Are checkrides longer than they used to be?

Eric Gleason

Eric Gleason

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Sep 6, 2016
Messages
489
Location
Albany, NY
Display Name
Display name:
Eric Gleason
I've seen a few comments lately in various places about PPL checkrides that seem *really* long. I got my ticket in '93, and as I recall the ground portion was a little over an hour and the flight portion was about 1.5. I remember arriving at the DPE's airport around 8 or 9 AM and being home for lunch. That seemed pretty typical for the time.

Have PPL checkrides gotten that much longer, or are these outliers?
 
Mine was LONG. I got there at 6:30 I think and wasn’t done until about 11:30ish. My IR wasn’t nearly as long and seemed a lot more reasonable.
 
Some are probably just outliers depending on how long winded the DPE is.

Mine went really fast. The oral was under an hour (~45min) and the flight was right about an hour. Here we have the luxury of having several DPE’s within the local area, so no travel is necessary. The guy I used was fantastic!
 
Eric Gleason said:
I've seen a few comments lately in various places about PPL checkrides that seem *really* long. I got my ticket in '93, and as I recall the ground portion was a little over an hour and the flight portion was about 1.5. I remember arriving at the DPE's airport around 8 or 9 AM and being home for lunch. That seemed pretty typical for the time.

Have PPL checkrides gotten that much longer, or are these outliers?
Click to expand...

Yes.

I've wrote about this before. Some parts of the country are better and worse than others. Much of the West coast is horrendous. A friend of mine just got his PPL last month. Total exam time was 11 hours! Out here, 3-4 hour oral exams are very common with high failure rates. FSDO fired all DPE's in our area and the adjoining FSDO as well. We have 2 DPE's from Paso Robles to Fremont. For reference, that's a 4 hour drive.
 
Mine was pretty fast to. Way back then. 76 or 77. Did it with the FAA dude at GADO(fsdo.) I remember very little ground. He did spend some time with the plane. Checked the Log Books which I had to take over, and the ELT battery. Air time was less than an hour. Took off, did a couple stalls, under the hood for a bit with an unusual attitude recovery, engine out, go home. I was with a Club that had it’s own examing authority that was up for renewal soon, so they had to send a student over to be evaluated.
 
I'm not going to make any assumptions about any oral or checkride that I wasn't involved in, but a lot of it also depends on the applicant.

I give pretty much the same oral (with a couple of variations) to everybody...the amount of time it takes varies from just over an hour to about 3 hours. It depends on how well prepared the applicant is.

I give the same flight check (with minor variations) to everybody...the amount of time it takes varies from about an hour and twenty minutes to about three hours. Some applicants use the checklist as a do list and double check each item...it can take an hour just to get to the runway. Some applicants take "don't start the maneuver until you're ready" just a little too seriously...they need to be stable, exactly on altitude, heading, and airspeed for a minimum of 30 seconds before they'll start a steep turn.

Of course it's not 100% the applicant...but it's also not nearly 100% examiner.
 
Eric Gleason said:
I've seen a few comments lately in various places about PPL checkrides that seem *really* long. I got my ticket in '93, and as I recall the ground portion was a little over an hour and the flight portion was about 1.5. I remember arriving at the DPE's airport around 8 or 9 AM and being home for lunch. That seemed pretty typical for the time.

Have PPL checkrides gotten that much longer, or are these outliers?
Click to expand...

My 2013 PPL ride was 2.1 and the oral was about 2.5 as I recall.

My 2017 IFR rating was 1.9 and about 2.5 on the oral.
 
I remember when I picked a specific examiner and everybody was shocked because he was known for long orals, it was 2ish hours on the ground for the commercial.

I have heard a lot of comments about “the FSDO is hot on this right now” so that extends Checkrides a lot.
 
Thanks for the data points, everyone. I knew already it could take longer if you weren't well-prepared, but didn't realize they regularly varied that much by area and DPE.



NordicDave said:
For reference, that's a 4 hour drive.
Click to expand...

They don't fly to the examiner?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Can’t comment on PPL as I got mine 24 years ago, but I took my IR checkride last month, and it was shockingly quick: maybe 2 hours total (30 minutes questions and 1 1/2 hours flying including preflight etc).
 
