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3 Answers

Taking my checkride this week and am using a different flight school’s plane

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Student Pilot

I'm taking my checkride this weekend and have a bit of a predicament. My flight instructor has gone missing after signing me off to take my checkride. However, I have made plans to still take my checkride this weekend with a different flight school's airplane(it's the same make/model). What sign off's will I need to conduct the checkride flight? I will be meeting the DPE at an airport that is not my original airport. I'm not sure if this makes a difference in what I will need from my new flight school.

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3 Answers



  1. nlynam on Jul 25, 2013

    Interesting situation. Generally you’ll have to go out with an instructor for an insurance checkout. Depending on what the insurance policy is all about it sholdn’t be a big deal. In my experience using another school’s aircraft; it was nothing more than a half hour flight with a CFI doing a couple stalls and slow flight. This might be a good opportunity, too, to do a mock checkride with this CFI that you have never flown with. Shouldn’t be a very big deal. Good Luck!

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  2. andyzball on Jul 25, 2013

    I was just worried about my student pilot cert. limitations. Since my old instructor signed off on this. Wasn’t sure if I needed a new signoff. Thanks for the help!

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  3. Mark Kolber on Jul 25, 2013

    If it’s the same make and model it should make no difference to the DPE. And assuming you have all the proper endorsements from your earlier instructor, there should be no problem on that score either.

    Unless there is something written in the limitations on your student pilot certificate restricting you to a specific N-Number at a particular, there should be nothing there to trip you up on a regulatory basis either.

    Here’s where I see some sticking points, though:

    1. It’s very unusual for a flight school to lend its airplane to a non-renter student, especially without some kind of checkout. OTOH, if there were discussions about this that you weren’t part of, it could very well be that the flight school is more than willing to do so because of the DPE or the management of the two schools work together from time to time. It leaves me wondering what the deal is. Not necessarily suspicious (I don’t know enough about it), but wondering.

    2. If you have only flown one N-Number airplane all along, you might want to have some kind of a checkout. For you; not them. There are individual differences in individual airplanes. Sometimes it’s a different radio. Or a switch in a different location. Or a rudder that isn’t quite as centered as you’re used to. Those kinds of differences are common pilots who have flown multiple airplanes take them in stride, but can really throw a pilot who has flown only one airplane and has gotten to know it. I don’t think the day of a primary checkride is the time to find out, for example, that =this= 172 has a tendency to drop a wing at the point of a stall when the one you’ve flown all along merely mushes straight ahead.

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