Progressive Air Inc

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Services
    • Flight Examination
    • Flight Instruction
    • Consulting
  • Links
  • Contact Us
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Services
    • Flight Examination
    • Flight Instruction
    • Consulting
  • Links
  • Contact Us

How long should a checkride take?

8/12/2011

0 Comments

 
Darn good question!  I think the checkride should be the length of a mini skirt, long enough to cover everything but short enough to keep it interseting.  Ok, joking aside, most of my checkrides run about 4 hours from the time you walk in the door to the time you walk out.  The checkride breaks down to 30 minutes of pre-checkride paperwork, 1 hour 30 minutes for the oral, 15 minutes for a quick break and preflight, 1 hour 30 minutes for the flight and another 15 minutes for debrief and paperwork.  Pretty streight forward.

Those are average times.  Some people take a little longer and others a little less.  What makes that determination is how well the applicant is prepared.  For example, I have seen a very well prepared private pilot applicant pass my oral in 1 hour and five minutes and I've had private applicants take 2 hours 10 minutes and still pass.  The flying part is very consistant at 1.5 plus or minus .2 on the hobbs.

How can an I keep my checkride orals to 1 hour 30 minutes when anouther examener takes 4 hours?  I use several senerios throughtout the test plus I combine Tasks from the PTS.  Here's an example of how I combine Task from the PTS.  Noticing the preplaned cross country passes through Class C airspace I'll ask according to the forcast, when will the XYZ (Class C airport) be VFR (IFR)?  This allows me to evaluate the ability to read a TAF and the applicants knoweldge of VFR/IFR mins in Class C airspace.  Note that this isn't the only question I'll ask on the subjects, it's just one example on how combine testing Tasks.

Checkrides very from applicant to applicant.  Some folks are more nervious than others and some are better test takers than other.  I recently had a CFI have an applicant come to me for a private pilot checkride.  The applicant passed the test, but the CFI was a little P.O. that the oral took over 2 hours.  The issue here was with how the applicant was prepared.  Some of the questions I initially posed to the applicant he would lock up on.  It took a little effort to pry the knoweldge out of him.  For example, When I ask most applicants to show me that the aircraft is airworthy for the flight we are about to make, it takes less than 5 minutes to take the log books and show me the requried inspections.  With this applicant when the question was posed he locked up.  He grabed the logs and started paging threw them with a glassy eyed look.  I let him flounder for a bit and then ask him what he's looking for and he list the required inspections.  A good sign.  Now I ask where those inspection could be found.  He continued to work through his list he made with the logs and he found everythings.  It took a little more than 15 minutes to do that.  But as you can see, if we have to do that for 3 or 4 questions, the oral can get quite long.  (Hint:  have your student put together a cheat sheet with the required inspections and tag them with sticky notes in the logs).

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    December 2024
    October 2024
    June 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    October 2023
    March 2023
    November 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    February 2022
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.