Let's be honest about something: the instrument rating checkride has a reputation. Plenty of capable pilots walk in feeling ready and walk out with a notice of disapproval, scratching their heads about what went wrong. The good news? The reasons people bust the instrument ride aren't mysterious. They cluster into a handful of predictable buckets — and once you know where the landmines are, you can study your way around them.
If you're prepping for your Instrument Rating, here are the failure patterns that show up again and again, split between the oral and the flight, plus how to keep yourself off the disapproval list.
A Lot of Busts Happen Before You Ever Fly
Here's something newer instrument applicants underestimate: a meaningful share of failures happen on the oral, not in the airplane. You can nail every approach in the world, but if you can't demonstrate the underlying knowledge on the ground, the flight never happens.
The usual oral-side culprits:
Weather, weather, weather. This is the big one for instrument applicants. Examiners want to see that you can interpret the full weather picture and make a real IFR go/no-go decision — not just read a METAR aloud. Expect to talk through icing, freezing levels, convective activity, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, and PIREPs, and to explain how each one affects your flight today. Vague, textbook-y answers don't cut it here.
Alternates and the 1-2-3 rule. Under 14 CFR 91.169, you need to know when an alternate is required and how to determine whether an airport even qualifies as one. Read 91.169 alternate requirements and the so-called 1-2-3 rule found within — from 1 hour before to 1 hour after ETA, ceiling 2,000 ft and visibility 3 SM. Applicants routinely stumble on the difference between filing minimums and approach minimums.
Lost communications. The classic 'gotcha'. 14 CFR 91.185 governs what route and altitude to fly if you lose comms in IMC. If you can't reason through it cleanly, examiners read that as a safety gap.
Currency and required equipment. Be ready to explain instrument recency under 14 CFR 61.57(c) and the equipment that must be working for IFR flight under 14 CFR 91.205(d). 61.57(c) is for tells us what constitutes recent instrument experience: six approaches, holding, intercepting and tracking within 6 calendar months. 91.205(d) IFR equipment list tells us what needs to be functioning and onboard in order to legally fly IFR. Toss in the inspection intervals — pitot-static and altimeter, transponder, and the VOR check — and you've covered a question set that trips up a surprising number of applicants. Remember: AV1ATES - Annual inspection, VOR inspection, 100 hour, ADs, Transponder, ELT and Static (pitot/static) system.
The thread tying all of this together: the oral isn't testing whether you memorized the regs. It's testing whether you can apply them to a real flight. That's exactly why structured, ACS-aligned oral prep matters so much at this level — our Checkride Ready (Instrument) oral prep is built around the same Areas of Operation the examiner pulls from, so the conversation on checkride day feels familiar instead of ambush-y.
Falling Behind the Airplane
Once you're flying, the single most common failure mode is task saturation — getting so buried in one task that everything else unravels. You're briefing the approach, ATC throws an amended clearance, you fumble the radio, and now you're three steps behind and chasing the airplane instead of flying it.
The fix isn't superhuman hands. It's staying ahead with disciplined habits:
- Brief approaches early, before you're in the thick of it
- Set up nav and comm frequencies in advance
- Use a flow and a checklist so nothing gets dropped under pressure
- Keep your instrument scan moving instead of fixating on one gauge
Examiners can spot a pilot who's ahead of the airplane versus one who's hanging on. Be the former.
Blowing Tolerances
The ACS (FAA-S-ACS-8C) spells out specific performance tolerances, and exceeding them is a clean, objective way to fail. Common offenders:
- Drifting outside altitude tolerances on an approach
- Heading and course deviations beyond standards while tracking
- Letting airspeed wander during configuration changes
The frustrating part is that these are rarely knowledge problems — they're scan and discipline problems. They creep in when you're saturated (see above) or when you let one deviation snowball. Tight, consistent flying within tolerances is what the ACS is measuring.
Holding Entries and the Approach Itself
Two specific flight tasks sink a lot of applicants:
Holding. Botched hold entries are a perennial favorite. The fix is to make entry selection automatic so you're not burning mental bandwidth deciding direct, teardrop, or parallel while the airplane gets away from you.
The approach. This is where it all comes together — and falls apart. Common busts include descending below minimums without the required visual references, fumbling the missed approach when it's called, and chasing the needles instead of making smooth, small corrections. Knowing your DA/MDA, your missed approach procedure, and your callouts cold before you start the approach takes enormous pressure off.
The Mindset That Keeps You Off the Disapproval List
Step back and you'll notice almost every failure traces to one of two roots: shaky underlying knowledge or getting behind the airplane. Address those two and the specific tasks take care of themselves.
Practically, that means two things. Practice flying ahead of the airplane until staying organized under pressure is automatic. And nail down your knowledge so cold that the oral is a conversation, not an interrogation — work directly from the ACS, rehearse applying regs to real scenarios, and keep a pre-tabbed FAR/AIM handy so you can find anything you're unsure of fast. (Knowing where to look is itself a skill examiners respect.)
The Takeaway
People don't fail the instrument checkride because it's unfair — they fail because of predictable gaps: weak weather and regulatory knowledge on the oral, and task saturation in the airplane. Study toward those patterns specifically, fly ahead of the airplane, and walk in knowing the ACS as well as your examiner does. Do that, and the instrument ride stops being something to fear and becomes something you're simply ready for.
For more resources to support your training, visit NorthstarVFR.com.