Your Flight Review – From Surviving to Thriving

It's a fact of aeronautical life that virtually every pilot has to complete some form of recurrent training every two years to fly as pilot in command in Part 91 operations. While FAR Part 61.56 outlines a number of methods of meeting its mandate, another fact of aeronautical life is that most pilots comply by taking a flight review. A third fact of aeronautical life is that most pilots don't like taking flight reviews.

But, what's not to love about a flight review? You get to spend a bare minimum of two hours doing something virtually everyone hates-being evaluated. Even more fun, while you can't fail a flight review, you can not finish it-and you can wind up in a situation where cannot fly as pilot in command, even solo, until you do finish and get a CFI's endorsement.

With the above as preamble, let's look at ways of turning your upcoming flight review into something that moves the fun-o-meter as far as possible from the "this stinks but it's got to be endured" range toward the "that was a kinda fun and I'm feeling more comfortable in the airplane" band. The underlying premise to having a pleasant flight review is good communication between you and your CFI before and during the event. At the end, I'll provide a checklist of sorts, to help you and your CFI tailor the review to your needs and interests as a pilot.

Before we go any further, however, there is no truth to the rumor that the prefix "Biennial" was dropped from the Flight Review name because so many pilots were at risk of losing the English Proficient endorsement from their pilot certificates because they didn't know the difference between biennial (every two years) and biannual (twice a year).

Grab a piece of paper and write down the stuff you would like to review the next time you take some dual with a CFI-anything from questions on regs or airspace to overcoming discomfort with slow flight or stalls. The idea is to start thinking about how to make your flight review beneficial to you. You're going to be spending the money for a flight review, it's the perfect time to get answers to questions you've got (and make the CFI work for his or her fee) and pry open that dark closet where you store concerns about some aspects of flight. This will be a chance to explore those uncomfortable parts of the envelope with someone in the right seat who can catch you if you slip. If slow flight and stalls give you the heebie-jeebies (you're in good company), rather than prepare to grit your teeth and suffer through demonstrating them and hoping they're good enough, why not tell your CFI ahead of time that you don't like them? Chances are, he or she has flown with a lot of pilots in your situation and can give you some tips that will help you do them better, with less stress.

Call your CFI to schedule the review-if you've been flying pretty regularly, a four-hour block of time will probably be about right. Realistically, don't plan for less. Even though the bare minimum time under the regs is an hour in the air and an hour on the ground, getting everything done is going to take about four hours. If you aren't current, plan on more.

During that scheduling phone call with your instructor, tell him or her the things you want to work on and ask what is going to be expected of you. Expect to do a little homework-at least planning a short cross country, reviewing regs and the airplane POH so you know speeds, systems and the memory portions of emergency checklists.

Tell your CFI that you want to enjoy the review and discuss how the two of you can make that happen. Also discuss what aircraft you're going to use. I've had pilots take advantage of the need for a flight review to get checked out in a new airplane or get a seaplane rating. I've also had pilots tell me that they're rated for balloons, gliders, multi-engine seaplanes-just about anything that will fly-but that their budget dictates that the flight review will be in a Cessna 152. While it's nice to take a review in the most sophisticated airplane you can fly, it may not be realistic.

Look up data on the most frequent accidents in the type of airplane you fly so that you can analyze the risks you face and use that data to tailor what you want to cover in the flight review. I'll make an unabashed plug for Aviation Consumer magazine and Used Aircraft Guides. Every month a type of aircraft is reviewed and the editors go through the most recent 100 accidents. The accidents for that aircraft may or may not match the overall general aviation accident stats. For example, if you're flying a Piper Comanche, there's a significant risk of a fuel-related crash because there are so many fuel tanks aboard and pilots don't always get at all the fuel in the airplane. By the same token, if you fly an Aviat Husky with its big tanks and dirt-simple fuel system, your risk of a fuel related accident is minimal, but your risk of a landing accident is higher than most other airplanes.

Show up prepared. Have your cross country planned and bring your list of questions for your instructor. Plan on talking about accident risks and what you can do to improve your odds-especially on the high-risk items, weather and loss of control on landing rollout in crosswinds. TFR busts continue to plague general aviation-discuss tools and practices that will help you avoid that embarrassment. Make sure you and your instructor agree on hard numbers for acceptable performance on the review-perhaps plus or minus 100 feet of altitude when that's important, plus or minus 10 knots when holding constant airspeed and plus or minus 10 degrees when holding heading.

Talk about what to expect on the flight-your instructor should produce a decently realistic scenario for a cross country flight in which something causes you to divert to someplace you can land safely (probably after transitioning at altitude that simulates the arrival of bad weather). Plan on having to perform some emergency procedures-after all, they're the things no pilot does very often and they usually have to be done correctly the first time.

Your instructor may have found a way to add a twist by doing a little something to the airplane to see if you can find it. Touch the static ports to see if they really are open (clear tape on them is a common CFI trick, and happens in real life if they are taped before washing the airplane). It may be as small as the Registration Certificate being displayed rather than the Airworthiness Certificate.

Knowing that there is probably something wrong to be found on a preflight ups your game when inspecting the airplane.

Making a short field takeoff for departure makes for a nice twist and is good practice for that vacation trip you make to the resort airstrip next month.

I am of the opinion that during a flight review your CFI should let you use all of the automation and hand-held devices you normally use when flying. The idea is to help you do what you normally do a little better. If you have a moving map on your iPad, by all means use it. Your instructor may have some tips to make your use even more efficient (and you may teach your CFI a thing or two).

Emergencies should reflect your type of flying-if the engine starts running rough and you need to find the nearest airport, that's not a reason for your iPad or Garmin 430 to simultaneously fail. You want to practice for what may really happen to you, using the tools you normally have available.

