A flight instructor reported a misunderstanding with the alien tsa requirements related to an intern...

Narrative:

I am a flight instructor at a university; upon the start of a new semester we received our new students. I began checking documents and tsa currencies of all my new students. I received my first international student and was new to the restrictions and requirements of the alien tsa. [We use a] program to monitor student currencies and hard stops are placed in the computer to prevent us from flying when anything has expired. When looking in [the system; a student's] alien tsa was not going to expire until the end of [the next month]. Thinking the currency was still valid we went on his first flight in the instrument course. It was not until after the flight that I realized that the notes within the currency stated the currency was only valid for his prior flight commercial course and that the alien tsa was not valid for the instrument course. I believe the cause of the problem was not being familiar with the alien tsa as much as I should have been as it is my responsibility as a CFI; to prevent a reoccurrence I have educated myself on the alien tsa process and [the university] will not assign any instructor until the student has already gone through the tsa process fully before getting an instructor and starting the new course.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Flight Instructor reported a misunderstanding with the alien TSA requirements related to an international student beginning an instrument course when only approved for a commercial course.

Narrative: I am a Flight Instructor at a university; upon the start of a new semester we received our new students. I began checking documents and TSA currencies of all my new students. I received my first international student and was new to the restrictions and requirements of the alien TSA. [We use a] program to monitor student currencies and hard stops are placed in the computer to prevent us from flying when anything has expired. When looking in [the system; a student's] alien TSA was not going to expire until the end of [the next month]. Thinking the currency was still valid we went on his first flight in the Instrument course. It was not until after the flight that I realized that the notes within the currency stated the currency was only valid for his prior flight commercial course and that the alien TSA was not valid for the instrument course. I believe the cause of the problem was not being familiar with the alien TSA as much as I should have been as it is my responsibility as a CFI; to prevent a reoccurrence I have educated myself on the alien TSA process and [the university] will not assign any instructor until the student has already gone through the TSA process fully before getting an instructor and starting the new course.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1332775
Time
Date	201601
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Skyhawk 172/Cutlass 172
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Function	Instructor
Qualification	Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Multiengine Flight Crew Flight Instructor Flight Crew Commercial
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 92 Flight Crew Total 766.8 Flight Crew Type 83.2
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Deviation - Procedural FAR

A flight instructor reported a misunderstanding with the alien tsa requirements related to an international student beginning an instrument course when only approved for a commercial course.