What the Waitlist Is and Why It Exists

The waitlist is your queue of applicants who are waiting for a checkride with you. It serves as the central place to manage who is next in line, track their readiness, and feed applicants into the automatic scheduler. Think of it as your pipeline of upcoming checkrides.

The Waitlist Page Layout

The Waitlist page: applicants in priority order, a discontinuance at the top, with their checkride types and pending offers
The Waitlist page: applicants in priority order, a discontinuance at the top, with their checkride types and pending offers

When you click Waitlist in the sidebar, you see a list of applicant cards arranged in priority order from top to bottom. Each card represents one applicant's entry on your waitlist. The order of the cards determines who gets scheduled first when you are using the MAXIMIZE_WAITLIST priority mode.

Information Shown Per Applicant

Each applicant card on the waitlist displays:

  • Position and name — Their place on your waitlist and their display name.
  • Checkride type — The type of checkride they are waiting for (e.g., Private Pilot, Instrument Rating), marked Discontinuance or Disapproval for a retest.
  • Pending offers — How many offers to them are awaiting an answer.
  • Join date — How long ago the applicant was added to your waitlist.

Click a card to open it: the applicant's email, phone and FTN, a link to their certificate data, the scheduler's offers to them and what became of each, your own offers and checkrides with them (with their checklist progress), and your private notes, with Offer Checkride, Message and Remove from Waitlist.

An applicant's entry opened: their contact details, the scheduler's offers to them and what became of each, your private notes, and Offer Checkride, Message and Remove from Waitlist
An applicant's entry opened: their contact details, the scheduler's offers to them and what became of each, your private notes, and Offer Checkride, Message and Remove from Waitlist

How Applicants Join Your Waitlist

Applicants can join your waitlist in two ways:

  • Invited by you — You email them an invitation with a link to your profile, where they join for the checkride they need. This is the primary way to onboard applicants you already know.
  • Joining on their own — If your waitlist is enabled, applicants can find you by searching for your name or on the DPE map, and join your waitlist from your profile. They select their desired checkride type and location preferences when joining.

Waitlist Position and Scheduler Priority

The position of each applicant on your waitlist matters, especially when using the MAXIMIZE_WAITLIST priority mode. Higher-positioned applicants are offered checkrides first. For other priority modes, the waitlist position serves as a tiebreaker when other factors (time, revenue, count, variety) are equal between two applicants.

Multiple Checkride Types Per Applicant

An applicant can appear on your waitlist more than once if they need multiple checkride types. For example, an applicant might be on your waitlist for both a Private Pilot checkride and an Instrument Rating checkride. Each entry is managed independently.

DPE Notes

Each waitlist entry includes a private notes field where you can add your own comments about the applicant. These notes are visible only to you and can be useful for tracking details like the applicant's training progress, preferred scheduling times, or any special circumstances.

Review your waitlist regularly, especially after the scheduler runs. Look for applicants who have been waiting a long time or who aren't answering offers, and follow up with them through the messaging system to keep things moving.