Do airline crews have the same recency requirements as GA pilots?
At the airlines, the familiar requirements of FAR 61.57 are superseded by FAR 121.439, which also requires three takeoffs and landings every 90 days but specifies the same aircraft type, with no differentiation between day and night operations. Lapsed recency can only be reestablished under the supervision of a check airman and must include a V1 cut and an ILS approach to the lowest authorized minimums. Reestablishing landing currency in the simulator has always been a routine chore for international relief pilots—but during the pandemic, many domestic pilots were also sent to do their “bounces in the box.”
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