14 CFR Part 61: Medicals, Ratings, Checkride, and Currency

14 CFR Part 61 is the federal regulation that sets the pilot certification requirements in the United States, covering who can apply, what medical and training standards apply, how the checkride works, and what a certificated pilot has to do to stay legal to fly. The rules apply the same way in every state, so a certificate earned in one place carries the same privileges everywhere in the national airspace.

Who Can Apply

Age is the first gate. You can hold a student pilot certificate at 16 for most aircraft, or at 14 if you’re training in gliders or balloons. A private pilot certificate for airplanes requires you to be at least 17, and commercial and airline transport certificates carry progressively higher age thresholds.¹²

Every applicant must be able to read, speak, write, and understand English. This isn’t about nationality or accent. Radio calls with air traffic control, weather briefings, and NOTAMs all depend on it. If a medical condition limits someone’s ability to meet the standard, the FAA can issue a certificate with operating limitations instead of denying it outright.¹

The Medical Certificate

Before you act as pilot in command, you generally need a medical certificate from an FAA-designated Aviation Medical Examiner. There are three classes, each tied to the privileges you plan to exercise.³

First-class is required for airline transport pilot privileges. It lasts 12 months if you’re under 40 and 6 months if you’re 40 or older when exercised for ATP operations.
Second-class is required for commercial pilot privileges and is valid for 12 months regardless of age.
Third-class is enough for private, recreational, and student pilots. It lasts 60 months if you’re under 40 and 24 months if you’re 40 or older.

A higher-class medical doesn’t expire all at once. It steps down. A first-class certificate that’s aged out for ATP purposes may still be valid as a third-class for private flying, depending on your age and when the exam took place. Every duration runs from the last day of the month the exam happened, so a physical taken on March 3 is treated as valid from March 31.³

Sport Pilot Driver’s License Option

Sport pilots have their own path. If you hold a sport pilot certificate and fly only light-sport aircraft, a valid U.S. driver’s license can stand in for an FAA medical. You cannot have been previously denied, suspended, or revoked from a medical certificate, and you can’t fly if you know of any condition that would make the flight unsafe. Any restrictions on the license itself, including judicial or administrative driving orders, still apply.⁴

BasicMed

BasicMed lets many private pilots skip the AME process. You get a physical from any state-licensed physician using the FAA’s checklist, and you complete an online medical education course.⁵ The physical is required every 48 months. The course is required every 24 months. If either lapses, you’re grounded until both are current.

BasicMed has operational limits. The aircraft can have a maximum certificated takeoff weight of up to 12,500 pounds. You can carry no more than six passengers, for seven total occupants. You must stay at or below 18,000 feet MSL and 250 knots indicated airspeed. The flight has to remain within U.S. airspace and cannot be for compensation or hire.⁶

One eligibility rule trips people up: to use BasicMed, you must have held a valid FAA medical certificate at some point after July 14, 2006. Pilots with certain serious medical histories, including psychosis, epilepsy, or cardiac events requiring surgical intervention, need to go through the traditional special issuance process instead.⁵

Certificate Levels

Part 61 issues certificates in a progression, with each level unlocking broader privileges.

Student pilot: solo flight with instructor endorsements, no passengers, no compensation.
Sport pilot: light-sport aircraft, daytime VFR, with altitude and airspace restrictions.
Recreational pilot: slightly broader than sport but still limited in range and aircraft type.
Private pilot: the general aviation workhorse. You can carry passengers, fly at night, and operate in controlled airspace, but not for compensation or hire.
Commercial pilot: allows paid flight services such as aerial photography, banner towing, or charter work.
Airline transport pilot: the highest level, required for captains at scheduled airlines and certain other operations.

Category, Class, and Type Ratings

Every certificate beyond student level carries category and class ratings that define what you’re authorized to fly. Category is the broad grouping: airplane, rotorcraft, glider, lighter-than-air, powered-lift, powered parachute, or weight-shift-control. Within airplane, the classes are single-engine land, multi-engine land, single-engine sea, and multi-engine sea.⁷

A private pilot certificate with a single-engine land rating doesn’t let you fly a twin. You’d add a multi-engine land class rating through additional training and a checkride. The same logic runs across categories: a fixed-wing pilot who wants to fly helicopters needs a rotorcraft category rating with a helicopter class.

Some aircraft also require a type rating, an aircraft-specific authorization added to your certificate. Type ratings are mandatory for large aircraft, generally over 12,500 pounds gross takeoff weight, all turbojet-powered airplanes, powered-lift aircraft, and any other aircraft the FAA designates through the type certificate process.⁸ Every airline pilot holds a type rating for the specific jet they fly, and moving to a new fleet means earning a new one.

Training Records, Knowledge Test, and Endorsements

Your logbook is the legal record of your training. Every flight has to be logged with the date, departure and arrival, aircraft type, and the nature of the experience. Entries must distinguish between pilot-in-command time, second-in-command time, solo, and dual instruction, and instrument, night, and simulated instrument time each get their own columns.⁹ Sloppy habits here can delay certification or create problems during FAA ramp checks years later.

Before you can take a checkride, you need to pass a written knowledge test at an FAA-approved testing center. It covers weather, navigation, regulations, and aircraft performance. Once you pass, the result expires 24 calendar months after the month you took it. Miss that window and you retake it.¹⁰

Your instructor is a gatekeeper too. Before you schedule the practical test, they must endorse your logbook confirming you’ve received the required training within the two calendar months preceding your application and that you’re prepared for the test.¹¹ Without those endorsements, the examiner won’t start.

