Recency requirements

Recency is having flown recently enough to keep your licence and its privileges valid. Three separate windows apply; the exam usually turns on the date math for the passenger one.

• General currency (401.05(1)): you may exercise your licence only if you acted as pilot-in-command or co-pilot within the past 5 years; if not, you need a flight review within the past 12 months.
• Recurrent-training recency (401.05(2)(a)): within the past 24 months you must have completed a recurrent training program. The 24-month window is in the CAR; the list of qualifying activities (a flight review, a written exam, the TC Self-Paced Study Program, a recognized safety seminar, or training toward a permit/licence/rating) lives in the personnel licensing standards (Std 421.05), not in CAR 401.05 itself.
• Passenger-carrying recency (401.05(2)(b)): to carry passengers you must have made 5 take-offs and 5 landings in the past 6 months; to carry them at night, those take-offs and landings must have been made at night.

For the passenger date math, count from the month you last made those take-offs and landings; the privilege runs through the end of the month 6 months later.

Trap: do not mix the windows, 6 months for passengers, 24 months for recurrent training, 12 months for a flight review.

Practice