You are mistaken.

An appeal to authority is any logical argument that relies significantly upon the authority of the person making that argument as support for that argument. It then becomes circular and flawed.

If you were to replace the person who is actually speaking with anyone else, and look at the same argument and its support, and it doesn't hold up, that's an appeal to authority.

It doesn't matter who the authority is. Just that there was an authority used to support a significantly unsupported argument