Borregard v. National Transportation Safety Board

Robert Borregard held an aviation mechanic certificate with an inspection authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Borregard was supposed to perform the annual inspection on an airplane. In the airplane’s logbooks, Borregard marked that he had performed the annual inspection on October 24 in one book and that he had performed the annual inspection on October 28 in another book. Borregard’s employer then asked Borregard to backdate the logbooks and claim that the annual inspection had been performed in September. Borregard put stickers over his October dates and entered a September date. After learning that the FAA had received copies of the backdated logbooks, Borregard put stickers over the September date, put in a new entry claiming that the annual inspection had happened on October 24 in both logbooks, and sent the revised copies to the FAA. Borregard later also formally logged November 1 as the date that he had completed the airplane’s annual inspection. However, Borregard did not actually complete the airplane’s annual inspection until after November 1, which meant that all the logbook entries were false. The FAA issued an emergency order revoking Borregard’s mechanic certificate and inspection authorization for having made fraudulent entries in a logbook. Borregard appealed the revocation to the National Transportation Safety Board, which upheld the revocation. Borregard appealed to the Ninth Circuit on several grounds, including an argument that the FAA could not revoke his mechanic certificate because the false logbook entries were not evidence that he was not qualified to be a mechanic.