictions of crimes from that seven year limit. Under 1681c(b) the limits do not apply at all to a report used for employment at an annual salary that equals or may reasonably be expected to equal $75,000 or more, which covers most airline flying.

State law may add its own restrictions. Federal law does not supply the seven years, and an employer running a lawful background check is not limited to the last seven years of convictions.

What about an expungement?

Treat this carefully. The FAA's published instructions for the medical application do not contain an expungement exception: Item 18.w asks for nontraffic convictions with no lookback, and the instruction for Item 18.v is that all incidents must be reported even if reported on a previous application. Neither page carves out a conviction that was later expunged, reversed or vacated.

What an expungement does under your state's law, what it permits you to say to a private employer and whether it reaches a federal security determination are three different questions with three different answers, and they turn on the specific order and the specific statute. This is one of the narrow situations where paying someone before you answer is genuinely worth it, because 14 CFR 67.403 (opens in a new tab) makes a fraudulent or intentionally false statement grounds to suspend or revoke every airman and medical certificate the person holds.

The practical order to do this in

If a conviction is the thing standing between you and a decision about flight training, work it in this order. Find out whether the offense is on the 49 CFR 1542.209(d) list at all, because for most offenses it is not. If it is, work out when the ten years ran from, which is the conviction date against the date you would apply for access. Then deal with the FAA questions, which are about disclosure rather than eligibility.

Doing it in that order can save a great deal of money, because the airport access rule is the one that produces a hard answer, and it is the one nobody checks first.