FAA Checkride Preparation
Ten Reasons for a Mock Checkride
A comprehensive mock checkride with an experienced instructor can help you (and your instructor) tell whether you’re ready for your checkride. If you’re ready, we’ll give you a vote of confidence. If you’re not ready, we’ll say so. Either way, we’ll provide an unbiased third-party evaluation of your preparedness.
Simply put, FAA Practical Test (checkrides) are hard. No matter what checkride you’re preparing for, it’s normal to have anxiety and nerves. The best way to address these is to simulate the checkride experience prior to your actual test date, with someone whom you’ve never met who is playing the role of the FAA Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE).
FAA DPE checkride fees range from a low of around $600 up to $2,500 (or even more). The average Private Pilot checkride fee is now around $1,000, and the average CFI-Initial fee around $1,500. Prices are set by individual DPEs and vary dramatically across the country. It used to be that DPEs would perform retests for free or a nominal fee. That’s not the case any longer. Expect a hefty retest fee at minimum, or a full fee at worst.
Naturally, the best way to save money on exam fees is to ensure you only need to take the checkride once. Setting yourself up to pass the oral portion is a great start toward passing any FAA checkride. We also check your paperwork (item number 9 below); helping you avoid any potential day-of-checkride paperwork snafus.
If you’re looking to go into a career in aviation, multiple checkride failures, especially multiple failures on the same checkride, can make finding employment challenging.
Airline and corporate HR departments have access to PRIA / PRD records (airman records), including failed Practical Tests. Additionally, nearly all job applications ask about failed checkrides, and you’ll need to explain these failures during an interview. A single failure typically will not discourage an employer (after all, failure is not altogether rare), but candidates with numerous failures may see their applications rejected in favor of candidates with few or no failures on their record.
Needless to say, avoiding/limiting failures is an important part of preserving your career prospects in aviation.
Although mock checkrides are intended to test your knowledge (rather than to be a teaching lesson), we at MockCheckride.com try to craft scenarios which make you think about how you will fly in the real world. Our scenario-based mock checkrides prompt you to apply your knowledge to real-world challenges. It’s not uncommon for candidates to remark “Huh, I haven’t had to think of it that way before, let me consider that a bit” when faced with a complex scenario.
We will also ask you questions during mock checkrides where we do not expect you to be able to answer from memory.. You will need to look up the answer in the appropriate FAA reference material; and in doing so, you will likely learn a few things that can be incorporated into your future flight planning and flying.
Frequently, applicants come to us with superb knowledge and aeronautical decision-making skills, yet they lack confidence that they are actually ready for the checkride. This is especially common at the Sport and Private Pilot level, where an applicant is taking an FAA checkride for the first time. For candidates who have never taken an FAA checkride before, we provide coaching on how to answer the DPE’s questions during a checkride.
As noted above, if you’re ready, we’ll tell you so! You’ll now have the recommendation of your own instructor, your school, and a third party instructor who has no incentive to tell you anything other than the truth.
Not to brag too much, but we’ve literally never had a candidate fail a checkride oral portion when we’ve given them a two-thumbs-up rating in their mock. A good performance on a mock checkride with us means that you’re set up for success on your actual checkride.
At the conclusion of every mock checkride, we conduct a thorough debrief. During this debrief, we discuss deficient areas and recommend resources to review prior to your checkride date.
We welcome instructor participation in the debrief portion of a mock checkride. Additionally, we offer a written debrief service, an ACS/PTS-based outline of what was covered during the mock checkride, deficient areas, and specific suggestions for material to review. Involving your instructor in the debrief (whether on the video call or via written debrief) helps to ensure that you and your instructor are on the same page during your final preparation steps.
It also allows the instructor to reflect on what they can do better to help prepare future students.
During the mock checkride, we establish that you are qualified to take the checkride, using the same checklists and FAR references that an FAA DPE will use. This includes checking aeronautical experience requirements, medical qualifications, training records including logbook endorsements, and aircraft documents.
We’ve caught a number of issues with candidate paperwork, including errors in cross-country logging, weight and balance problems, and maintenance log discrepancies.
Every time we catch an error that would have otherwise derailed a checkride, we spare you from dealing with an unhappy DPE (at best) or from losing an entire exam fee (at worst).
We’ve helped numerous candidates from all across the country prepare for their FAA checkrides. We’ve also conducted follow-up with our customers to find out what they’ve experienced in their actual checkrides. It’s possible we’ve worked with someone who has used your DPE before; if so, we’ll share what we know about their testing methods.
The FAA has done a good job of making testing information available. The ACS/PTS (testing standards) and the DPE Handbook (testing methodology) are both available to the public. We are happy to answer any questions you have about the testing process (yes, this includes the flight portion!).