Flight Instructor Renewal Tracker

Under 61.197: a FIRC (flight instructor refresher course) completed within the 3 calendar months before expiry, a practical test, or a renewal based on activity — 80% first-time pass rate with at least five endorsements in the preceding 24 months, among other paths. Since late 2024 the certificate itself no longer expires but privileges require renewal on the same cycle; the calendar trap is identical, and this tracker watches it.

61.189(c) requires instructors to keep a record of endorsements for knowledge and practical tests, and solo endorsements, for at least 3 years — including the kind of test or check and the result. Many instructors keep them for their entire career because renewal-by-activity, Gold Seal applications and employment verification can reach back further than the regulatory minimum.

No — Part 141 schools and most 61 academies maintain their own official training records, and those remain the documents of record. This is the instructor's personal layer: your portable evidence of activity that survives job changes, school closures and software migrations, in a plain CSV you control. The two should agree; yours is the one you can produce in five seconds.

Everything you enter is saved in your browser's local storage on your own device — nothing is uploaded to any server. That means your flight records stay completely private, work offline, and load instantly. Use the CSV export regularly to keep an off-device backup copy of your records.

Yes — one click exports your complete instruction record as a CSV file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. The export preserves every column exactly as entered, so you can print it, attach it to an application, or hand it to an examiner, inspector or insurance underwriter as a supporting summary alongside your official records.