Alleviating Checkride Anxiety

Isabel Goyer

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 11:18 PM ET

Verified

** Nervous about your checkride? Don't
be — At the end of the day, it's just another
flight.**

Key Takeaways:

Pilot check rides are a routine yet anxiety-inducing necessity for pilots, even experienced instructors, as they signify a commitment to maintaining high standards.
To manage checkride anxiety, pilots should adopt a philosophical mindset, trust their preparation, prioritize rest over last-minute cramming, and remember that examiners want them to succeed within established standards, not achieve perfection.
Ultimately, a check ride should be viewed as just another flight, for which the pilot has already proven their readiness by being signed off.

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When I was getting ready for a check ride the other day, I mentioned to my primary instructor, Bill Ball, that I’d been nervous about it for the past day and a half. He nodded. After all, he’s a pilot too. It’s too easy to forget that that the person with the clipboard has to go through the same thing him or herself on a regular basis.

Bill is a senior instructor at SimCom and an FAA designated examiner. He has a couple of handfuls of type ratings and teaches in a few different airplanes. After it occurred to me that my instructor is the student sometimes too, I asked him how many check rides he’d taken.