CARs Standard 566, Explained

CARs Standard 566 — formally the Airworthiness Manual Chapter 566, made under the Canadian Aviation Regulations — is the regulatory document that actually specifies what it takes to get an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer licence: the rating categories, the required experience, the minimum training hours, and the examination requirements. Where the Canadian Aviation Regulations themselves establish that an AME licence exists and is required, Standard 566 is where the specific numbers and conditions live.

It is organized into two main divisions: Division I sets out the AME licensing requirements themselves (what an applicant needs), and Division II sets out standards for Approved Training Organizations (ATOs) — the schools and programs whose training TC recognizes toward licensing. Two appendices do a lot of the practical work: Appendix A tables the specific requirements by rating, and Appendix B lists sample experience tasks — see our dedicated guides to each.

Standard 566 lays out the experience requirements as a combination of total months of experience, months in the specific specialty rating, and months of experience specifically on civil-registered aircraft. It also specifies how approved training can be credited toward that experience requirement, and how part-time work is converted into equivalent months. See our AME Experience Requirements guide for how these categories work in practice.

It further requires that applicants complete a representative selection of maintenance tasks from Appendix B — not less than 70 percent of the applicable items — each certified by an AME or equivalent as actually performed. This is the regulatory basis for why experience has to be logged and certified in detail rather than simply asserted; see our AME Logbook guide for how that documentation requirement plays out in practice.

Standard 566 sets the passing grade for Transport Canada's AME examinations at 70%. It also sets retake conditions: after a first failed attempt, a candidate cannot be re-examined sooner than 30 days later; after a subsequent failure, the waiting period extends to six months.

Because training-hour minimums and other specific figures in Standard 566 are set by regulation and can be amended, and because even official secondary summaries can lag the current regulatory text, PassCARs directs readers to the live Transport Canada page linked below for exact current figures rather than restating every number here as fixed.