Again this REALLY depends on the attitude of the governing FSDO. In general FSDO's are tightening up, and in our area extremely so. Fees are high as well. PPL check rides are $600-700 depending how far they have to travel. With high failure rates, the retests are $500.

A CFI friend of mine 4 hangars down had a student fail at the very end because student did not tiedmown the aircraft to the DPE's satisfaction. When challenged where are securing A/C's found in the FAR's, he just said it was his prerogative as a safety factor in the flight. You Cannot believe the reasons people are failing here, and how stringent and stern the testing has become in our area.
 
NordicDave said:
Again this REALLY depends on the attitude of the governing FSDO. In general FSDO's are tightening up, and in our area extremely so. Fees are high as well. PPL check rides are $600-700 depending how far they have to travel. With high failure rates, the retests are $500.

A CFI friend of mine 4 hangars down had a student fail at the very end because student did not tiedmown the aircraft to the DPE's satisfaction. When challenged where are securing A/C's found in the FAR's, he just said it was his prerogative as a safety factor in the flight. You Cannot believe the reasons people are failing here, and how stringent and stern the testing has become in our area.
Click to expand...

Makes you wonder how those DPEs stay in business. If your failing everyone I’d go find another DPE to use. I suppose this could be an issue if there weren’t many DPEs in your area.
 
CC268 said:
Makes you wonder how those DPEs stay in business. If your failing everyone I’d go find another DPE to use. I suppose this could be an issue if there weren’t many DPEs in your area.
Click to expand...
We have 2 DPE's from Paso Robles to Fremont. Basically the central coast of California to Silicon Valley. CFI's here are sending people to other parts of the country to test.
 
NordicDave said:
We have 2 DPE's from Paso Robles to Fremont. Basically the central coast of California to Silicon Valley. CFI's here are sending people to other parts of the country to test.
Click to expand...

Ouch.
 
My Sport checkride last Nov was 1.1 and IIRC the oral was about an hour. Seems like it varies quite a bit from one DPE to another.
 
When I sent my students for their checkrides, their orals seemed to be about the same as when I took mine.
 
Can’t wait for the CFI checkride which will
Be a full 12 hours long
 
At my work we have an internal mailing list for pilots. A guy just posted his experience from last week. The write up was very well done and detailed and it was 10 pages long. He said the oral was nearly 4 hours and the flight was about 3hrs... It was rather discouraging to hear, and yes this was in CA.
 
I refuse to say how long my initial CFI oral was, but I can pretty much guarantee yours will be longer than mine.
 
inspectorpacket said:
At my work we have an internal mailing list for pilots. A guy just posted his experience from last week. The write up was very well done and detailed and it was 10 pages long. He said the oral was nearly 4 hours and the flight was about 3hrs... It was rather discouraging to hear, and yes this was in CA.
Click to expand...


That's insane.

I hope word gets around and DPEs like that are avoided.
 
My checkride was about 2.5 for the oral and 1.3 for the flight. I had already did 3 stage checks and end of course check with him.

Between oral and flight we took lunch break, he even paid for lunch. Started at 9:00 am and walked out at 2:00 pm.
 
Mine went from about 9:30 to 3:00 even though my paper work was done a week prior because my night x-country, although 130 miles, fell a few miles short of the 50 mile distance from point of origin.
Only one pee break to boot. I ate a energy bar and drank a Gatorade during the oral.
My debrief was very brief, he said as far as check rides go it was great and he had very little to add..
 
Last edited:
Both my private (2001) and instrument (2002) orals were an hour or less, and the instrument oral was with another pilot included. Examiner asked me a question, ask him a question, back and forth. My check rides were 1.1 and 1.0 respectively.
 
My students typically experience a 3-4 hour oral (there are a couple of breaks in there) and 1.3-1.6 on the flight. That being said the examiner I use lets the applicant take their time, look up whatever they need etc. His commercial and instrument checkrides are 2 hour orals or less. He says private students just suck at articulating themselves to check boxes efficiently, and by the time they get their next rating they have an idea how it's going to go. He's also super fair while also providing good feedback for improvement to both the applicant and me.
 
