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:

Anxiety surrounding pilot check rides is a normal experience, even for seasoned instructors and examiners, as regular evaluation is an accepted part of maintaining aviation standards.
To manage check ride nervousness, pilots should trust their prior preparation and instructor's endorsement, prioritizing adequate rest and a calm mindset over intense last-minute studying.
Remember that examiners generally want you to succeed and the goal is to meet established standards, not perfection, which can help reframe the experience as "just another flight."

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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.