How to Write FAA Endorsements: The CFI's Guide to AC 61-65

Nathan Hodell
6 days ago
4 min read

Every privilege a student pilot exercises traces back to an instructor's signature. Endorsements are the legal core of the CFI job — they're how the FAA delegates authority to you, and they're where your certificate is on the line if you get them wrong. Here's how to write them correctly, which ones you'll use constantly, and how examiners test them.

The easiest, best tool in the world can be found here: www.wifiCFI.com/endorsements

Pilot in white uniform writes in a logbook at a desk under warm lamp light, focused and serious.

The Source Document: AC 61-65

Advisory Circular 61-65 (use the current edition) contains the FAA's recommended endorsement language for essentially every situation. The wording isn't legally mandatory — the regulation behind each endorsement is what controls — but using the AC's sample language verbatim is the professional standard. It guarantees you've covered the required elements and gives you a defensible paper trail.

Every endorsement needs four things: the endorsement text (with the specific regulation cited), the date, your signature, and your certificate number with expiration of your recent experience cycle — written legibly. Sloppy or incomplete endorsements are the kind of thing that surfaces in the worst possible context: an incident investigation.

The Endorsements You'll Write Most

Pre-solo (61.87). Actually a set: the pre-solo aeronautical knowledge test endorsement, the pre-solo flight training endorsement in the student's logbook, and the make-and-model solo endorsement on the student pilot certificate. The solo endorsement must be renewed every 90 days. Remember the knowledge test must be administered, graded, and reviewed with the student — and it's your test, covering your aircraft and your airport's procedures.
Solo cross-country (61.93). Two layers that trip up new CFIs: the one-time cross-country training endorsement, plus an individual endorsement for each solo cross-country flight, confirming you reviewed that day's planning and the flight can be made safely under the conditions. Skipping the per-flight review endorsement is one of the most common violations found in student logbooks.
Knowledge test (61.35/61.103). Certifying the applicant is prepared for the written. Sign it only when practice scores back it up — your pass rate follows you.
Practical test (61.39). Certifying the applicant received required training within the preceding two calendar months and is prepared. You're also certifying you've reviewed the deficient knowledge areas from their written test report.
Flight review (61.56). Note carefully: a flight review endorsement certifies satisfactory completion — there is no "failed flight review." If the pilot doesn't meet your standard, the review is simply not complete, and you log the time as dual instruction with no review endorsement. Understanding this distinction is a classic CFI oral question.
Additional aircraft endorsements: complex (61.31(e)), high performance (61.31(f)), tailwheel (61.31(i)), and high altitude (61.31(g)) — one-time endorsements that follow the pilot forever, so make sure the training behind them is genuinely complete.
90-day recurrent and additional-airport solo endorsements, repeated more times than you can count at a busy school.

The Mistakes That Create Real Liability

Endorsing without the regulation's training actually completed and logged. The endorsement certifies the training happened; the logbook must show it.
Date math errors on 90-day solo and two-calendar-month checkride windows. Calendar months, not 60 days — know the difference.
Missing limitations. Solo endorsements can and often should carry limitations (winds, runways, times of day). Write them in.
Paraphrasing from memory. Improvised endorsement language omits required elements. Use AC 61-65 templates — that's what they exist for.
Endorsing the certificate but not the logbook (or vice versa) for pre-solo, where both are required.

A practical habit from day one: keep digital copies of every endorsement you write. Your records protect you.

How the CFI Checkride Tests Endorsements

DPEs almost universally make endorsement scenarios part of the oral: "Your student is ready to solo — show me everything you'd write." Expect to produce the actual text, on paper, with correct regulatory references — and expect follow-ups: How long is it valid? What if they want to fly to a nearby airport? What training had to be logged first?

The candidates who shine treat endorsements as a system: they know the regulation, the AC sample language, the prerequisites, and the renewal timelines as one connected picture. The candidates who struggle treat each endorsement as an isolated memorization item.

Drill the core set — pre-solo, solo cross-country, knowledge test, practical test, flight review — until you can write them with correct references from memory, then know exactly where in AC 61-65 to find everything else. The wifiCFI CFI course walks through every endorsement scenario the way DPEs actually present them, and our lesson plans include the endorsement references you'll teach from for years.

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Author: Nathan Hodell

CFI, CFII, MEI, ATP, Creator and CEO

Nathan is an aviation enthusiast that has thousands of hours of flying and flight instruction over the past 15+ years. Through his aviation career he has been able to earn his ATP, fly as an airline pilot, create a flight school with over 80 students, 12 airplanes, and 2 locations, and create and host wifiCFI.