Hello, I'm Brendan Martini, a commercial pilot and flight instructor.
And I'm Carson Vasquez.
I'm a private pilot.
And you're listening to the Aviation Mentors podcast sponsored by Stratis Financial.
So buckle up because the aviation mentors are taking off.
Welcome back to another fantastic and amazing episode of Aviation Mentors podcast.
Thank you guys for joining us today.
We've received a few questions about check rides, counting as a flight review.
So we want to talk about flight reviews.
And I know we kind of addressed the check ride thing a few episodes ago.
But a flight review is something that a lot of people forget all about because if you're
just doing flight training, you're going to be getting new ratings or you're going to
be getting kind of flight reviews with line checkman and things like that at the airlines
when you eventually get there.
But if you're just a private pilot or an instrument rated pilot or even a commercial pilot doesn't
fly for hire, really, you're not going to be doing as many check rides or check flights
with people of authority.
So you actually have to do a flight review.
Nowadays, the FAA calls them flight reviews.
But when I first started, they called them biannual flight reviews or BFRs.
And the reason why they are BFRs or biannual flight reviews and now just flight reviews
because you need to do them every two years.
That will come up on your check ride, by the way.
They'll say, how often do you need to get a flight review?
Or they'll say, what does it take to be current?
I know that's my favorite one.
Whenever I'm doing end of course exams, I say, what else do you need to be current?
I will continue to ask until they figure out that they need a flight review to be current
because everyone forgets about it because they haven't done one yet.
So make sure you know that you do need to do a flight review.
By the way, you don't have to do a flight review every two years.
That's what you mandatory have to do, just like you only have to do three takeoffs and
landings to stay current.
But you do not have to do just flight review every two years.
I actually like to do a flight reviews once a year.
I do an IPC and a flight review usually once a year for myself.
I go up with an instructor and I just I want them to quiz me and put me through the wringer.
And I actually tell them to be super hard on me.
I want to know exactly what I'm doing wrong.
And trust me, when I give other flight instructors, especially ones I've worked with, that opportunity
to be hard on me, they definitely don't take it easy.
They're like, Brandon, you lost 40 feet.
Thanks so much.
And actually, one of our friends, Johnny, I actually he sent me a picture and he was
off by like 30 or 20 feet or something on an altimeter.
I said, Johnny, you're way off on that altimeter.
I can't believe that you'd send me a picture of you not not flying straight and level.
And and then I did the same thing one day.
He definitely called me out.
It was pretty funny.
But but yeah, so you can get a flight review at any time.
And Carson, have you had a flight review yet?
You know, I was going through my logbook because I thought I was getting some somewhere close
and realized that it was actually a month over on getting a flight review.
And don't worry, I haven't flown since I was current.
But it's been over two years since I've had my private pilot checkride.
So I actually need to get one soon, especially if I want to go fly again.
So my last my last flight review was my was my private pilot checkride, which, you know,
as we talked about, checkride resets that clock.
But I haven't had a flight review yet.
So what should I expect from a flight review?
Well, there's actually several documents that that tell you exactly what you can expect.
There's an advisory circular 6168 Delta or sorry, 6198 Delta that was dated on 430 2018.
That's when the advisory circular came out.
So that tells you the currency requirements and guidance for the flight review and instrument
proficiency check.
And there's also a document out, which actually I like a lot better.
And it's it's obviously by the FAA, but it's not an advisory circular.
So it doesn't have the same legal status, but it really breaks down everything a lot
better.
It has pictures in it, too.
So I love books with pictures.
I'm like a little kid that way.
But it's all color and it looks really, really good.
And it looks like they actually did it really well.
And they actually have it presented by the FAA website.
And it says conducting an effective flight review.
So although that advisory circular kind of tells you exactly what you need to do.
Well, if you want to do an effective flight review, you should probably follow this document.
So in the table of contents of that document.
Now everyone says, well, you need to do an hour of ground an hour of flight.
Yes.
Are those the minimums?
Absolutely.
Carson, do you think anybody should do the bare minimum?
No, just like the way almost nobody gets their private pilot in a minimum of 35 or 40 hours.
Yeah.
Part 141 or 61.
Exactly.
