What 53 Real IFR Checkride Exit Interviews Actually Tell Us
The instrument rating checkride has a reputation for being the most intellectually demanding practical test in the FAA certificate progression. That reputation is earned. Unlike the private pilot checkride, where a confident demeanor and solid stick-and-rudder skills can carry you a long way, the instrument checkride demands that you think precisely, cite regulations accurately, and fly to tight tolerances while managing a full IFR workload, sometimes without your primary instruments.
GougeHub has collected exit interviews from pilots who completed their instrument rating practical tests with 29 different DPEs. Across those 53 approved reports, drawn from our broader database of 272 approved pilot exit interviews, clear patterns emerge. The same oral traps catch candidates repeatedly. Approach briefings separate prepared pilots from underprepared ones within the first sixty seconds of a procedure. And partial panel, lost comms, and hold entries continue to be the maneuvers most likely to generate a bust or a recheck.
Here is what the data shows.
The Oral Exam: Where IFR Candidates Most Often Get Caught
Currency Is More Complicated Than You Think
The six approaches in six months rule sounds simple until an examiner starts asking follow-up questions. Across multiple gouges, DPEs pushed beyond the basic recitation of 61.57 into genuinely tricky territory: What happens if your currency lapses beyond the six-month window but you are still within twelve months? What exactly counts as a hold for currency purposes? Who qualifies as a safety pilot, and what if that safety pilot has a BasicMed that turns out to be invalid?
Matt Harlin (California) is a clear example of this pattern, pilots reported extensive questioning on the 66-HITS framework, what happens after the twelve-month window closes entirely, IPC requirements, and safety pilot edge cases. Leo Bell covers similar ground in an oral that pilots described as running just under two hours, including detailed questions on VOR check procedures and when an IPC can actually be administered.
Lost Comms: The Regulation Nobody Has Fully Memorized
Lost communication procedures are the single most consistently reported oral trap in the IFR gouge dataset. The regulation exists in 91.185, but the nuance of applying AVE-F and MEA in a realistic scenario, especially when you lose comms at different points in the flight, is where candidates stumble.
Jacob Hansen (Arizona) digs into AVE-F and MEA thoroughly, with multiple pilots reporting significant time spent on what you'd do enroute, at a hold or fix, and in both IMC and VMC conditions. Brunno Winnubst (Oregon) makes lost comms the centerpiece of his oral, expecting you to work through regulatory and practical considerations at multiple points during a hypothetical flight. The consistent advice from pilots: do not just memorize the acronym. Know what it means when you are actually flying the scenario.
Approach Plate Symbology and Alternate Requirements
William Gregory Hill (New York) treats approach plate symbology as a major oral focus, pilots reported he wants you to know your symbols cold. Across the broader dataset, alternate airport requirements come up repeatedly, particularly the 1-2-3 rule and what happens when the destination forecast puts you in alternate-required territory but you filed for an airport with no published alternate minimums.
Weather is another consistent pressure point. Scott Worthington (California) pulls up aviationweather.gov during the oral and works through real charts, surface analysis, METARs, TAFs, winds aloft, and frontal systems, asking candidates to explain why the weather is happening, not just decode products. That distinction matters: IFR pilots are expected to be weather decision-makers, not weather readers.
The Flight Portion: What the Data Shows About Maneuver Patterns
Approach Briefings Set the Tone Immediately
Pilots consistently reported that how you brief an approach tells the examiner almost everything they need to know about your instrument flying. A thorough briefing, covering the IAF, feeder routes, procedure turn or HILPT, final approach fix, DA or MDA, missed approach instructions, and applicable NOTAMs, signals that you have flown the approach mentally before you fly it physically.
Julie Keane (California) expects every fix on an approach accounted for in the nav log with associated fuel burns, including feeder routes and procedure turn fixes. That level of detail during planning translates directly into approach briefing quality during the flight portion.
Partial Panel: Altitude and Heading Discipline
Partial panel flying appears in nearly every IFR checkride in the dataset. The failure mode most commonly described by candidates is not the unusual attitude recovery itself, it is the altitude and heading drift that accumulates during the workload spike of simulating the failure, identifying it, and cross-checking remaining instruments. Pilots who passed reported consciously slowing down their scan and verbalizing the failure identification before attempting to continue the task.
The compass and turn coordinator become your primary references, and many candidates underestimate how much practice it takes to hold altitude on the altimeter and VSI alone while tracking a VOR or flying an approach course. This is where simulator time pays disproportionate returns.
Hold Entries and the Direct-Teardrop-Parallel Problem
Hold entries remain a consistent source of examiner scrutiny. The textbook entries, direct, teardrop, parallel, are well understood in the abstract, but applying them correctly on a chart with an inbound course that is not aligned with a cardinal heading trips up many candidates. Several DPEs in the dataset use non-standard holding patterns specifically to test whether you can determine entry type correctly under pressure.
Jacob Hansen also emphasizes ODP compliance and climb gradients, specifically whether your actual aircraft can meet a published departure procedure gradient. This is the kind of applied performance calculation that distinguishes a pilot who flew the checkride from one who prepared for it.
How IFR Demands Differ From the Private Pilot Checkride
The most important shift is in the precision of your regulatory knowledge. On the private checkride, a general awareness of airspace and weather minimums is sufficient. On the instrument checkride, examiners expect you to cite specific regulations, explain their application in edge-case scenarios, and make defensible decisions when the rules create ambiguous situations.
Bill Conley (Beaumont) is explicit about this, his oral emphasizes real-world IFR decision-making over rote recitation, using curveball scenarios designed to see how you reason under pressure. Steven Brimmer (Tucson) frames his entire oral around a hypothetical flight and probes not just whether you can legally do something but whether you should, a framing that reflects the practical realities of IFR flying far better than any textbook question bank.
The flight portion is also a fundamentally different physical task. IFR ACS tolerances, plus or minus 100 feet on altitude, plus or minus 10 knots on airspeed, plus or minus 10 degrees on heading, one dot on CDI deflection, leave very little margin. Staying inside those tolerances while briefing an approach, communicating with ATC, and managing a missed approach sequence simultaneously is not something you can improvise.
What This Means for Your Preparation
The data from 53 exit interviews points toward a consistent preparation framework. First, know your regulations at the citation level, not just what they say but where they are and how to apply them in non-obvious scenarios. Lost comms (91.185), currency (61.57), alternate requirements (91.169), and required instruments (91.205) come up across virtually every DPE profile in the dataset.
Second, brief every approach out loud during your training flights. Make it a habit before the checkride, not a performance on the day. Third, log meaningful partial panel time, not just the minimum required, but enough that the scan feels automatic. And fourth, look up your specific examiner before you walk in.
DPE styles vary significantly. John Gordy (Royse City) will verify your logged approaches in ForeFlight before the checkride begins and may decline to proceed without a ground instruction log from your instructor. Cliff Shuman samples broadly across all ACS knowledge areas without fixating on any single topic. Eric Cook (California) opens with ADM and hazardous attitudes before working through the ACS methodically, with particular attention to your written exam misses.
Knowing these patterns before you walk in is not cheating, it is exactly the kind of preparation that instrument flying rewards.
Find your specific DPE at gougehub.com/browse-dpes.html