CFI Checkride: What to Bring (Documents Checklist)

Your CFI checkride can end before it starts — not on a steep turn, not on a FOI question, on paperwork. The examiner sits down, opens your logbook, and finds a missing endorsement or an expired registration. At that point there's no oral, no flight, no "let's see how the rest goes." You go home, you reschedule, and in most cases you pay the examiner fee again. I've watched it happen. It's the dumbest way to fail a checkride, and it's completely avoidable. Here's the complete list — bring all of it, tab all of it, check it the night before.

Your Pilot Documents

These prove you're eligible to even sit for the test. No originals, no checkride.

• Pilot certificate — 61.183 requires a commercial pilot certificate with an airplane category rating and an instrument rating before you can get the flight instructor certificate. The examiner will verify this first.
• Medical certificate — at least a current third-class. You need it to take the practical test and to exercise flight instructor privileges as PIC.
• Government-issued photo ID — driver's license or passport. The examiner has to confirm you are who your application says you are.

Check the expiration dates now, not the morning of. A medical that's lapsed by a week is the same as no medical.

Your Application: IACRA

• IACRA application completed and signed. Most examiners use IACRA now instead of the paper Form 8710-1. Complete every section, sign it digitally, and confirm it's submitted — not sitting in draft.
• Verify every field before you walk in. Wrong certificate number, wrong address, a box you skipped — the examiner catches these in the first five minutes, and it sets the tone for the whole day. Print the application summary and read it line by line the night before.

Knowledge Test Results

• FOI knowledge test report (original).
• FIA knowledge test report (original).
• Check the dates. Knowledge test reports expire after 24 calendar months. If either one is expired, you're not taking the checkride — you're retaking a written.

Bring the originals. A screenshot on your phone is not a test report.

Logbooks and Endorsements

This is where most paperwork failures happen. Your logbook isn't just a record of flight time — for the CFI checkride, it's evidence that you meet every training requirement in 61.183. Tab every endorsement with a sticky flag so the examiner can find each one in seconds.

• Pilot logbook with all required training logged. Total time, PIC time, cross-country, night, instrument — everything 61.183 requires, logged and totaled. If the examiner has to do your math for you, you've already lost credibility.
• Spin training endorsement — 61.183(i). This is the big one examiners ask about by name. You need a logbook endorsement from an authorized instructor stating you are competent and possess instructional proficiency in stall awareness, spin entry, spins, and spin recovery procedures — earned through flight training in an airplane certificated for spins. The examiner may accept this endorsement in place of an in-flight spin demonstration. The exception: if this is a retest after failing on stall/spin instructional proficiency, you fly the spin in a spin-certificated airplane, no exceptions.
• Practical test recommendation. Your instructor's endorsement certifying that you received and logged the required training within the 2 calendar months preceding the month of application, and that you're prepared for the practical test. Two things candidates get wrong here: the training has to fall inside that 2-calendar-month window, and one test — pass or fail — uses up the endorsement. Retest means a new endorsement with new training.
• Knowledge test endorsements. The endorsements your instructor gave you for the FOI and FIA writtens should be in the logbook.
• AC 61-65J. You don't need to memorize endorsement wording, but know where to find it. Bring a copy of AC 61-65 (current revision) or have the endorsement appendix tabbed. An examiner would much rather see an instructor who looks up the exact wording than one who wings it from memory.
• Your 61.189 instructor records. You're about to become an instructor, so act like one: keep your own records of endorsements given, retained for at least 3 years. The examiner may ask how you track them.

The Airplane: ARROW Documents

Before the flight portion, the examiner verifies the airplane is legal. Memorize ARROW — the documents required by 91.203 to be in the airplane:

• A — Airworthiness certificate. Must be in the airplane and displayed. If you can't find it, the flight doesn't happen. Full stop.
• R — Registration certificate. Check the expiration date as part of your document check — a registration is valid for 36 months, and an expired registration grounds the airplane as surely as an expired annual.
• R — Operating limitations. The POH/AFM, in the airplane, for that specific airplane. Not a PDF on your iPad — the actual book.
• W — Weight and balance data. Current weight and balance information for the airplane, so you can compute a real W&B for the checkride flight.

Do this check yourself the day before. Don't trust that the school "always keeps it in there."

Maintenance Logs: AVIATES and ADs

The examiner will ask you to prove the airplane is airworthy using the maintenance logs — airframe, engine, and propeller logbooks. Know AVIATES, the inspections that keep an airplane legal:

• A — Annual inspection (91.409): within the preceding 12 calendar months. Calendar months, not anniversary date — an annual signed March 15 is due before April 1 of the following year.
• V — VOR check (91.171): every 30 days, for IFR.
• I — 100-hour inspection (91.409(b)): required when the airplane carries persons for hire or is provided for flight instruction for hire — which covers just about every training airplane. The 10-hour overfly rule exists for getting to the shop, and the overage counts against the next 100.
• A — Altimeter and static system (91.411): every 24 calendar months, for IFR.
• T — Transponder (91.413): every 24 calendar months.
• E — ELT (91.207): inspected every 12 calendar months; battery replaced per the manufacturer's life limit or after 1 cumulative hour of use.
• S — Static system (91.411): every 24 calendar months.

Plus Airworthiness Directive compliance — ADs are mandatory, and compliance has to be tracked in the maintenance records under 91.417. Know where the AD list lives for your airplane and be ready to show the examiner that recurring ADs are current. If you want the full breakdown of what the examiner is really testing when they hand you a maintenance discrepancy, that's exactly the kind of scenario covered in how long the CFI checkride actually takes — because the paperwork review is where your day starts.

Publications and Materials

You're the instructor now. Show up like one.

• Current FAR/AIM. Not last year's. The examiner will ask about a regulation, and "my FAR/AIM is from 2024" is a bad look.
• The ACS — FAA-S-ACS-25, effective May 31, 2024. This is the document the entire checkride is graded against. Have it tabbed.
• Your lesson plans — printed and tabbed. The examiner can assign any maneuver from Areas V through XII or XIV and ask you to teach it on the spot. Your lesson plans are your ammunition. If you're wondering how many you actually need and what the examiner wants to see in them, I covered that in how many lesson plans you need for the CFI checkride.
• Teaching aids. Whiteboard markers, a model airplane, your teaching figures — whatever you use to teach. The examiner is grading your teaching, and instructors teach with visual aids.
• A notebook and pen. You'll want to write down the examiner's debrief, pass or fail.

One thing that helps more than people expect: having your lesson plans in a real binder, tabbed by Area of Operation, that you can hand the examiner and teach from. The Teach to Fly course ships with exactly that — 27 printable lesson plans, one per checkride area — but whatever system you use, make it one you can navigate without fumbling.

Practical Tips: The Night Before

• Tab everything. Sticky tabs on every endorsement, every inspection entry, every document. The examiner should never watch you flip through 300 logbook pages hunting for a signature.
• Bring originals. Certificates, medical, test reports, logbooks — originals. Copies are backup, not primary.
• Do a full document rehearsal. Lay everything out on a table the night before, in the order the examiner will ask for it: your documents, your application, test results, logbook, airplane documents, maintenance logs, publications. If anything's missing, you find out at 9 PM, not at 9 AM in front of the examiner.
• Know what happens if it's wrong. The examiner cannot start the checkride without valid paperwork — it's a regulatory thing, not a judgment call. The test gets discontinued before it begins, you reschedule, and you typically pay the fee again. Paperwork failures are one of the most common — and most preventable — reasons people don't get through the day, which is why they made my list of why people fail the CFI checkride.
• Arrive early. Thirty minutes early. Rushing plus paperwork is how things get missed.