That just it doesn't happen often.
Doing the bare minimum almost never is a good thing.
Yeah.
Like I said, I got my private very low hours and I was an idiot for taking passengers up,
just like we talked about in that previous episode.
So yeah, you should fly more and get really used to different things.
So back to what I was saying.
So that document that they actually consider a PowerPoint presentation of conducting an
effective flight review.
They have a table of contents in there and they have step one, step two, step three,
et cetera.
But in the preparation for it, it says you want to manage their expectations.
Let them know that they might not get their flight review done in one day.
I know I'm working with somebody right now on their flight review and we got their ground
part of their flight review done in, I think it took us about two and a half hours.
He hasn't flown in about a year or flown solo in about a year.
I think he's flown with some friends and stuff, but that's not the same.
He hasn't flown solo or rented an airplane.
So he got that ground done, but we couldn't go fly that day.
So we set a day to go fly and we went flying the other day and went and had lunch.
And although he's a fun guy to fly with, we just weren't quite there yet.
We weren't able to get that flight review knocked out.
We still had six or seven items that needed some polish for me to be comfortable signing
them off for a flight review.
So I managed his expectations originally.
I tried to explain to him that, by the way, you haven't flown in a while.
Don't expect you just to get in the airplane.
Everything come back to you, especially with all of a glass cockpit when you've flown for
40 years and you didn't have a glass cockpit before.
So I told him I managed those expectations.
And another one is going through a regulatory review.
What has changed in the past year or two?
Not much has changed in the past year or two, but it also asks for a cross-country flight
plan.
By the way, airspace changes all the time.
There's a reason why the charts come out.
I think it's every 56 days.
I could be quoted slightly wrong on that, but it used to be it depended where, depending
where he were at in the US, it was different timing.
But I think it's straight 56 days for every publication now.
But I would have that person do a cross-country flight plan.
If they're a brand new private pilot and they just went through training and all they've
ever used is paper, use paper.
If they've only ever used for flight, use for flight or whatever EFB they have.
So have them do a cross-country flight plan and review that thoroughly as part of your
ground, which I did with that gentleman as well.
I wanted to know about airspace and I really, really like hammer airspace on people because
that's one thing that will get you in trouble.
It's not just being able to land an airplane and doing that safely and being able to manage
the engine and all that other stuff.
That's really, really the kind of the core of it.
You don't want to break airspace.
You don't want to accidentally not talk to somebody when you should.
So in even step two, it says ground review and it says general aviation security issues.
I think that's the 1-800-GA secure phone number and there's actually something you can go
on if you work at a flight school, you actually have to go through it.
It's from the TSA.
Weather decision making, risk management and personal minimums.
These are all items that you need to go over or you should go over in a ground review.
And then flight activities is number three and it says physical airplane, basic skills,
mental airplane, systems knowledge.
Guess what?
There's a lot of instrument rated pilots that what happens at the P2O2 vice is over.
I would love to say that all of them tell me exactly what should happen to the airspeed
indicator but everyone hems and haws and tries to give me a sideways answer and never really
gets to the point.
And then the other one they have on there and they have a separate line for it is aeronautical
decision making, ADM.
It's something we've talked about a whole bunch of times and we keep on bringing it
up.
We brought up in the last episode, we brought up this episode.
Heck, we even have an entire episode for ADM and I think it's in like our top eight episodes
out of 70 or 71 episodes that we have out now.
So it's a really important topic and I'm glad our listeners are taking it as a really
important topic.
And then beyond all of that, it goes through a post flight debriefing.
So debriefing the flight.
It also talks about personal minimums and proficiency practice plans and what a training
plan should be in the future.
And then there's a bunch of other appendices to it as well.
So talking about if you're a CFI, like how you should properly conduct these in the future
and checklist and the three P's for risk management and so on and so forth.
But it's a really, really great document.
And like I said earlier, it's called Conducting an Effective Flight Review.
And if you just Google search FAA flight review, I believe it's on the first two things on
Google.
It's pretty fantastic.
So aside from staying legal and staying current, why are flight reviews important and why can't
I just use my last flight with an instructor as my flight review?
If I'm doing an hour ground, an hour flight with an instructor, why can't it count?
