This Reddit post from r/flying illustrates a persistent and practical challenge in the U.S. flight training pipeline: the scarcity and logistics of scheduling a Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) for a checkride, in this case for a Commercial Flight Instructor (CFI) certificate. The original poster, having completed CFI training out of state, is returning to Utah and seeking recommendations for examiners—naming James Crawford and Kelli Peay as candidates—along with guidance on where to rent a Cessna 172 to conduct the practical test. While the post itself is a routine crowdsourced request typical of aviation forums, it reflects a systemic issue that has been building for years across the general aviation training industry: DPE availability has not kept pace with the surge in flight training activity following the pilot shortage era of the early 2020s.
For working pilots and flight instructors, this scenario is emblematic of a bottleneck that adds real time, cost, and uncertainty to the certification process. The FAA's DPE corps is aging and has historically been understaffed relative to demand, particularly in regions with growing flight schools or university aviation programs, like Utah, which hosts programs at institutions such as Utah Valley University and Utah State University. Prospective CFIs and other applicants often face wait times of weeks or months to secure a checkride slot, and many pilots—as this poster is doing—travel or plan trips specifically around DPE availability rather than the reverse. This has real operational consequences: flight schools lose instructor capacity while candidates wait, students queue behind bottlenecked CFI pipelines, and regional airlines and Part 135 operators relying on a steady flow of newly minted instructors building hours toward ATP minimums see that pipeline slow down accordingly.
The aircraft rental question embedded in the post is not incidental—it points to a second layer of the same problem. Renting a 172 for a checkride requires coordinating not just examiner availability but aircraft availability, often from an FBO or flight school unaffiliated with the applicant's training provider, since the poster trained out of state. This adds insurance, checkout, and scheduling complexity, and it is a common friction point for applicants who complete accelerated or out-of-state training programs and then need to "import" the checkride process back to their home state. Flight schools and FBOs that offer rental-only checkride packages, along with examiner coordination, have increasingly become a niche but valuable service line in response to this demand.
More broadly, this thread reflects the informal, peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing culture that fills gaps left by official FAA resources—prospective aviators frequently turn to forums like r/flying rather than any centralized, reliable directory of examiner quality, temperament, or scheduling responsiveness. The FAA has taken some steps in recent years to expand the DPE pool and streamline designations, including policy changes aimed at reducing administrative burden on examiners and encouraging more retired airline and military pilots to pursue designation. However, anecdotal reports across flight training communities continue to describe wait times and geographic disparities as an ongoing pain point. For CFIs, DPEs, and flight school operators alike, this dynamic underscores the importance of building strong regional relationships and understanding local examiner networks—knowledge that, as this post shows, is still largely transmitted informally rather than through official channels.