The Flight Review (FR, it hasn’t been BFR for decades) is a fact of every pilot’s aeronautical life. FAR Part 61.56 mandates a flight review or one of a specified list of alternatives every 24 calendar months for every person who desires to fly as pilot in command. Most pilots chose to take the flight review route to compliance—rather than one of the alternatives. As with anything we do around aircraft, how can we maximize the value of our flight reviews while minimizing cost and inconvenience, especially if we haven’t been flying much and are a little concerned about maybe being rusty in some areas?
The good news is that there are a number of resources available to pilots to help them through their flight review, and that the best of those are free. We’ll give you a rundown of what’s available as we’ll as how to work with an instructor to make the review as efficient as possible and look at the alternative methods of complying with the recurrent training requirement.