Well sometimes it can.
It depends what you talked about and what you did.
Obviously if it wasn't an effective flight review, then it probably wasn't a good one
or should have been signed off as one.
But the answer is you can sometimes.
It depends on what you talked about.
But why can't you?
Because you did not really hit the items that you really need to.
If you just flew with your buddy who's a flight instructor and you just him and Haad and you
did some steep turns and some stalls and like, ah, you're good for another two years.
Here's my signature like old timers do.
That's not a good flight review.
You didn't talk about airspace and you didn't talk about possible problems that you can
have in an airplane.
You didn't go through all the emergency procedures and things like that.
Those are very different things that you're learning.
And even if you did go up with a CFI, you probably had a mission or you had a reason
that you were going up with a flight instructor that day.
Maybe it was just to feel more comfortable in the airplane.
It could have been to learn a new maneuver like a chandel or lazy eight for commercial
maneuver.
It could have been lots of different things, and it probably wasn't an effective flight
review.
That would be my answer.
Got it.
And and back to why are they important?
Why are they important?
Because they're going to make you a better pilot and it makes you legal.
You got to do it.
So there's a big, big reason why it's important.
If you don't do it, you won't have a certificate very, very much longer.
FAA is going to pull that from you.
And just by the way, are flight reviews reported to the FAA or is it kind of on your honor
system until you get ramp checked?
Honor system and probably not even honor system until ramp checked.
It's probably honor system until you get in trouble and they ask for copies of your log
books, to be honest.
I do know of some flight instructors and some pilots who have had to not surrender their
log books, but give copies of their log books to the FAA.
And by the way, if that happens to you, I highly suggest you go get an attorney.
If the FAA just wants to have a phone call with you after you screwed up with something,
that's one thing.
Call the FAA and own your mistake and fix it and apologize and go from there.
Now, if they start asking for a whole lot of documentation on what you did wrong, go
get an attorney so you don't lose your certificate forever or for 30, 60 or 90 days.
I mean, those are all bad things.
But yes, that's the only way the FAA is going to know if you...
Take a traffic stop versus a search warrant.
Yeah, pretty much.
Exactly.
I mean, you can drive around in your car all day long without a driver's license.
Is it legal?
No, it's not legal.
Would you get caught?
No, not until you get pulled over.
So it's the same thing.
So you always have your driver's license on you, obviously, because you don't want to
be doing illegal things.
And you're always going to have that flight review done because you want to stay safe,
current, and you want to stay legal, of course.
Exactly.
So I'm happy admitting that I don't have a flight review yet, but I also haven't flown
because I'm going to get it done.
It's just part of being a responsible pilot and it keeps everybody safe.
But as a CFI, I'm pretty sure that you don't do the same flight review for an airline pilot
as you would a private pilot, right?
No.
But before we get to that point, since Carson doesn't have his BFR done yet or flight review
as the FAA now calls it, I'm guessing I'm going to have to go fly with him.
That's going to be absolutely miserable.
Not for me, for him.
Yeah.
I was about to say, I was like, you should enjoy flying with me.
I'm going to spend that quality time with me.
But if I remember anything from my stage check with you, and of course, stage check, it was
going to be a miserable flight for me.
Well, just make sure you're not staying up studying all night long and getting up at
4 a.m. to do the flight with me.
I still pass that stage review.
You did.
I put him through the wringer on that day, too.
That was great.
But as you said, do you do the same flight review for an airline pilot as a private pilot?
It depends.
Does that airline pilot fly general aviation airplanes all the time?
Do they fly low flying?
Do they go do aerobatics?
Do they go fly tailwheel?
What type of flying do they do?
The real question is, you want to ask that person what kind of flying they do.
If somebody just flies around the pattern, and that's all they do, they fly around the
pattern and they go over to the practice area and they come back to the airport and they
do 30 minute flights and that's what they do.
They don't do anything else.
Do you think I'm going to spend hours and hours and hours on cross country planning
with them?
Probably not.
I am going to touch base on it, obviously.
I want to conduct an effective flight review as the FAA says it, but I'm going to be doing
different things with them.
Also in that advisory circular, it explains to you that you should really focus on what
type of pilot they are and what type of piloting they're doing.
