CFI Checkride And The Fundamentals Of Instructing
Two writtens, an oral that is really a teaching audition, and a flight in which every manoeuvre has to be narrated while it happens. Pilots who treat this as a flying test are the ones it surprises.
What Is The CFI Checkride?
It is the practical test 14 CFR 61.183(h) requires, examined against the areas of operation 14 CFR 61.187(b) sets for the instructor rating you are seeking, and flown in an aircraft representative of that rating or in an approved flight simulation training device. In plain terms: an oral, then a flight, with an examiner sitting where a student would sit.
The written work happens first. Paragraph (e) sends you to a knowledge test on the fundamentals-of-instructing areas at 14 CFR 61.185(a)(1). Paragraph (f) sends you to a second one, on the aeronautical knowledge areas at 61.185(a)(2) and (a)(3) for the rating being sought. Both have to be done before an examiner will look at you.
The standard the examiner works to is FAA-S-ACS-25, the Flight Instructor for Airplane Category airman certification standards. It carries fourteen areas of operation numbered I through XIV, and area XIII is multiengine operations, so a candidate testing for a single-engine instructor rating is examined across thirteen of the fourteen.
What Is On The Fundamentals Of Instructing Test?
Educational theory, and nothing else. 14 CFR 61.185(a)(1) names six subject areas, and there is not an aeroplane anywhere in them. It is the only knowledge test on a pilot's whole route with no aviation content, which is exactly why it is underestimated.
The Six Areas In 61.185(a)(1)
The rule wants ground training from an authorized instructor across six headings: how learning happens, what makes teaching effective, how students are evaluated and tested, how a course is developed, how a lesson is planned, and how a classroom is handled. Every one of them is about a person rather than a machine.
Paragraph (d) of 14 CFR 61.183 is a separate item people routinely confuse with this one. It calls for a fundamentals-of-instructing endorsement, written in your logbook by an authorized instructor. Paragraph (e) is the knowledge test itself. The endorsement comes first, they are not the same item, and both appear on the eligibility list.
- How a person learns, and what gets in the way of learning
- What separates teaching that works from teaching that does not
- How a student is assessed, and how a test is written
- How a course is developed, and how one lesson is planned inside it
- How a classroom is run
Who Is Excused From It
14 CFR 61.183(e) carves out several groups. Somebody who already holds a flight instructor certificate or a ground instructor certificate does not sit it again. Nor does the holder of a state teaching certificate for the seventh grade or above, nor a person employed as a teacher at an accredited college or university.
That exemption is the reason 14 CFR 61.191(b) exists in the shape it does. Somebody adding an instrument instructor or multiengine instructor rating to an existing instructor certificate is not asked to prove they still understand the learning process. They proved it once.
- Holders of a flight or ground instructor certificate
- Holders of a state teaching certificate, seventh grade or above
- Teachers employed at an accredited college or university
Why Does The FOI Written Catch People Out?
Because it is studied last and it is studied like aviation. Candidates who have passed four aviation writtens by memorising airspace, weather products and performance charts arrive at a paper about pedagogy expecting the same technique to work, and it does not. The material rewards understanding a model, not recalling a number.
The scheduling problem compounds it. 14 CFR 61.39(a) allows a knowledge test to be used for a practical test only if it was taken no more than 24 calendar months before the month of application. Sitting the fundamentals paper early, then spending eighteen months finishing a commercial certificate, can burn most of that window before the instructor course has even begun.
Our position, and it is worth stating as a position: sit the fundamentals test first, not last. It is the least expensive item on this certificate, it needs no aeroplane, and knowing the material before you start writing lesson plans makes the whole instructor course shorter. The counter-argument is the 24 calendar month clock, so the sensible version is early but not years early.
What Does Preparing For The CFI Checkride Cost?
No standalone figure appears here for the instructor rating or its checkride preparation, and that is a deliberate omission rather than an oversight. The rating lives inside the $89,000 career track. Sold on its own it depends on how much of 14 CFR 61.183 you already satisfy.
Airline Career Track
The whole sequence at one published total, with the instructor certificate and its practical test inside the number rather than added at the end.
- ✓One figure, agreed before the first lesson
- ✓No repricing at a phase boundary
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
Checkride Preparation Alone
A candidate who needs lesson plans written from scratch and one who needs three flights of polish are not buying the same thing, so one number would be wrong for both.
- ✓Examiner fees are yours and are set by the examiner
- ✓This site publishes no ranges and no third-party fee tables
- ✓A consultation costs nothing
Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion, fully enclosed and FAA-approved. Useful for rehearsing instrument work and emergency procedures while narrating them, which is the skill the practical test measures.
