On August 1, 2010, the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010, Public Law 111-216, 124 Stat. 2348 (2010) (?Act?), was signed into law. The Act amends the Pilot Records Improvement Act (?PRIA?) by requiring the FAA to create a pilot records database. 

Air carriers will use this database to perform background checks on pilots before hiring them, as required by PRIA. The database will contain various types of records, including summaries of legal enforcement actions against individuals resulting in a finding by the FAA Administrator of a violation.  

These records must be kept by the FAA until it receives notice that the individual is deceased. The requirement to keep these records began on the date of the law's enactment, August 1, 2010.

The five-year expunction of certain legal enforcement action records is not consistent with the Act's amendments to PRIA. Although the requirement to maintain the records began on August 1, 2010, the FAA last expunged on November 1, 2010, as we began determining which records must be kept in order to comply with the law.  

The November 1, 2010 expunction covered records from scheduled for expunction during October. We will continue to expunge records of administrative actions and cases with no enforcement action, as PRIA does not require the FAA to put this information in the pilot record database.