“ A better way to stay current”
Complete your flight review and become a safer pilot in the process by participating in the WINGS program!
We conduct all of our flight reviews using the FAA’s
pilot proficiency program, known as WINGS.
Click the button below for a list of Knowledge and Flight activities you can choose to complete your flight review.
What is the WINGS Program?
The WINGS program is an online pilot proficiency program that was designed to help keep pilots safer by addressing specific causal factors that have contributed to aircraft accidents. Pilots participating in the WINGS program will train to improve their flying skills and knowledge, helping mitigate these causal factors and (hopefully) leading to fewer or no future accidents.
That’s great, but how does this work as a flight review?
Simply put, the WINGS program can serve as an alternative to the historical “hour of ground, hour of flying” flight review process. By completing a phase of the WINGS program, a pilot has satisfied the requirements of a flight review.
This sounds like a lot of work. Can’t I just do a regular flight review?
While you can get a “standard” flight review done in a day, that bare-minimum time with an instructor once every couple of years is often not enough to truly give a pilot a genuine refresher on current rules and regulations, and is far less likely to allow a pilot to maintain the skills needed to safely fly an aircraft to the highest level of safety.
By participating in the WINGS program, a pilot is far more likely to maintain proficiency. This is because the program is designed to have pilots completing review activities both on their own and with their instructors on a regular basis.
By nature, you will need to devote more time overall to complete a flight review through the WINGS program versus a standard flight review.
That said, there are advantages to completing your flight review using WINGS:
1) You are exempt from the requirement to complete ground training with a CFI. The ground knowledge portion of your flight review can be completed entirely on your own by completing WINGS courses online or attending seminars. As long as you ensure that you complete the required credits, the activities you choose to complete are up to you!
2) You’ll never have to keep up with scheduling your flight review every couple of years since you’ll have already been working on it regularly. Have you ever gotten dangerously close to not being able to fly because you forgot to schedule your flight review in time? By completing WINGS activities on a regular basis you can keep resetting your flight review currency often so you’ll never again have to worry about maintaining your 24-month currency.
3) You won’t have to complete an entire review with one specific instructor. Because instructors who participate in WINGS can sign off on individual WINGS credits that they’ve completed with you, you can fly with a different instructor for each activity instead of having to work around a single instructor’s busy schedule. This gives you far greater flexibility when it comes to scheduling each activity. Additionally, you won’t have to seek a flight review endorsement from any instructor to complete the process – once you have the credits you need, you’re automatically done with no endorsements required!
4) You create your own flight review experience. There’s a huge variety of activities available to complete. Want to learn more about instrument flying? Interested in accident case studies? Need a refresher on engine systems? Have questions about that whole “BasicMed” thing? There are courses for all of these things and more! You can choose whichever activities you want as long as you complete each of the required credits. Most of these activities can be done for free, and some have a cost associated with them.
How do I complete a flight review using WINGS?
To complete a phase of WINGS and thus satisfy the requirements for a flight review, a pilot must complete 6 total credits consisting of 3 Knowledge Activity credits and 3 Flight Activity credits.
Knowledge Activities can be thought of as the ground portion of a flight review. Completing all of the Knowledge Activity credits eliminates the requirement for a pilot to complete ground training with an instructor for the flight review. These Knowledge Activities can take many forms, from an online course to a in-person seminar. Completing each activity satisfactorily will earn a pilot a credit for either Knowledge Topic 1, Knowledge Topic 2, or Knowledge Topic 3, depending on the subject matter being covered. Each topic covers a slightly different set of concepts, so a pilot must earn credit for at least one of each topic to receive a well-rounded review.
Flight Activities are equivalent to the flight portion of a flight review. These activities are actual flight lessons completed with an instructor. Like Knowledge Activities a pilot must earn a total of 3 credits, one credit each for Flight Topic 1, Flight Topic 2, and (for the Basic level) Flight Topic 3. Pilots should plan to complete these credits across multiple flights, with each flight focusing on a single credit for the most effective skills review and learning to take place. Upon completing an activity satisfactorily, the instructor will issue the credit for the activity through the WINGS website.
Once all 3 Knowledge Topic credits and all 3 Flight Topic credits have been satisfactorily completed, that Phase of WINGS has been completed. This means that the pilot’s “flight review” is complete!
Okay, walk me through this step by step.