If they're flying IFR all the time, guess what, I'm going to do a couple of approaches
with them.
Even though it's not necessary, it's a flight review.
It's not an IPC, but the people who need the flight review, I usually do an IPC at the
same time, at least whenever I do them, just because it will get them current again, so
they're flying IFR and really it hones their skills more so than anything.
I would say the answer, the long answer, long answer long, is no.
You do a different flight review for those different types of pilots and you utilize
that advisory circular in the presentation from the FAA on guidance on how to do that.
I'm sure your answer is going to be something similar to this, but what should I do to prepare
for a flight review?
Not just a flight review with you, which I know is going to be hard, but a flight review,
I'm a weekend flyer, I'm a private pilot, and if I have my ATP, am I going to prepare
the same way?
Is it the same information?
I mean, like I said before, it really depends on what type of flying you're doing, but
for you in particular, Carson, you're a private pilot, you don't quite have your instrument
rating yet, even though I think you have all the requirements.
I know, you've given me so much flack for it, thanks.
Yeah, well, you can give me the same flack for not having my ATP done or my ATP written
done.
I've got that all ready to go and I just need to go do it.
So I know the feeling, but by the way, when I finally schedule that check ride and I go
get my written done for that ATP, you better be on my tail with that instrument rating.
You've got to get close.
I have to.
I know you're not going to give me a choice, otherwise you're going to rub it in my face
in the intro forever.
100%.
I can't wait to say ATP rated pilot and Carson's just, I'm still a private pilot.
So I would say for somebody like you, Carson, who's a private pilot and kind of a weekend
flyer, once a month flyer, I know sometimes you fly more than that, but I mean, in general,
it's more like a 30 hour a year pilot, right?
And that's actually kind of the general population.
If you're a private pilot or just a casual instrument pilot, everyone's goal is fly 100
hours a year, but most people only fly 20 or 30.
I know Richard Cavus told me how many hours some of these airplanes come in annual after
annual, and some of them come in with a couple of hundred hours, which are pretty awesome,
but most of them come in with 10, 20, 30, maybe 50 hours on them.
So that means the pilots of these airplanes are flying the same amount, right?
So I would say to prepare for that flight review, go ahead and read up on airspace.
That's a big one.
At least that's one of my biggest ones, especially in Southern California.
Yeah, especially Southern California.
Or if you're in an, if you're in an area with a lot of restricted airspace, like Nevada
or Arizona has got a lot of Moas, read about those Moas, read about the airspace, read
about what type of traffic comes in and out of your airport.
I would review the charts on your airport, review the chart diagrams.
I know our home airport, Riverside, K-R-A-L, they put in a, just outside of the taxiway,
which actually I don't know if it's published yet.
I got to find out.
But they've got a run-up area now that may or may not be published, but they've got a
run-up area that people don't know how to use.
I actually had to show somebody actually on that BFR the other day, how to use that run-up
area properly and when to use ground and when to use use tower.
Like when to talk to each one of them because it's kind of in a weird place.
So those are also things that you would add to a flight review, which I actually did that
I didn't mention earlier, but it's those little things.
So try to look up your airport.
The person who I was flying with, they also, they had like a notepad where they wrote down
all the frequencies and they didn't look at a current chart.
Guess what?
They didn't have the current frequencies.
The ground frequency at Riverside changed six or nine months ago or something.
And he still had the old frequency written down.
If he would have had that in the air or flying by himself, he wouldn't have talked to the
right person.
He wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
Yeah, you're right.
It would have been like something's wrong with the airplane, right?
No, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
He wouldn't have been able to taxi or anything like that.
So it would have actually caused him possibly to cancel a flight or all sorts of things.
So look at the regulations.
I would say look at part 91 and 61 or whatever the regulation that you work under.
I would also review some of the aim.
If you're going to a lot of FBOs, there's a lot of like hand signals that people do
when you're taxiing your airplane.
You need to know what those marshallers are saying.
Are they saying turn right or turn left?
Are they saying stop or keep coming?
Those hand signals are in the aim if you didn't know.
