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Extending Flaps For Preflight Inspection

Asked by: 5108 views Aircraft Systems, Student Pilot

I was reading a 1977 Cessna 172 N model preflight inspection checklist  that’s in the POH and other 70 model Cessna 172’s as well and noticed that nowhere does the checklist say to extend the flaps and visually check them. However, everyone I’ve seen do a preflight on a Cessna extends the flaps for preflight. I think it's a good idea to extend flaps to verify they are operational, etc., but just wondering why the POH doesn’t include extending or checking the flaps on the preflight checklist.

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1 Answers



  1. Brian on Jan 31, 2013

    With the exception of section two on limitations, the POH is a guide. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore the rest of it, but it does mean that it isn’t necessarily complete: especially older aircraft.

    If you need to extend the flaps to check operation, do so. No harm no foul. For what it’s worth, however, on a real cold day you may opt not to do that. Operating the flap motors drains some of the battery. On warm days that’s not an issue (usually anyway). On cold days it could mean the difference between starting it or jump starting it.

    There is no way to be certain, but if i had to guess I’d sat the POH leaves it out because you can verify operation with the engine running during taxi/runup without using battery power you may need for start.

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