AMA Membership for foreigners wanting to attend US events

Balu

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Since it just came up in the podcast again, I decided to ask the AMA if the membership is still necessary if you have a membership (including insurance) in a local association / club.

My question is regarding to the policy that RC model events in the US usually require an AMA membership. Just lately I was listening to the "Flite Test" podcast where this topic came up again.

I am a member of the German model association DMFV and as such I have insurance for flying model airplanes. There's an extra fee I have to pay to have this insurance extend outside of Europe, but with that I have insurance worldwide even outside of designated flying fields.

Now I wonder if I'd still need an AMA membership if I wanted to fly at an event like FliteFest next year where only AMA members are allowed as pilots.

If so, how do I have to register and how long would it take? I am not sure if I'll be able to come to the US next year, but I'd love to know what I have to do then

The answer was quite short:

AMA has for some time had a reciprocal agreement with Canada where a member of MAAC can fly in the USA without belonging to AMA and AMA members can fly in Canada without joining MAAC. AMA offers a reduced membership for foreign competitors which is an Affiliate, cost $28 per year and covers you while flying in the US. The form can be found on our website but at this time you have to download, fill it out, and fax it in. Depending on the time of year is how long it would take to process and get your card back to you. If you are attending a "sanctioned" event in the USA you can also sign up for membership at the meet. The cost for membership would be the same.

So, as a Canadian with MAAC membership you don't have to become AMA member.

For other countries it doesn't matter if you have a membership with worldwide insurance, you still need the AMA membership if you want to fly in the US. If you are going to attend an AMA "sanctioned" event, you can do that on the spot though.

I'm going to ask my association why they suggest to extend the membership for a worldwide insurance when going to the US if you still need the AMA membership.
 

stay-fun

Helicopter addict
Interesting. And it sucks, too.

It's probably bad to be dual insured though. Although the first thought would be that double insurance wouldn't hurt, you can get stuck in between the insurers when there is an incident: they will both tell you to let the other insurer pay for <whatever evil happened>. I got this heads up when I first started my job here in the US. This was about healthcare insurance, but it may translate to this as well...

Something to keep in mind.