Learn › Technical subjects › Endorsements and Logbook Entries

Endorsements and Logbook Entries

An endorsement is one person's judgment, written down and signed. It is usually the only thing standing between a student and a flight nobody is watching.

Technical Subject Areas — FI.II.K

Why a signature is a safety item

Failing to make sure a learner holds the right endorsements is treated as a serious deficiency in instructor performance, and it is one of the few ways an instructor can be at fault for an accident they were not present for. That is the weight this paperwork actually carries, and it is why the rest of this page is mostly section numbers.

The limits written inside endorsements exist for the same reason. Ninety days, twenty-five nautical miles, fifty nautical miles, twenty-four calendar months — none of those are round numbers for tidiness. They force a fresh look at a pilot before the last look goes stale.

Two ground rules before anything else. Regulations change, and 14 CFR is the authority — everything below is cited by section so you can check the current text rather than trust a page. And you never write an endorsement from memory. The wording lives in Advisory Circular 61-65, which numbers each template (A.1, A.72, and so on). You copy it, fill in the brackets, and sign. The numbering is not stable across revisions either: AC 61-65K, issued in November 2025, cancelled 61-65J and inserted new templates that pushed most of the later numbers up by four. The numbers on this page are the K numbers. Check them against the current revision before you quote one to an examiner, because the next revision can move them again.

What a logbook entry has to contain

Under §61.189(a), a flight instructor must sign the logbook of every person they give flight training or ground training to. Not only solo students, not only the ones headed for a checkride — everyone, every lesson, ground included.

What goes in the entry is §61.51(b): the date, total flight or lesson time, where the aircraft departed and arrived, the type and identification of the aircraft, and the name of a safety pilot if §91.109 required one. Then the type of experience — solo, pilot in command, second in command, or training received from an authorized instructor — and the conditions of flight, meaning day or night, actual instrument, or simulated instrument.

That list is the skeleton of every certificate application you will ever make. An hour flown and logged badly is an hour you may not be able to count.

Student pilot endorsements

Before a student flies solo, two things go in the logbook. The first is a presolo aeronautical knowledge test, §61.87(b). The instructor who endorses the student for solo administers and grades that test and reviews all incorrect answers with the student before signing. The section does not require that instructor to have written the questions — a syllabus or school test is normal and compliant — but the grading and the review have to be theirs. The second is an endorsement that the student has been trained and found proficient in the required maneuvers for that make and model, §61.87(c). Solo at night needs its own training and its own endorsement under §61.87(o).

The solo endorsement is not permanent. §61.87(n) and (p) hold it to 90 days at a time, so the instructor has to look again and re-endorse. That expiration is the mechanism, not an inconvenience to it.

Everything beyond the home pattern is a separate signature:

• Solo takeoffs and landings at another airport within 25 nautical miles — §61.93(b)(1)
• Solo cross-country training generally — §61.93(c)(1) and (2) — and then a review of the planning for each specific flight, §61.93(c)(3)
• Repeated solo cross-countries not more than 50 nautical miles from the point of departure — §61.93(b)(2)
• Solo flight in Class B airspace — §61.95(a)
• Solo to, from, or at an airport located in Class B airspace — §61.95(b), read with §91.131(b)(2)

Read the Class B pair together with §91.131 rather than on its own. Section 4 of appendix D to part 91 lists the busiest primary Class B airports, and §91.131(b)(2) puts every one of them outside the reach of any student endorsement: no person may take off or land there unless the pilot in command holds at least a private pilot certificate. Check the section for the current list, since the appendix is amended.

Separately, TSA rules require a flight training provider to verify citizenship, or to process the candidate through the Alien Flight Student Program, before certain flight training. The recordkeeping requirement, including the logbook endorsement a provider may use to certify that it inspected the candidate's documents, is 49 CFR 1552.15 — not part 61 at all. It belongs in the logbook with the rest.

The endorsements that get an applicant to the examiner

§61.39(a)(6) is the recommendation. The instructor certifies that the applicant received and logged training within the 2 calendar months preceding the month of application, and that the applicant is prepared for the test — subparagraphs (i) and (ii), which AC 61-65K gives as A.1. If the applicant was deficient in any subject area on the knowledge test, a further certification is required that those areas were reviewed and satisfactory knowledge demonstrated: §61.39(a)(6)(iii).

The endorsement is only part of the packet. The application is normally filed through IACRA, though a paper FAA Form 8710-1 is still accepted in limited circumstances — confirm which one the examiner expects rather than assuming. And the applicant must hold whatever medical certificate §61.23 requires for the certificate sought, unless an exception applies.

Adding a category or class

A certificated pilot adding a rating needs the training, the aeronautical experience, the endorsements, and then the practical test. Adding a category is §61.63(b); adding a class is §61.63(c); the AC wording for both is A.78. Where a pilot has to fly solo in an aircraft they are not yet rated in, in order to earn the rating, that gets its own endorsement under §61.31(d)(2).

Take a private pilot with single-engine land adding multi-engine land. Two signatures go in before the checkride, and a third whenever the airplane is complex:

1. A.1 — the §61.39(a)(6) practical test recommendation.
2. A.78 — that the pilot "has received the required training for an additional [aircraft category/class rating]" and is prepared for its addition.
3. A.72 — only if the airplane is complex: the §61.31(e) endorsement that the pilot is proficient in the operation and systems of a complex airplane.

