You have a couple of options to complete a flight review.

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Option 1 - Complete an FAA wings phase

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This is honestly the best and our preferred option for you to complete your flight review and here's why.

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In general aviation (as a non professional pilot) once you earn your pilot certificate and are out of training you'll only need to fly once every 24 calendar months with a flight instructor to demonstrate that you are able to demonstrate that you can safely exercise the privileges of your certificate safely. If you are a professional pilot you typically will have a training event every six months, reason being people get rusty. Professional pilots fly every day and they still need constant retraining. If you are not flying as much as them, why in the world would it make any sense that you could only fly for a few hours a year and be "safe".

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The FAA wings phase gives you the opportunity to create your own pilot proficiency program by completing:

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• 3 FAA wings ground modules

• 3 FAA wings flight modules

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There are hundreds of accredited FAA wings seminars and modules that you can attend or complete for free on your own time. Flying with an instructor to complete a flight module takes about an hour for a proficient pilot. Flying 3 hours with an instructor after certification isn't overly expensive and will be a significant contributor to keeping your skills much more sharp than the standard flight review. 

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Follow the link above to sign up (it's free)

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Option 2 - the good old fashion flight review.

 

Not all flight reviews are created equally.

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Some people like to "shop" for the path of least resistance. That is look for someone who is a flight instructor and will fly out to breakfast with them on a nice calm day and for the price of a meal sign them off so they're good to go for another 24 months without any actual "hard work" involved. They think they're getting one over on the FAA by dodging their "stupid" or "expensive" for no reason rules. The only person that pilot is cheating is themselves. You're only as good as your training, and no matter what you think you build bad habits, or and this is a wild one - may just not be as good as you think you are.

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It's not pass or fail.

 

Often times you might run into an instructor that feels like they have to exercise their power and grind you down on every single little maneuver and give you what seems like a second private pilot check-ride. Yuck, who wants to do that, answer is no one.

 

However that doesn't mean we will just pencil whip you a flight review after two hours of your time, you do need to demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency per the ACS standards for your pilot certificate. 

 

This is what the FAA says in FAR 61.56:

 

(a) Except as provided in paragraphs (b) and (f) of this section, a flight review consists of a minimum of 1 hour of flight training and 1 hour of ground training. The review must include:

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(1) A review of the current general operating and flight rules of part 91 of this chapter; and

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(2) A review of those maneuvers and procedures that, at the discretion of the person giving the review, are necessary for the pilot to demonstrate the safe exercise of the privileges of the pilot certificate.

 

What does that mean to you?

 

What that little FAA blurb means to you is that when you schedule your flight review with us, we are going to email you a little packet to finish (you can also download it on the left hand side of the screen). The packet consists of most things that you should easily know already, and a few things that may have changed over the past year. Think of it as a little take home test you have to spend about an hour studying for that we will review together when you get there, just to make sure that you are up to date with the current hoopla.

 

As for the second part. We will delve into your logbook to see what kind of flying you have been doing, and to what level you are certified. Then we will go up do a little bit of air work, and observe you doing the normal type of flying that you routinely do.

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Typically we use the FAA WINGS safety program to complete flight reviews. www.faasafety.gov for more information. This method has many advantages over the standard anxiety ridden flight review. Please contact us for more information.

 

Will I have to do Stalls?

 

Absolutely. It's critical as an aviator that you are proficient in stall recognition and recovery with minimum loss of altitude, you never know when it could happen to you and we want to make sure that if it does, you are going to be A-O K. 

 

Do you have more questions?

 

Great! We love questions. Give us a call 401-216-9359 and we will help you out!