Endorsement Wording: The AC 61-65K Endorsements CFIs Write Most

An endorsement is the only evidence that exists for a regulatory prerequisite you certified. The training happened in the airplane, but what an inspector, an examiner, or the next instructor at your school will read a year later is one or two sentences you wrote in a logbook. AC 61-65K exists so those sentences say what the regulation needs them to say. This page explains what the AC is, why the exact wording carries weight even though the AC itself is not a rule, and gives you a generator for the seven endorsements a Part 61 school writes most.

What AC 61-65K Is

AC 61-65 is the FAA advisory circular on certification of pilots and flight instructors, and revision K is the current one. Most of it is a catalog: paragraph by paragraph, it gives sample wording for every logbook endorsement Part 61 contemplates, each labeled with a letter (A.3, A.6, A.10, and so on) and each citing the specific regulation it satisfies.

Those letters are worth knowing by name. They are how schools, examiners, and the FAA refer to endorsements in conversation, and they are stable across a revision in a way that paragraph numbers in your own school's handbook are not. When someone says a student is missing "the A.10," they mean the endorsement for one specific solo cross-country flight under 14 CFR 61.93(c)(3), and there is no ambiguity about which sentence that is.

Why the Wording Matters

An advisory circular is guidance. It does not carry the force of a regulation, and AC 61-65K says so on its own first page. That leads some instructors to conclude the wording is a suggestion. It is, in the narrow sense that you are free to write your own. The catch is what your own wording then has to do.

The regulation is the thing you are complying with, and it is specific. 14 CFR 61.87(n) does not ask for a note saying the student is ready to solo. It requires an endorsement, in the student's logbook, for the specific make and model to be flown, from an instructor who gave the training within the preceding 90 days. The AC's sample text is built clause by clause out of that requirement, which is exactly why rewriting it is risky: the clause an instructor trims as boilerplate is usually the clause carrying the regulatory content.

When the wording falls short, the consequence is not that the endorsement looks untidy. It is that the prerequisite is undocumented. A solo flown on an endorsement that names the wrong airplane was not an authorized solo. An applicant whose recommendation endorsement does not cover what 61.39(a)(6) requires can be sent home by the examiner on the morning of the checkride, with the training complete and the paperwork short. Nothing about the flying changes. The compliance record does.

The Seven a Part 61 School Writes Most

They come in four groups, and each group answers a different question.

The two pre-solo sign-offs (14 CFR 61.87(b) and (c); A.3 and A.4.) One records that the student passed the pre-solo knowledge test you administered and that you reviewed every wrong answer with them. The other records that they have been trained in the maneuvers the regulation lists and that you find them proficient and safe in that make and model. Neither authorizes a flight. Both are prerequisites the solo endorsement rests on, and neither expires.

The solo endorsement and its renewal (61.87(n) and (p); A.6 and A.7.) This is the one that actually authorizes solo flight, and it is good for 90 days. The renewal is not a formality: the same proficiency determination applies each time you sign it. A student who stops flying for a season comes back to an expired endorsement.

The two solo cross-country endorsements (61.93; A.9 and A.10.) The first establishes that the student is trained and proficient for solo cross-country flight in that make and model. The second authorizes one specific flight, after you have reviewed that day's planning. They are different endorsements doing different jobs, and collapsing them into one is the most common gap found in a pre-checkride file review.

The practical test recommendation (61.39(a)(6); A.1.) Every certificate and rating funnels through this one. It certifies that the required training happened inside the 2 calendar months before the month of application and that you find the applicant prepared for the test.

The generator below produces the AC wording for all seven, with the blanks the AC leaves for you to complete.

I certify that {{student_name}} has satisfactorily completed the pre-solo knowledge test of § 61.87(b) for the Private Pilot.

{{instructor_name}}    {{date}}
CFI {{instructor_cfi_number}}    Exp. {{instructor_cert_exp}}

The Record You Have to Keep Anyway

Writing the endorsement is only half of what Part 61 asks of an instructor. 14 CFR 61.189 makes the instructor, not the school and not the student, responsible for a record that outlives the logbook it was written in.

Paragraph (b) is the part instructors overlook. Separately from the logbook entry, you have to maintain a record of the name and date of every person you endorsed for solo flight privileges, and of every person you endorsed for a knowledge test or a practical test, with the kind of test, the date, and the result. Paragraph (c) requires you to keep those records for at least 3 years.

That obligation survives the student. The logbook goes home in their flight bag, and the student who moves to another school takes the only copy of your signature with them. What stays with you is whatever separate record you built, which for a lot of instructors is a spiral notebook and, eventually, a memory.

For the full solo sequence, including the pre-solo night endorsement and the narrower local-solo endorsements under 61.93(b), see Solo Endorsement Requirements. For the endorsement a flight review produces, and the 24 calendar month clock behind it, see Flight Review Requirements. And if what you are actually chasing is whether a student has the hours to be endorsed at all, the private pilot hour requirements page carries a free 61.109 calculator.