The §61.31(d)(2) endorsement introduced above belongs to this example too, and it is easy to lose track of. If the training plan has that pilot flying the twin alone before the multi-engine rating is added, none of the three signatures above authorizes it. That solo needs its own separate endorsement, and it authorizes solo in an aircraft the pilot is not rated in only for the purpose of earning the rating.

The complex endorsement catches people. Complex is an aircraft-specific privilege, not a rating, and it does not arrive bundled with the multi-engine class just because most twin trainers happen to have retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller.

When the checkride stops

A practical test can end short of a pass in two different ways, and they produce two different documents. §61.43(e) allows the examiner or the applicant to discontinue the test if the applicant fails one or more areas of operation, or because of inclement weather, aircraft airworthiness, or any other safety-of-flight concern.

Either way, §61.43(f) gives credit for the areas of operation already passed — provided the remainder is completed within 60 days of the discontinuance, the original notice of disapproval or letter of discontinuance is presented to the examiner, and the application is properly completed and signed.

What differs is what happens in between. After a notice of disapproval, the applicant needs additional training and a fresh endorsement saying that training was given and the applicant is prepared — AC 61-65K A.77, under §61.49. After a letter of discontinuance, where nothing was failed, no additional endorsement is required. You go back and finish.

A second clock runs alongside. Under §61.39(g), if a test is given in increments and is not completed on the same date, everything remaining must be done within 2 calendar months after the month the applicant began. Miss that and §61.39(h) makes you retake the entire test. The two clocks overlap, and the tighter one governs.

Flight reviews and instrument proficiency checks

A flight review under §61.56 gets an endorsement (A.69) certifying satisfactory completion on a stated date. An instrument proficiency check under §61.57(d) gets its own (A.71) and names the make and model flown.

Who may give that check is §61.57(d)(3), and the list is longer than most instructors carry in their heads. The subparagraph reaches five kinds of people: an examiner; a person authorized by the U.S. Armed Forces to conduct instrument flight tests, where the pilot being checked is a member of the Armed Forces; a company check pilot authorized under part 121, 125, or 135, within the employment relationship the subparagraph describes; an authorized instructor; and a person approved by the Administrator to conduct instrument practical tests. The familiar limit belongs to only one of those entries. Because §61.193(a) lets an instructor give only those endorsements that fall within the limitations of their own flight instructor certificate and ratings, the instructor who conducts an instrument proficiency check needs the instrument rating on that certificate. Read §61.57(d)(3) in full before you tell anyone who can sign for them — and note that the neighboring §61.57(d)(2) is a different rule, governing what the check may be conducted in rather than who may give it.

Neither is ever failed on paper. If the pilot does not meet the standard, nothing is written — the review simply was not satisfactorily completed, and it becomes more training. AC 61-65 says plainly that no logbook entry reflecting unsatisfactory performance is necessary.

What the instructor keeps

§61.189(b) requires an instructor to keep a record of their own, separate from any student's logbook: the name of each person endorsed for solo flight privileges and the date, and the name of each person endorsed for a knowledge or practical test along with the kind of test, the date, and the result. §61.189(c) makes that a three-year retention.

The instructor's own standing is the cleanest example on this page of why you check the CFR rather than a study guide. A flight instructor certificate issued on or after December 1, 2024 is issued without an expiration date (§61.19(d)); certificates issued before that date still expire 24 calendar months from the month of issue, renewal or reinstatement. What governs now is recent experience.

§61.197 requires you to have established it, and the methods listed in §61.197(b) do not all run on the same clock. Most are measured over the preceding 24 calendar months: passing a practical test for a rating on the certificate or for an additional flight instructor rating; endorsing at least five applicants with an 80 percent first-attempt pass rate; serving as a company check pilot or as a part 121 or 135 instructor; or, under §61.197(b)(2)(iv), passing a U.S. Armed Forces military instructor pilot or pilot examiner proficiency check. The refresher course is the exception, and it is the one people get wrong: §61.197(b)(2)(iii) wants an approved flight instructor refresher course completed within the preceding 3 calendar months, not 24.

The FAA-sponsored pilot proficiency program route, §61.197(b)(2)(v), is misread more often than any of the others. Flying WINGS as a pilot does not keep a flight instructor current. The subparagraph asks that you served as a flight instructor in the program within the preceding 24 calendar months, and it adds conditions on top: at least one phase of the program completed in the preceding 12 calendar months, and at least 15 recognized flight activities conducted, evaluating at least 5 different pilots, with the logbook endorsements the section requires. Read the subparagraph in full before you rely on it. Let recent experience lapse and you stop instructing until you reinstate under §61.199.

Where you meet it next

On a flight instructor practical test this is a paper exercise done out loud: the examiner describes a learner and a situation, and you produce the correct endorsement — by AC number, with the right regulation cited, from the current AC rather than a printout of your own. On every other checkride you meet it from the other side, as the applicant whose logbook the examiner reads before the airplane is ever untied.

Get in the habit of writing entries the day they happen, opening the AC every single time, and treating an expiring endorsement as a scheduled reassessment rather than a renewal. Four lessons sit directly against this one. Pre-Solo and Cross-Country Training covers the training behind the solo signatures. Pilot Qualifications covers the certificates and medicals the logbook has to support. 14 CFR and Publications covers how to find and read the section you are citing, and how to tell when it changed. The National Airspace System is where the Class B limits above stop being a list and start being a place. All of them are indexed at Learn.