The Checkride

The practical test is administered by a Designated Pilot Examiner, an experienced pilot authorized by the FAA to evaluate applicants and issue certificates. It has two phases. The oral examination typically runs one to two hours and covers regulations, weather decision-making, aircraft systems, weight and balance, emergency procedures, and cross-country planning. The flight portion follows, where you demonstrate maneuvers, navigation, and judgment.

If the examiner is satisfied, you receive a temporary airman certificate that’s valid for up to 120 days while the FAA processes the permanent one.¹² The plastic card that arrives in the mail never expires. Your medical and currency requirements do.

If You Fail

A failed practical test isn’t the end. You must receive additional training from an authorized instructor on the areas where you were deficient, and that instructor endorses your logbook certifying you’re ready to retest.¹³ On the retest, you generally only demonstrate the areas you previously failed, though the examiner can expand the scope if issues surface.

Staying Current After You’re Certificated

Flight Review

The certificate doesn’t expire; your authority to use it does. To act as pilot in command, you must complete a flight review within the preceding 24 calendar months. It consists of at least one hour of ground training and one hour of flight training with an authorized instructor, who endorses your logbook on successful completion.¹⁴

Some activities substitute for the flight review. Passing a practical test for a new certificate or rating, completing a pilot proficiency check, or satisfactorily finishing a phase of the FAA’s WINGS Pilot Proficiency Program within the preceding 24 months all count.¹⁴

Passenger and Night Currency

Carrying passengers adds its own requirement. You must have made at least three takeoffs and three landings within the preceding 90 days in an aircraft of the same category, class, and type (if a type rating is required), and you must have been the sole manipulator of the controls for all of them.¹⁵

Night currency is stricter. Those three takeoffs and landings must be to a full stop, during the period beginning one hour after sunset and ending one hour before sunrise. Touch-and-goes don’t count. Tailwheel airplane pilots have an added wrinkle: even their daytime passenger-currency landings must be full-stop landings in a tailwheel aircraft.¹⁵

These 90-day windows are rolling, not fixed calendar periods. Every qualifying landing resets the clock. If you let the window lapse, you can still fly solo to rebuild currency. You just can’t bring passengers along until you do.

Instrument Currency

Instrument-rated pilots face the most demanding currency rule. To fly under instrument flight rules or in weather below visual minimums, you must have logged within the preceding six calendar months: six instrument approaches, holding procedures, and intercepting and tracking courses using electronic navigation systems. These can be performed in actual conditions or under simulated conditions with a view-limiting device and a safety pilot.¹⁵

Let that six-month window lapse and you’re not immediately locked out. You get another six months to regain currency by completing the same tasks with a safety pilot or instructor. You just can’t file IFR or fly in actual instrument conditions until you do.

If a full twelve months slip by without completing the tasks, the only way back is an Instrument Proficiency Check, essentially a focused checkride covering the instrument areas of operation from the applicable Airman Certification Standards. It must be given by an authorized instructor, examiner, or other qualified individual.¹⁵

Obligations That Can Cost You the Certificate

Alcohol and Drug Reporting

Any motor vehicle action related to alcohol or drugs, including a DUI conviction, license suspension, or denial of a license application for an impairment-related cause, must be reported to the FAA in writing within 60 days. The report goes to the FAA’s Civil Aviation Security Division and must include your name, certificate number, the nature of the violation, the date, and the state that holds the record.¹⁶

Missing that deadline is where pilots make things worse. The FAA can deny any certificate application for up to a year after the motor vehicle action, or suspend or revoke your existing certificates, purely for the failure to report. That enforcement is separate from whatever the FAA decides about the underlying offense.¹⁶

Refusing a blood alcohol test when requested by law enforcement under the circumstances described in 14 CFR 91.17 is independently sanctionable. A refusal can result in denial of any certificate for up to a year or suspension or revocation of existing certificates.¹⁷

Address Changes

When you move, you have 30 days to notify the FAA of your new permanent mailing address. After that window, your certificate is no longer valid for exercising pilot privileges until you’ve sent the update in writing to the Airmen Certification Branch in Oklahoma City. If your mailing address is a P.O. Box, you also need to provide your residential address.¹⁸ It’s easy to overlook during a move, and it’s technically an immediate grounding if you let it slide.

1
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.83 – Eligibility Requirements for Student Pilots
2
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.103 – Eligibility Requirements for Private Pilots
3
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.23 – Medical Certificates: Requirement and Duration
4
Federal Aviation Administration. Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners – Operations
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eCFR. 14 CFR Part 68 – Requirements for Operating Certain Small Aircraft Without a Medical Certificate
6
Federal Aviation Administration. BasicMed
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eCFR. 14 CFR 61.5 – Certificates and Ratings Issued Under This Part
8
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.31 – Type Rating Requirements, Additional Training, and Authorization Requirements
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eCFR. 14 CFR 61.51 – Pilot Logbooks
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Federal Aviation Administration. Recreational Pilot and Private Pilot Knowledge Tests
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eCFR. 14 CFR 61.39 – Prerequisites for Practical Tests
12
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.17 – Temporary Certificate
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eCFR. 14 CFR 61.49 – Retesting After Failure
14
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.56 – Flight Review
15
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.57 – Recent Flight Experience: Pilot in Command
16
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.15 – Offenses Involving Alcohol or Drugs
17
eCFR. 14 CFR 61.16 – Refusal to Submit to an Alcohol Test or to Furnish Test Results
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eCFR. 14 CFR 61.60 – Change of Address