The aim is actually probably one of the, just I know side topic, but the aim is probably
one of my favorite kind of documents that the FAA has put out there because it gives
you so much information.
If you look through the aim, you can learn a whole lot from the aim.
I've read it twice actually, one of them in preparation for my CFI and then one after
I became a CFI just to kind of know what everything was.
But I wouldn't say have to go read the whole aim or read the whole FAR aim like I have.
But I would say go touch base on kind of the regulations and things like that.
There's some interesting like tips and tricks in the aim as well.
But we should probably cover the FAR aim in a whole other episode.
I fully agree.
FAR aim is a huge book as all of you who are pilots or soon to be pilots have seen.
I don't know, it's like two or three inches wide.
So imagine reading the whole thing.
Yeah, and that book only has how many sections out of at least 135 that I know of.
But when you go to take a flight review, are they pass and fail or is there something in
between?
There's no such thing as a fail on a flight review.
We didn't finish.
So once you quote unquote pass your flight review, it's not really a pass or fail.
I mean, that's really kind of the wrong way to say it.
There's no failing a flight review.
It is not a pass or fail type of thing.
It is did we finish our flight review?
And the answer is for the other day for me was no, we did not finish our flight review.
We have, we're just continuing it.
The flight review will be continued until it's completed.
So you can complete a flight review and you can get the kind of endorsement for that.
Or you can just not finish the flight review and you just have to continue working on it.
So that's really the difference between pass and fail.
Yeah, if you don't pass, you can be told you need more instruction.
Like I've talked about, just like the gentleman who I flew with the other day.
Yeah, if you don't finish your flight review and you're told you need more instruction,
it does mean that you can't act as PIC until you have your instructor sign off.
So if you want to go fly, make sure you go fly with either a flight instructor or you
fly with another friend who's acting as PIC in that airplane.
You have to make sure that you're staying legal and of course you're staying safe.
Staying safe is more important than being legal, but it is a close tie.
I want you to do both and you shouldn't sacrifice either.
So make sure you guys are being safe and legal.
And for the pilots who are unlucky or maybe even lucky enough to not have Brandon Martini
as their instructor, where should they go to find a flight instructor to do their flight
review?
Because a lot of these people, they got their license from their school and moved on or
moved somewhere else or just haven't flown in two years.
Yeah, absolutely.
I would look up your local airport and go find, usually the mom and pop flight schools
or flying clubs are normally kind of the best place to get a flight review done because
you're not in a flight training environment all the time.
And a lot of flight schools nowadays are middle sized or large sized flight schools.
They're really focused on the career pilots and they might not even have enough slots,
but you can go to any of them and ask.
I would go to any flight school that's at your local airport and just go meet the pilots,
go look at their airplanes, see how you feel about them.
Just if you click or you vibe with that particular flight school or flying club, ask them if
they can do your flight review.
And like I said earlier, just don't expect it to be done in one flight, especially when
you've not flown in a while.
But if you fly all the time, then you can probably expect to be done in one flight and
one ground lesson.
Don't expect it to be exactly one hour either on the ground or on the flight.
It could be 1.1, it could be 1.9, it could be whatever it may be.
It just is what it is.
I know that my flight review flights with somebody who is very current and very good.
They're still typically about 1.2 to 1.6.
It kind of depends on traffic and stuff.
I just conduct it just like I would kind of a stage check or an end of course check with
the emphasis areas that are conducive with whatever their flying methods are.
Or if they're in a particularly not so not really difficult airplane, but an abnormal
airplane to fly.
If they're in a special twin or something like that, I will custom cater it towards
that particular airplane and those systems a little bit more than I would like 172 or
something like that.
That brings me to one other quick question that I didn't prepare you for.
I'm sorry.
If I have my single engine private pilot license and my multi-engine private pilot license,
can I get a flight review?
Does it have to be in both airplanes or can it be in either?
That's a great question.
By the way, Carson doesn't prepare me very well.
Him and Phil are the real heroes in this.
They prepare everything and then I review whatever he's come up with about 10 minutes
before we record.
I hope I have enough knowledge to pull it off.
I usually do too.
Sometimes we give it a lot of thought and you can probably tell which episodes we put
a ton of effort into and which ones we're not fantastic with.