1) If you don’t already have an account on FAASafety.gov, create one here.
Once logged in, click “My Preferences and Profile”.
Under the “WINGS Profile” tab, fill out your pilot certificate information and enter the date of your previous flight review or flight review equivalent (such as the last date you passed a practical test for a certificate or rating). When all of this info has been entered, click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page.
2) Go to My WINGS to display your current status on your Knowledge Topic and Flight Topic credits.
If you have never completed a phase of WINGS before, you’ll start with the “Basic WINGS” phase. At the Basic level, you’ll be expected to demonstrate the knowledge and skills at the Private Pilot level.
Once you’ve completed a phase at the Basic WINGS level, you may either continue completing activities at the Basic level or move on to the Advanced WINGS (Commercial Pilot standards) or Master WINGS (ATP/CFI standards) levels where you can demonstrate your knowledge and skills to an even higher level.
3) Choose the Knowledge Activities and Flight Activities you would like to complete to earn your required credits.
To complete the Basic WINGS phase, you must complete one credit each of Knowledge Topics 1, 2, and 3, as well as Flight Topics 1, 2, and 3.
You can complete the suggested activities already listed on your WINGS page, or you can choose other activities that correspond to knowledge and skills for which you wish to train. Click the “Find Alternate Activities” link to search for activities that count toward a specific credit, or go to the Activity Search to search for all possible activities.
Click here for a list of activities we’ve complied to make choosing your activities a little easier. Note that this is only a sample of the activities you can choose, and you should refer to the FAASafety.gov website linked above for the full list of activities.
Look for activities that match what you what to learn about! For example, if you were interested in flying tailwheel aircraft, you could search “tailwheel” to display a list of activities that involve tailwheel flying:
When you’ve found an activity that looks promising, click on it to learn more about what is required to earn the credit(s) associated with it.
Keep in mind that certain activities may be offered only to members of specific organizations such as flying clubs. Also, some activities may have an enrollment fee or other costs associated with them. Be sure to read the activity information thoroughly before you choose to complete it.
4) On your own, complete the Knowledge activities you selected.
Courses you select will often have a quiz or test that you’ll need to pass in order to earn credit. Seminars or webinars will often have an attendance sheet on which you’ll need to include your name to receive credit. Again, read the activity information thoroughly to determine what is required to receive credit.
5) Schedule flights with an instructor to complete the Flight activities you selected.
Once a flight has been completed and you have completed all of the requirements for that activity, navigate to the same activity and click the “Request Credit!” button.
On the Accredited Activity Validation page, enter the date you completed the activity and search for the appropriate validator (the person conducting the seminar/the instructor you flew with/etc.) by entering their name or email address. Once all required info has ben entered, click the “Submit for Validation” button.
Do this for each of the flight activities you complete to earn credit for each.
6) The validator will either accept or reject your validation request(s).
Once a request has been accepted and you have earned the credit, the credit is valid for one year or until it is used to complete a phase of WINGS. If you do not complete a phase of WINGS before the credit expires, you will need to use another credit in its place.
7) Once you have completed all required Knowledge Topic and Flight Topic credits, you have completed a phase of WINGS and reset your flight review clock.
Well done! Like a regular flight review, your WINGS flight review is valid for up to 24 calendar months. After this you’ll need to complete another phase of WINGS to satisfy your flight review currency requirements.
Although you can choose to wait until the end of this 24 month period to complete another phase of WINGS, we recommend that you…
8) Continually complete additional Knowledge and Flight credits to continue resetting your currency.
The point of an aviation proficiency program is to keep you actively reviewing and training your aeronautical knowledge and skills so that you are never out of practice. Make a plan to complete at least one WINGS credit every couple of months to stay current and to stay proficient.
How do I keep my Flight Review current with WINGS?
A major goal of the WINGS program is to help pilots train with an instructor more often than once every two years. While you could wait to complete a phase of WINGS all at once, the preferred way to keep up your currency is to complete WINGS activities and earn credits on a regular basis.
Our recommendation is that pilots complete at least one WINGS activity every other month. A pilot that maintains this schedule could complete a phase of WINGS once every 12 months, thus resetting their flight review clock every year. A pilot that completes these credits more often than that may even complete multiple phases in a year, resetting this currency every time.
Used properly, the WINGS program will help keep a pilot’s knowledge and skills sharp while making it so that the pilot never has to complete a standard flight review!