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Flight Review Prep Guide

Larco

Well Known Member
Some pilots say this FAA course satisfies the oral portion of a flight review but the title of it suggests to me that it is strictly a prep course for the oral portion. With this cert does the CFI still need to conduct an oral review as part of the FR? Don't mind either way, just looking for valid info.
 
Just get a normal flight review, the 1 hour of ground instruction you are required to have for a FR is money well spent. In the course description it says "Completing this course in advance of your scheduled flight review will allow you and your instructor to use your ground time more efficiently." The FAA clearly intends this to be used as a supplement and not as a replacement.
 
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...and

As a CFI, there is significant latitude given for what is in the 1 hour of ground and flight required.

I would look at the prep course as a supplement, not a replacement, for the ground portion.

You may want to ask the CFI before scheduling the review...
 
Maybe?

I took the Sporty's Flight Review course a short while ago. My CFI noted at the beginning of my FR that we could skip the ground portion of I had the certificate.

I said thanks but I still want to do it. Why wouldn't you take advantage of learning something? Well, unless finances were really tight.

I DID learn some important things during that flight review.
 
As a CFI, I can tell you that the length of the FR pretty much depends upon the student's level of preparedness. I have done flight reviews for pilots that were pretty much pro forma since they were very active and "current" on recent changes and it was easily demonstrated in an hour of conversation, spread out between pre-brief and debrief. Other pilots haven't flown much in the last two years (or decades) and need much, much more. Somehow, most of them still understand the "1 hour" requirement as the standard time a flight review should consist of instead of understanding that it is a "minimum". I can tell in the first five minutes how familiar a pilot is with the rules and regs. I had one gentleman who couldn't name the required documents for legal flight, asking him to describe airspace weather requirements was taxing... and we're in very close proximity to B airspace. Oftentimes, a single hour simply isn't enough to get a pilot caught up on things they may have forgotten or are unfamiliar with due to lack of use, even in the course of a year or two. This is where taking a prep course CAN make your FR more efficient.

Talk to the CFI you're using. To me, someone taking the initiative to use a FR prep course is proactive and interested in the value of the FR. You may even find that it leads you to bring questions for your CFI, and make you a less passive participant.
 
I have my Flight Review (still a BFR to me) in the next few weeks. I did the Wings Flight Review course. Any other Free flight review preps courses that I should take.
 
The AOPA Air Safety Institute Focused Flight Review is exhaustively complete, meaning that it also serves as a menu for pick and choose.

They're also incorporating the Expanded Envelope Exercises®, developed in my RV-9A. They have a youtube video on E3 and Richard McSpadden's column in the current issue of AOPA Pilot.
 
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