The Southwest Is Its Own Classroom
Fly long enough in the Southwest and the environment teaches you things no ground school can fully replicate. Density altitude that turns a routine takeoff into a performance calculation puzzle. Mountain terrain that makes lost-comms procedures feel less theoretical. Airspace that layers Class B, MOAs, restricted areas, and wilderness corridors in ways that reward pilots who actually read sectionals rather than just glance at them.
All of that shows up on checkrides here. The 272 approved pilot reports in the GougeHub database, submitted as first-hand exit interviews after real FAA practical tests, paint a consistent picture: Southwest DPEs know their environment, and they expect you to know it too.
Desert and Mountain Flying: What Gets Asked on Orals
If there's one theme that cuts across Southwest checkride reports, it's this: examiners here aren't just testing FAA knowledge standards in the abstract. They're testing whether you can apply that knowledge in an environment that punishes complacency.
Density Altitude and Performance
Phoenix sits at about 1,100 feet MSL, but airport elevations across the region climb fast. Flagstaff is over 7,000 feet. Telluride is above 9,000. Even at lower-elevation airports, summer temperatures push density altitudes well above field elevation before 10 a.m. Southwest DPEs know this, and performance calculations aren't treated as a checkbox, they're treated as survival skills.
Dawn Zurcher (Arizona) exemplifies this approach. Her oral is built around your nav log, and she's known to hand pilots two separate weight-and-balance scenarios, including one that's weight-limited, to see how you reason through the numbers, not just whether you can run the chart. Cross-country planning, altitude selection rationale, and climb/cruise/descent interpolation are all fair game.
Departure Procedures and Climb Gradients
Mountain terrain makes obstacle departure procedures more than an academic exercise. Jacob Hansen (Arizona) is one of the most specific examiners in our dataset on this topic. Pilots who've tested with him report spending real time determining whether their specific aircraft can meet a published climb gradient, not just acknowledging that one exists. He's cited the DRAKE 2 departure as an example, asking pilots to work through the math with their actual aircraft performance numbers.
Hansen also goes deep on ODP logic and lost-communications procedures, including AVE-F applied to both enroute and hold/fix scenarios in both IMC and VFR conditions. In mountainous terrain where turning back isn't always an option, this knowledge is operationally critical, and he treats it that way.
Go/No-Go Decision Making in Real Conditions
Several Arizona DPEs use scenario-based orals that mirror actual commercial or IFR operations in the region. Mark Rebholz (Arizona) runs what pilots describe as a full mission briefing: a specific route, passenger considerations, weight and balance at max gross, and real weather from the day of the test. He then changes conditions to legal minimums and asks you to walk through your go/no-go logic using a three-part framework, is it legal, can the airplane do it, and can you do it safely? It's the kind of structured decision-making that makes sense when you're operating in an environment where weather can move fast and terrain leaves little margin.
Airspace Patterns in the Southwest
The Southwest is dense with special-use airspace. Phoenix has Class B. Las Vegas has Class B. There are MOAs and restricted areas blanketing large portions of Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. And the transition airspace between controlled and uncontrolled environments, especially in Utah and northern Arizona, requires real chart literacy.
Lauren Scott (Nevada) focuses her oral heavily on preflight planning, required documents, and regulatory knowledge, foundational material that becomes especially important when you're planning routes through or around complex airspace. Pilots report that aeronautical decision-making (ADM) is woven throughout her oral, not siloed into one question.
Robert Alan Clausen (Arizona) takes a systems-first approach: he wants pilots to understand how their aircraft actually works before discussing how to operate it in complex airspace. Reports from his checkrides emphasize engine cycle of operation, the six-pack instruments and their failure modes, airworthiness requirements, and MELs. Understanding your aircraft's systems is the prerequisite to sound aeronautical decision-making, and his oral reflects that philosophy.
How Southwest DPEs Compare in Style
Style varies across the nine DPEs we've profiled, but a few patterns stand out in the pilot reports.
Scenario-Driven vs. Knowledge-Driven
A meaningful subset of Southwest DPEs structure their orals around scenarios rather than question-and-answer sessions. Rebholz's mission briefing approach is one example. Elliot Crawford (Colorado), who handles CFI checkrides, sends pilots a detailed scenario a full week before the exam, which anchors the entire oral conversation. Both approaches reward pilots who can reason through problems in context, not just recall isolated facts.
Broad Coverage vs. Deep Dives
Adam Christopher Adrian (Colorado) is known for a comprehensive oral that spans the full IFR knowledge spectrum rather than drilling deep on one or two topics. Pilots who've tested with him describe an exam that covers weather, regs, systems, charts, and procedures, preparation breadth matters here. His flight portion, by contrast, is described as more relaxed, though altitude management receives specific attention.
Ryan Brown (Arizona) takes a structured two-part approach for the Commercial Multi oral: Part 1 covers commercial pilot identity, privileges, limitations, private versus common carriage, and Part 2 shifts entirely to multi-engine systems, including propeller aerodynamics, gear systems, and memory items like SMACFUM and PAST.
Conversational and Low-Pressure
Ben York (Arizona) stands out in pilot reports for his approachable, conversational style. Pilots describe him as an examiner who creates space to demonstrate what you know rather than trying to surface what you don't. That doesn't mean underpreparing, reports note he's thorough across ACS standards, but it does mean the environment he creates is one where well-prepared pilots can perform at their best.
What This Means for Your Prep
If you're testing in the Southwest, a few preparation priorities are worth building into your study plan regardless of which DPE you're scheduled with:
- Know your performance numbers cold. Density altitude isn't a hypothetical here. Practice running takeoff, climb, and landing performance calculations for the specific airports you might route through, not just your home field.
- Understand departure procedures at a practical level. Be able to look at an ODP or SID, find the climb gradient requirement, and determine whether your aircraft meets it. Hansen's approach is specific, but the underlying skill is universally relevant in mountain terrain.
- Practice scenario-based thinking. Several Southwest DPEs will present you with a situation and ask you to reason through it. The three-part framework Rebholz uses, legal, aircraft capable, pilot capable, is a useful structure to internalize before any checkride.
- Know your aircraft systems, not just procedures. Clausen's emphasis on how things actually work reflects a broader Southwest examiner expectation: you should understand your airplane, not just be able to operate it.
The pilot reports that power GougeHub's DPE profiles come from pilots who sat in the right seat of a real checkride and wrote down what happened afterward. That first-hand data is the clearest signal available about what actually gets asked, and in a region as operationally demanding as the Southwest, walking in with that knowledge is a meaningful advantage.
Find your specific DPE at gougehub.com/browse-dpes.html