Staying current as a private pilot: the 90 day rule explained

The rule itself is one sentence. To carry passengers as pilot in command you must have made at least three take-offs, approaches and landings in the preceding ninety days, in an aircraft of the same type or class.

Almost every misunderstanding comes from the two words in the middle: preceding ninety days.

The window moves

This is not a quarterly reset. There is no date on which everyone becomes current again.

The window is measured backwards from whatever day you are flying. Three landings on 1 March make you current on 1 May. On 31 May they are outside the window and you are not, without anything having changed except the calendar.

Pilots who fly regularly never think about it. Pilots who fly in bursts, a run of trips in June and nothing until September, are the ones caught out, usually on a good weekend with a passenger already in the car.

What counts

The three must be in an aircraft of the same type or class, or an appropriate simulator. For most club flying, single engine piston, that means three landings in any SEP aeroplane count towards SEP currency.

Touch and goes count. There is no requirement for a full stop, and circuits are the normal way to restore currency because you can do three in half an hour.

The landings must be yours. Sitting beside an instructor who lands the aircraft does not count, though instruction where you fly the landings does.

Night is separate

To carry passengers at night, at least one of your three must have been at night, unless you hold an instrument rating.

A pilot perfectly current by day can be uncurrent by night on the same afternoon, which surprises people every autumn when the evenings shorten and the first night trip of the season comes around.

Currency is not a measure of skill. It is a measure of recency, and the two only loosely correlate.

What it does not cover

The 90 day rule governs carrying passengers. It does not stop you flying.

If you are outside the window, you may fly solo, and that is exactly how you fix it. Half an hour of circuits, three landings, and you are current again.

It is also not the same thing as your rating being valid, which is a separate requirement with its own timing, or your medical, which is a third. A pilot can be current under this rule while holding a rating that expired last month. All three have to be right.

Being honest about the number

Three landings in ninety days is a legal minimum, not a standard of competence. A pilot who flies exactly three circuits every eighty-nine days is legally entitled to take their family to another country in weather they have not seen since spring.

Most experienced pilots set a private threshold higher than the rule. Something like: if it has been more than six weeks, the first flight back is solo, in good weather, from a familiar airfield. That costs an hour and buys back the margin the regulation does not require.

Knowing where you stand

The information is in your logbook, but only if you keep it current and go looking.

Clubs that record flights properly can answer the question for every member without anyone counting. In SkyField, every flight is recorded against the pilot and the aircraft, so how recently you flew, and in what, is a matter of record rather than recollection.

The responsibility stays with the pilot. But nobody should be working it out in the car park with a passenger waiting.