Private in 1976. DE comes up from Pell City, Al. to Guntersville, Al. They were 3 of us, all good friends. We used the same aircraft, a C 150 (2682J). DE arrived a little before 8:00 AM. The 3 of us the examiner and our instructor went to lunch at 11:00 AM, as new private pilots. Cost $50 each for check ride and we bought lunch.
A year later I flew to Pell City to take instrument check ride. A check of my log book shows 1.1 hours. Seems like the oral was about an hour. I was home (Scottsboro, Al.) well before lunch. My CFI was my longest at about 3 hours total at Macon, Ga. Charged me $100 which was a bit high I thought at the time. My CFI ME was only .9 flying time, don't remember the oral time. Ya, things are different now.
 
Yeah they seem to be long. We just had a comm asel oral go from 8am till 12 I have the office nxt door and he was getting grilled hard into the weeds on everything.
One guy on a ppl ride had to verify that all the labels were in the aircraft properly by digging into the poh and TCDS. Who teaches their private students about tcds stuff ? Other than mentioning what a tcds is.

A private ride oral should be an hour or 1.5 tops after paperwork is done. Course dpes are so rare now its hard to get a slot so you get stuck with going to bad ones cause the decent guys are booked solid for 30 days out.
 
More regs each year, how could they not be longer to cover them all?
 
Not sure if there are any statistics about the length, but the pass rate has decreased about 5 points in the past decade.
 
I guess I'll add this to the many reasons why I'm glad I left California long ago. I'll be pursuing my instrument rating next year, and haven't heard of excessive checkride times out here.
 
Over the last decade I’ve taken checkrides with 6 different examiners in a few different states. All of them seemed to take a very practical approach to things and none seemed to be on a hunt to find something wrong. The only checkride that I felt took longer than it maybe should have was my multi add on which went long simply because after the examiner figured out how well I knew the airplane (I had done a lot of work on it for the owner) he had fun and kept probing hoping to find a weak area (he never did).

Of the practical tests I’ve taken (including CFI) I feel that the A&P test was still the most challenging and longest. It is also the only test I’ve gotten a call from the FAA about, doing a quality check on the examiner.
 
My oral portion was less than an hour. I scored in the 90s and he focused on the questions I missed and the flight planning part. The actual flight portion was 1 hour on the hobbs. We took off from class C did all the maneuvers then we went to my home drome for the landings. On the last one he told me taxi up to the FBO and shut down. He still hadn't told me I passed until the flight school owner asked him how I did. He then said I could drive him back the 40 minutes to the class C airport to save me the flight money either that or he was scarred to fly with me anymore. :)
 
Including pre-exam paperwork, preflight & postflight inspections and more paperwork afterwards, all of mine were just about 4 hours, with different DPEs.
Remember, the examiners want to make money too so they often schedule 2 checkrides back-to-back for one 8-hour day with a quick lunch break.
YMMV
 
BigBadLou said:
Including pre-exam paperwork, preflight & postflight inspections and more paperwork afterwards, all of mine were just about 4 hours, with different DPEs.
Remember, the examiners want to make money too so they often schedule 2 checkrides back-to-back for one 8-hour day with a quick lunch break.
YMMV
Click to expand...
And that may be one reason a lot of them used to be shorter...the FAA kind of cracked down on doing 3 or 4 or more checkrides in a day.
 
NordicDave said:
Again this REALLY depends on the attitude of the governing FSDO. In general FSDO's are tightening up, and in our area extremely so. Fees are high as well. PPL check rides are $600-700 depending how far they have to travel. With high failure rates, the retests are $500.

A CFI friend of mine 4 hangars down had a student fail at the very end because student did not tiedmown the aircraft to the DPE's satisfaction. When challenged where are securing A/C's found in the FAR's, he just said it was his prerogative as a safety factor in the flight. You Cannot believe the reasons people are failing here, and how stringent and stern the testing has become in our area.
Click to expand...
MauleSkinner said:
And that may be one reason a lot of them used to be shorter...the FAA kind of cracked down on doing 3 or 4 or more checkrides in a day.
Click to expand...
The FAA had limited DPEs to two a day, and within a certain geographical area. That was stupid. They've fixed that in the new aviation bill (unless something has changed since OSH) so both of those limits will be removed. Heck, who wants to wait weeks to get a test date, and then run into weather? Doing four or five a day should be doable, if the DPE doesn't mind long days.
(As a point of reference, twenty-one years ago I paid $160 for the fee, about 1.5/1.8 ground/flight, and did it a couple of days after signoff. Limiting the DPE caused prices to rise, I'm sure.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top