William Devereaux DPE Checkride Gouges
Designated Pilot Examiner
Preparing for an FAA checkride with Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) William Devereaux? GougeHub has a first-hand William Devereaux checkride gouge report from a pilot who tested. Read oral exam questions, flight test patterns, and examiner insights.
↓ View 1 available gouge reportAs of this writing, only one report sits on file for William Devereaux, from a private pilot checkride. The pilot called him a nice and fair examiner who allows some leeway around standards. He says several times that he is not expecting perfection. But going outside standards more than once can bring a notice of disapproval, so treat that leeway as thin.
Before the checkride he goes through your logbook and the aircraft maintenance logs to confirm you are eligible. Then he takes payment and starts the checkride. The oral runs completely scenario based. Rote memorization will trip you up here, so practice applying the material to real situations instead.
He does not dig too deep on any single question. But if you answer shaky or wrong, he tends to return to that topic later in the oral. The pace is fast, and a clean run can wrap the oral in an hour to an hour and a half.
One scenario has a friend asking you to fly to KTTD and pick them up. The friend is a photographer who wants to take pictures on the return trip and sell them for a website. Expect follow-ups on whether you can legally do this, plus night currency and currency in general. He may push on the gap between currency and proficiency, asking if you would still go up after a month or two off.
Another scenario puts you in a friend's plane and asks about required documents and inspections. Know your airworthiness paperwork and inspection intervals cold. The pilot's write-up cuts off there, so the flight portion details are not captured in this report. Come ready to reason out loud on every scenario and you will match how he tests.
Analyzed across 113 site-wide Private Pilot checkrides in the GougeHub database, the same questions keep coming up. Here’s one of the 37 in the guide:
“Describe the different classes of airspace and their VFR weather minimums.”
⚠ Common Pitfall: Class D often reverts to Class G (or another class per the chart supplement) when the tower closes. The examiner may point to a spot and ask you to describe the airspace — Class G can be tricky, so know where it starts per the chart. Watch the floor of Class E: it can be the surface, 700 AGL, 1,200 AGL, or 14,500 MSL. And remember Class E is still controlled even though you needn’t talk to anyone VFR — there may be IFR traffic in it.
All 37 questions, ranked by frequency, with Examiner Insights and Common Pitfalls from 113 real checkrides — written and reviewed by Andrew Gray, CFI-II.
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Ratings & Checkride Types
- PPL (Private Pilot)
Transparency Disclaimer: This page summarizes patterns reported by applicants. It is not an endorsement, prediction, or guarantee of checkride outcome. Every checkride varies based on the applicant and circumstances.