We do love doing this for you guys and thank you again for everybody listening to us.
The answer is you can do it in one of the other airplane.
It doesn't matter.
You can do it in the multi or you can do it in the single.
You can do it in the seaplane.
You can do it in whatever you want.
That's just like if you go get a new rating.
You go get a single engine seaplane rating, it counts as a biennial flight review just
like we talked about before because it's a new check ride.
But I would say go do it in the plane that you're flying most often.
If you fly a Baron all the time or you fly an Aerostar all the time or you fly a jet
all the time, it does not make any sense to go do a flight review in a 172.
If you fly a 172 all the time but you do have a multi engine rating, it doesn't make any
sense to go do it in a twin unless you are planning on flying that twin and you need
to get current again and in the realm of flying a twin again, you should probably do the flight
review in the twin then.
That way you are ready to fly that airplane and you are prepped and ready because you're
going to go have to get current and get in that airplane.
You might as well do it with a flight instructor.
It's a little safer.
You've got a little input in there and then you'll have a better experience especially
when you take your passengers up like we talked about last episode.
Yeah, you know flight reviews, although I haven't done them yet, I know they're really just an
essential part of your aviation career and they make sure that you're able to keep yourself
safe, your passengers safe and everyone on the ground safe.
Like we talked about, you don't have to do a flight review only every two years although
you legally have to.
Doing a flight review is a great habit that you should probably get into anytime you haven't
flown for a period of time or you haven't flown with another pilot or another CFI in
a little while.
Yeah, absolutely.
I know a lot of flight schools and flying clubs, they actually have a, some of them
have two week currency, 30 day currency, 60, 90 day currency, kind of depends where you
fly.
I think if you haven't flown, if you're not, if you're just a weekend flyer and you haven't
flown in 90 days, you should definitely go up with an instructor before taking friends
and family up.
Depending on your experience level, I would say even after 30 days, you should probably
go up with an instructor or go by yourself first before you go take people up.
Doing that flight review by the way is a fantastic way to hone your skills, even learn some new
skills.
I know I've done, I did a flight review, one of my first flight reviews several years ago
with a pilot and I went over things that he said he's never heard before, which was really,
it wasn't surprising just kind of knowing how long the gentleman was flying for, but
it was really kind of a cool experience knowing that, hey, I'm informing a pilot who's been
flying three times as long as I have on just new things that are happening in aviation.
I think during that particular one, ADS-B was pretty new and it wasn't even required
yet, but I was able to tell him exactly where ADS-B was going to be required and how the
airspace was.
Everyone thinks that ADS-B was required everywhere, but it's really not.
In most of the airspace that he flew and most people still fly, ADS-B is technically not
required and not to be reliant on for-flight and your stratus on telling you where all
the traffic is because all the people who are using ADS-B in and out, they probably
already they're using it and they're doing the right thing and all the people that aren't
are probably the ones that you should be worried about, to be honest.
Just talking about things like that as your flight review, those are little things that
you'll learn over time.
Make sure you take that flight review really seriously and like Carson said, you don't
have to wait every two years.
You can go get one once a year or whenever you really need it.
I would highly suggest if you haven't had a flight review in a while or it's been a
little close, go check your logbook.
Make sure you're not like Carson and missing out on me to get that flight review done.
At least I wasn't flying without a flight review.
That is a good point.
Yeah, you'd get an earful from me if that happened.
You need to update your for-flight and put that in there.
Anybody who's on here, if you don't have a digital logbook like me, I'm still old school
paper, I actually have reminders in my phone that go off on my calendar.
I know when I'm current on different things, on takeoffs, landings, IFR, final flight review,
all that stuff.
That's what I do.
Carson, I'm going to highly suggest you do that so you never get yourself in trouble
and have to hear an earful from me.
Thanks again, Carson, for coming up with this great idea today.
Thanks Phil again for putting this episode together and making sure it's a success for
us.
As always, if you'd like to reach out to either one of us, you can reach us via emails,
preferredbrandon at aviationmentors.com or you can reach Carson, Carson at aviationmentors.com.
As a wrap up for the day, remember, we're here to guide you in your aviation journey,
so fly safe and enjoy the ride.
See you.