Pilot examiner shortage persists
AOPA continues to press FAA to address delays, issue guidance
While the FAA has reported progress in reversing the yearslong shortage of designated pilot examiners, many pilots still struggle to schedule a checkride at an affordable price, and wait times are all too often measured in months. Congress has given the FAA additional directives to fix the problem.
AOPA advocated before Congress to include measures in the recently passed 2024 FAA reauthorization designed to increase the number of DPEs and improve their management and oversight. The bill was signed into law on May 16. As a result, DPEs can now fly with BasicMed, and the BasicMed program was also expanded to include pilots flying aircraft with up to seven seats and weighing up to 12,500 pounds. The agency issued detailed guidance for examiners explaining how to implement the new policy November 14.
The law also calls on the FAA to implement additional recommendations made by the Designated Pilot Examiner Reforms Working Group. In 2022, the FAA responded to the working group’s recommendations, reporting progress on some, including improvement to the online designee locator system.
AOPA was a member of that working group, advocating on behalf of pilots who have been subjected for years to long delays in scheduling checkrides. The FAA agreed in 2022 that some of the recommendations, including the establishment of a national survey system, “would be beneficial,” though the agency has yet to deploy such a survey.
AOPA continues to press the FAA to act, and individual pilots are also speaking up in the absence of a formal survey. Southern California pilot Eric Heigis, who recently completed a flight instructor checkride after a three-month wait—and an exhaustive, multistate search for a qualified examiner—complained to the agency directly. Heigis also shared his experience in an email to AOPA sent two days before the FAA published the latest DPE policy guidance on BasicMed use by examiners:
“I know I don’t have to tell you, but the DPE situation is really bad—especially in Southern California,” Heigis wrote to AOPA. “It’s not just scheduling issues: one of our scholarship recipients had a DPE schedule three checkrides in one day with the plan that at least one will be failed/discontinued. Of course the rescheduled checkride comes with a new exam fee, and the going rate is now a minimum of $1000 for a private checkride.”
California, the nation’s most populous state with 39 million people, currently has 104 DPEs, according to a November 18 search of the FAA Designee Management System. That ranks California fourth in the nation for DPEs by state, behind Florida with 147, Texas with 130, and Arizona with 109 DPEs, according to the FAA database, but Heigis found during his search that only 83 DPEs currently conduct exams in California.
Heigis said more than half of the DPEs he contacted never responded, and he found many listings have incorrect or outdated addresses, as well as DPEs who are no longer active but who have been unable to have their names removed from the directory.
A much smaller subset of examiners in any given state are qualified to test pilots flying a particular combination of aircraft, seeking a particular certificate or rating. Six states had six or fewer DPEs listed in the online database during the recent search; a total of 28 DPEs were listed across six New England states.
“This three to four month backlog is creating a vicious cycle,” Heigis wrote. Students are motivated to schedule their checkride before they start training, and some are then forced to cancel if their training is delayed. “Those cancellations—especially if last minute—waste a DPE’s day that … could have been spent with another applicant, further adding to the backlog.”
“AOPA will continue to work with the FAA to address the long overdue reforms to the DPE program. Our goal is to promote and protect general aviation and to ensure pilots, new and experienced, have a seamless and timely examiner process. To make that a reality, we need a viable, efficient, and fair DPE system. AOPA will keep at it—you can count on that,” said Jim Coon, AOPA senior vice president of government affairs and advocacy.
Congress gave the FAA 180 days after the reauthorization was signed (on May 16) to make its first biennial report on the use of DPEs systemwide, including analysis of the methodology by which examiners are deployed, and the average wait time for a checkride by region. That report may shed further light on the scope and persistence of a stubborn problem, and what else the FAA will do to address it.
