How to rent an airplane after your checkride
Your certificate says you can fly. A rental owner wants to know you can fly their airplane. Checkouts, what owners look for, staying current, what it costs, and how to build hours with a purpose.
Passing the checkride is the moment most training plans stop, and it is exactly when a lot of new pilots stop flying. The certificate gives you the privilege to act as pilot in command. It does not come with an airplane. Renting one is straightforward once you know what the owner is checking for and what keeps you legal to fly. This is the short version.
The checkout
Before an owner or club lets you take an aircraft out alone, they will want a checkout: a flight with an instructor they trust, in that specific airplane. Expect about an hour. The instructor will watch your preflight, your normal and short-field landings, how you handle a simulated engine failure, and whether you know the airplane's systems and speeds. Some owners also ask you to read the pilot's operating handbook first or answer a few questions about it.
If you trained in the same airplane, the checkout is often a formality, and sometimes the owner will accept your training record instead. If you trained in a Cessna and want to rent a Piper, plan on a real lesson, not a signature.
What owners look for
An owner is lending you an asset worth more than most houses in some towns, and their insurance policy sets most of the rules. The common questions are your total time, your time in this make and model, how recently you have flown, and whether you carry renter's insurance. A newly certificated pilot with 60 hours is a normal renter. Some policies require a minimum number of hours, or hours in type, before you can fly the airplane solo.
Renter's insurance, sold as a non-owned aircraft policy, covers what the owner's policy does not: the deductible, and your own liability. It typically costs a few hundred dollars a year. Some owners require it. It is worth having either way.
On AviPrep you verify your pilot certificate once. We review it by hand, usually within a day. After that you request approval on each aircraft you want to fly, and the owner decides, sometimes after a checkout flight. The owner sees your hours and your note, and can approve, ask for a checkout, or decline.
Staying legal to fly
Three rules cover most of it. You need a flight review with an instructor every 24 calendar months. To carry passengers, you need three takeoffs and landings in the preceding 90 days in the same category and class of aircraft, and to full stop if it is a tailwheel airplane. To carry passengers at night, those three need to be to a full stop, at night, during the same 90 days.
Your medical has its own schedule depending on its class and your age, or you may be flying under BasicMed. Put all of these dates on a calendar the day you pass your checkride. An owner will ask, and a lapsed requirement is the easiest way to lose a weekend.
What it costs
A Cessna 172 rents at a median of about $165 an hour wet on AviPrep, meaning fuel is included. Twenty-five hours of flying in one is about $4,125. Older and simpler airplanes rent for less, and glass-panel or higher-performance aircraft for more. Check whether a rate is wet or dry, and whether the owner bills on Hobbs time or tach time; the Cessna 172 rental guide explains both.
Many rentals have a daily minimum for overnight trips, so the airplane is not sitting at another airport earning nothing. Ask before you plan a weekend away. AviPrep shows the full price, including the platform fee, before you book, and the flight is billed on the hours you actually fly, after you land.
You can price out a block of hours at your pace with the cost calculator by choosing Build hours.
Building hours with a purpose
If you are working toward a commercial certificate, you need 250 hours total, including 100 hours as pilot in command and 50 hours of cross-country time as pilot in command. Every hour you fly as a renter counts, so make them useful. Fly to airports you have not landed at. Fly at night. Plan cross-countries long enough to count. Take an instructor along now and then to work on what the commercial practical test will ask.
As a private pilot you can share the operating expenses of a flight with your passengers: fuel, oil, airport fees, and the rental itself, split evenly. You cannot charge them more than their share, and you cannot fly for compensation. Within those limits, a friend who wants to see the coast from the right seat can halve the cost of a long cross-country.
The pilots who keep flying after their checkride usually have a reason to fly and an airplane they can count on. You can see aircraft listed near your airport, with their rates and owner requirements, at find aircraft.
Ready when you are
Book aviation training sessions with certified flight instructors on AviPrep.