Because maneuvering flight and stalls keep bringing general aviation pilots to grief, now is the time to chip off the rust on your skills in those areas. So what if your first steep turn strays more than 100 feet off altitude. This isn't a checkride-do another one or two or three and take the time to enjoy them. Remember when you were first learning to fly and how much you enjoyed learning about how the airplane could be tossed around the sky? Then slow the airplane down to where the stall warning is sounding, trim it and take some time to feel how solid it is at that speed. Yeah, the ailerons are a little sloppy, but they respond just fine with a little more control input.

Your instructor will catch you if you slip up, but you won't. Explore what the airplane will do-it will hang in there a couple of knots above the stall and can probably be trimmed to fly hands off. Allow yourself to feel it and listen to what the airplane is telling you about how close to the stall you are.

Do some stalls-starting with those that are most comfortable for you. Do them plenty high so you don't have the feeling that you've got to recover within a microsecond or all will be lost. I was terrified of stalls for a long time, mostly because the nose was so high I couldn't see-and I was convinced the airplane was going to flip over on its back. A CFI suggested how to deal with that, showing me where else I could look, other than straight ahead, to tell what the airplane was doing.

Finally, I suggest doing a lot of landings-in as much crosswind as you can find. In my opinion, doing more than one short field landing (and any soft field takeoffs and landings) is a waste of time. The accident stats show that we wreck airplanes in crosswinds-often because we come down final too fast and don't manage the energy the airplane still has as it comes into the flare. Practice touching down on the upwind main gear and holding it there, rolling in all of the aileron and keeping the ailerons deflected throughout the landing roll. In years of looking at accident data, I think that getting comfortable with handling crosswinds is the single best thing a pilot can do to reduce his or her risk of bending an airplane.

Take the time to debrief the flight. While that's the part that pilots tend to dislike because it involves criticism, it's the part where we grow as aviators. I recommend having the CFI and pilot separate for 15 minutes and write down a review of the flight: a brief of what went right and what could be improved. I also recommend that both write down what the pilot might use as personal minimums for VFR flight weather in that area of the country, max crosswind the pilot is willing to accept in the type of airplane being used and minimum length runway for gross weight operations in summertime.

Once the briefs are written, get back together and go over them. One of the most pleasant things about a good flight review is that the briefs usually match amazingly well. It's a good indication the pilot can self-evaluate (or a red flag for the CFI if the pilot's sefl-evaluation is much more rosy than the CFI's eval).

Sometimes a flight review doesn't get finished-usually it's a problem with the weather or the airplane. Sometimes the pilot is a little too rusty to meet the standards he or she and the instructor have agreed on. None of those reasons are any fun; it just means scheduling the next session with a plan on what will be done to finish up. I've seen pilots do poorly for reasons they couldn't figure out-in both cases they were coming down with the flu and were quite sick the next day. Both came back and did just fine after they got over the bug. There are times that a pilot has laid off for long enough that it takes a series of flights to get proficient. From time to time a flight review uncovers the fact that a pilot has lost just enough steps that he or she needs to seriously consider hanging up the goggles. While it's an unpleasant realization, it beats what I've also seen-a pilot who doesn't stop until he wrecks an airplane and hurts someone.

The real world also means that sometimes a pilot and CFI just don't get along when together for a flight review and the CFI refuses to sign off the pilot unreasonably. The solution is for the pilot to go to another instructor for his or her flight review. No matter what the reason for not completing a flight review, there is no requirement that the pilot go back to the same CFI to get the endorsement.

I've had the good fortune to come out of a lot of recurrent training sessions knowing that my skill level went up a few notches over where it was when I went in. In my opinion, that's how every flight review should conclude-the pilot walks away feeling good about what he or she learned, a lot of rust got scrapped off and skill levels are up. Oh, yeah, and there's a new endorsement in his or her logbook.

The following is a brief checklist for a flight review, starting with the realization you've got to take one-expand it together with your instructor:

Oh, Goodness, I've Got to Schedule a Flight Review

List what you want out of your flight review.

List questions you want your CFI to answer.

Consider what aircraft you want to use for the review.

Scheduling the Flight Review

Call your CFI, set up the time, place and airplane.

Discuss the type of flying you do.

Tell your CFI what you want to cover in the review, your areas of concernsand the questions you have.

Find out what your CFI wants to cover (including the FAR-mandatedmaterial) and the homework you are to do before you get together.

Preparation

Do the assigned homework.

Look up accident data on the type of airplane you're to fly and list areasof higher risk that you can reduce with recurrent training.

Add to your list of questions for your CFI.

The Review-On the Ground

Go over the FAR-mandated areas of review with your CFI.

Discuss accident data, the risks you face and how you can mitigate them.

Discuss tactics for avoiding TFR busts.

Review airspace requirements for the areas you regularly fly.

Review the POH for the aircraft, emergencies, speeds and systems.

Agree on acceptable performance standards for the review.

Make sure you know what is going to take place on the flight.

Preflight

Assume there is something wrong with the airplane, your CFI mayhave done something.

The Flight

Realistic cross country, diversion and emergency scenarios.

Airwork tailored for the pilot with emphasis on maneuvering and stallrecognition skills.

Crosswind landings with emphasis on correct approach speed and controlof the airplane during rollout.

Post-Flight

Evaluation by the pilot and CFI with personal minimums for the pilot.

Discussion of the evaluations.

Endorsement or schedule next session.

Rick Durden holds an ATP and has been a flight instructor for 41 years. He is also an aviation attorney and the author of The Thinking Pilot's Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vol. I. Volume 2 is due out shortly.