Flight Test
 

I'm very close to my flight test now and am Cr@ping myself. One question I do have though is this, is the flight test like the driving test where if you fail one part of it I need to take the whole thing again ? or do you only have to retake the failed part.
I'm sure the answer is on the CAA site but I know you guys will give it to me in English.

dewdrop,

As far as I know, the skill test is divided into two parts. The upper air work, and the Navigation test. If you fail one, then you only have to repeat that one.

Further more, if the examiner is not happy with a particular manover, such as a steep turn or stall, he can ask you to do it again, there and then. The two exceptions to this I believe are the PFL which you must get first time, and Navigation...you must not get lost...you must always know where you are.

Don't worry about it too much. You will make some mistakes on your test...we all have. You will get questions wrong before the test....we all have.

The examiner will approach the test with two things in mind.

1. He will assume that you are a competent pilot, as otherwise your instructor would not have put you forward. Therefore little mistakes are forgiveable.

2. He will try to empart some of his knowledge to you, that your insturctors may have missed. They might do this by the questions that they ask in the begining, so don't worry if you don't know all the answers...they don't expect you to.

dp

There are five parts (pre-flight, airwork, en-route, approach/landing and abnormal/emergency operations). I think that if you fail one and pass the rest you get a partial pass and only have to retake the failed section - obviously some parts (like pre-flight) will be retested too, even if you passed them first time out. If you fail a second time then you have to do the whole thing again, probably after 'suitable retraining'.

The details will be in LASORS, on the CAA website.

I don't know whether this is standard, but at my school I went for a complete mock test with my instructor the day before. The parts I ballsed up a bit on that, were the parts I had least trouble with in the test itself.

Oh, and be confident. You wouldn't be there if you couldn't do it.

I did mine 2 months ago (& passed). Hopefully, your instructor has chosen an examiner he knows and likes. Mine did and he got me an examiner who was a complete pussycat.

One really important thing, though, is to be calm. They don't want you to fail. (At least, that's what mine said afterwards).

Dewdrop,

I failed the PFL first time I did the test. Since I only failed that bit I got a partial pass, which meant that I only had to do that one thing again, within 6 months of the first test.

Try to relax and even if you feel one thing may not have gone too well, put it out of your mind and concentrate on the remainder - you may still pass or partial pass.

Good luck

SD