Pilot Currency Rules (FAA)

Pilot currency is a concept distinct from pilot certification: a certificated pilot who stops flying remains certificated indefinitely, but loses the legal privilege to carry passengers, fly at night, or operate under IFR rules if they fail to meet the recency-of-experience standards established in 14 CFR §61.57 and the flight review standard in §61.56. Currency is the rolling, activity-based overlay that sits on top of certification and must be continuously maintained.

The primary passenger-carrying recency requirement is in §61.57(a): no person may act as pilot in command carrying passengers in an aircraft unless they have made, within the preceding 90 days, at least three takeoffs and three landings in an aircraft of the same category, class, and — if a type rating is required — type. For airplanes, this means three takeoffs and three landings in an airplane; for a multiengine pilot, in a multiengine airplane. The night currency rule, in §61.57(b), imposes an additional requirement: to carry passengers at night (between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as defined in the Air Almanac), the pilot must have made at least three takeoffs and three full-stop landings at night within the preceding 90 days. The "full stop" requirement for night landings (versus touch-and-go acceptable for daytime currency) reflects the FAA's intent that night landing skills include the complete low-energy phase of deceleration and taxi.

Instrument currency under §61.57(c) operates on a 6-month rolling window rather than 90 days. To act as pilot in command under IFR or in weather conditions below VFR minimums, a pilot must have performed, within the preceding 6 calendar months, at least 6 instrument approaches, holding procedures and tasks, and intercepting and tracking courses through the use of navigational electronic systems. Critically, the 6 calendar months begins on the first day of the calendar month in which the activity is logged — so an approach logged on April 15 gives currency through October 31. The 6 instrument approaches may be performed in an actual aircraft under actual or simulated IMC, or in a flight training device (FTD), aviation training device (ATD), or full flight simulator (FFS) under the supervision of an authorized instructor. Not all simulated instrument approaches count: the approaches must be of the type for which instrument approach privileges are sought (e.g., precision approaches for ILS currency).

If instrument currency lapses beyond 6 calendar months but not beyond 12 calendar months (the "grace period" window), the pilot may not exercise IFR privileges but may re-establish currency by performing the required 6 approaches and holding within the 6-to-12-month window — without an instructor — so long as weather and traffic conditions permit. If instrument currency lapses beyond 12 calendar months, the pilot must pass an Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) with an authorized instructor or DPE before exercising any IFR privileges. The IPC is evaluated against the Instrument Rating ACS (FAA-S-ACS-8) standards.

The Flight Review requirement under §61.56 imposes a broader recurrent evaluation: no person may act as pilot in command of a civil aircraft unless they have accomplished a flight review within the preceding 24 calendar months with a person authorized to conduct flight reviews. The flight review must include at least 1 hour of flight training and 1 hour of ground training and review. There is no prescribed maneuver list — the authorized instructor has discretion to determine what operations are appropriate given the pilot's certificates and ratings. Completion of an appropriate Phase of the FAA WINGS Pilot Proficiency Program under §61.56(e) satisfies the flight review obligation. Additional recurrency obligations exist for specific categories: §61.58 requires annual proficiency checks for PICs of certain high-performance aircraft including turbojets; Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Sport Aviation self-certification and FAA BasicMed both incorporate their own currency validation requirements.

For flight schools renting aircraft to certificated pilots, currency verification is a legal and insurance obligation. A school that dispatches an aircraft to a pilot who is not current to carry a passenger, or not current for night operations, is potentially exposed to enforcement action and civil liability in the event of an accident. The challenge is that currency is not documented on any certificate — there is no updated "expiry date" on a pilot certificate when currency lapses. Currency status must be inferred from the pilot's logbook entries, which may not be current, complete, or even legible.

Instrument currency creates particular tracking complexity for schools with instrument-equipped aircraft: IFR-equipped aircraft are frequently rented to instrument-rated pilots who may or may not be current, and the 6-month rolling window with the 6-to-12-month grace period creates three distinct states (current, in grace, lapsed) that a dispatch desk must be able to distinguish. Schools that allow IFR rental without a systematic currency verification mechanism routinely discover violations only after an incident — at which point the FAA's enforcement focus shifts to the operator as well as the pilot.

Aviatize's pilot currency engine tracks all three primary FAA currency windows simultaneously for every pilot in the system: 90-day passenger recency (daytime and night), 6-month instrument recency with grace period tracking, and 24-month flight review. Pilots log their own flight activity in Aviatize, or instructors log it on their behalf; each logged entry updates the currency calculations in real time. The booking engine cross-references currency against the intended flight — a night flight with passengers triggers the night currency check; an IFR flight plan triggers the instrument currency check — and blocks the booking if any required currency is not current.

For instrument currency specifically, Aviatize tracks the count and type of instrument approaches logged within the rolling 6-month window, the date the window opened, and the number of approaches remaining to restore or maintain currency. A pilot at 3 of 6 required approaches sees a visual indicator showing both their current count and the expiry date of the oldest qualifying approach in the window — giving them a proactive view of how much flying they need to do before the window rolls forward and their approaches become insufficient. This granularity replaces the common manual practice of highlighting logbook entries with colored markers, with an automated system that cannot be forgotten or miscalculated.