- ✓Never cancelled for weather
- ✓Strong for procedures and instrument scan
- ✓Poor for landings, and we will say so
Which Steps Before The Checkride Have A Fixed Price?
The certificates and ratings 14 CFR 61.183(c) assumes you already carry. Each is fixed at enrolment and none of them moves afterwards.
Private Pilot — Standard
Forty hours logged, at the floor 14 CFR 61.109 sets, for a reader who has not started yet.
- ✓38 hours single-engine, 2 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓30 hours dual, 3 hours ground
- ✓Books and training materials included
Private Pilot — Comprehensive
Sixty hours logged. The version most students finish inside without buying a second block.
- ✓55 hours single-engine, 5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓50 hours dual, 10 hours ground
- ✓Books and training materials included
Instrument Rating
Basic instrument manoeuvres sit inside the areas of operation for the single-engine instructor test, so this rating is examined indirectly as well as required directly.
- ✓Named in 61.183(c)(2) as a prerequisite
- ✓Area XI of FAA-S-ACS-25 leans on it
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Multi-Engine Add-On
The Piper Seminole twin rating, and the route to the fifteenth area of operation the multiengine instructor test adds at 61.187(b)(2).
- ✓No hour floor in 14 CFR 61.63(c)
- ✓Adds multiengine operations to the test
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
What Does The CFI Practical Test Examine?
The areas of operation at 14 CFR 61.187(b) for the rating being sought, and 14 CFR 61.187(a) also requires that you have received and logged flight and ground training from an authorized instructor across those areas, with a logbook endorsement certifying that you are proficient to pass a practical test on them.
The airplane single-engine list at 61.187(b)(1) runs to fourteen areas, and the order tells you what the FAA thinks matters. It opens with fundamentals of instructing, then technical subject areas, then preflight preparation, then a preflight lesson on a manoeuvre to be performed in flight. Four items before an aeroplane moves at all.
The airplane multiengine list at 61.187(b)(2) runs to fifteen. It adds multiengine operations, and the slow flight and stalls area drops spins, which is the practical acknowledgement that intentional spins in a twin are not a training exercise.
The Fourteen Areas Of Operation, I To XIV
This is the examiner's document, and it is public. FAA-S-ACS-25 is the Flight Instructor for Airplane Category airman certification standards, and its fourteen areas of operation are numbered I through XIV. Area XIII does not apply to a single-engine candidate.
Fundamentals Of Instructing
The pedagogy from the first written, examined out loud instead of on paper.
Technical Subject Areas
Regulations, airspace, weather, aerodynamics, systems, human factors — taught, not recited.
Preflight Preparation
Performance, weight and balance, weather judgement, and how you teach a student to do them.
Preflight Lesson On A Manoeuvre
A whiteboard lesson on one manoeuvre before it is flown. This is where lesson plans earn their keep.
Preflight Procedures
Inspection, cockpit management, engine start, taxi, run-up, all taught from the right seat.
Airport And Seaplane Base Operations
Traffic patterns, radio calls, markings and lighting, taught while somebody else flies badly.
Takeoffs, Landings And Go-Arounds
Normal, crosswind, short field, soft field, and the go-around a student was slow to start.
Fundamentals Of Flight
Straight and level, turns, climbs and descents, explained while they are happening.
Performance And Ground Reference Manoeuvres
Steep turns and the ground reference set, narrated at the same time as they are flown.
Slow Flight, Stalls And Spins
The area 14 CFR 61.183(i) attaches its endorsement to, and the one candidates rehearse most.
Basic Instrument Manoeuvres
Attitude instrument flying, taught to somebody who has never flown on instruments before.
Emergency Operations
Engine failures, systems failures and the emergency descent, taught rather than merely flown.
Multiengine Operations
Applies to a multiengine instructor candidate only. Skipped on a single-engine ride.
Postflight Procedures
Securing the aeroplane, and the debrief — which is itself an examined teaching skill.
What Is The Examiner Actually Watching For?
Whether you can teach, diagnose and recover in the same breath. The manoeuvre itself is not the point; you demonstrated you could fly it at the commercial checkride. What is being measured is whether a person sitting in the left seat, who has never done this, would come away able to do it and knowing why.
That splits into three visible behaviours. You explain before you demonstrate. You narrate while you demonstrate, in language a beginner can follow, without lapsing into shorthand. And you name the error the moment it appears, rather than fixing it silently and moving on. Silent competence reads as a failure on this test.
The uncomfortable truth is that a good pilot can fail this ride while flying accurately throughout. The examiner is not there to watch you fly. They are there to be taught, badly or well, and to decide whether the next person in that seat will be safe.
How Does A CFI Checkride Day Run?
Four phases, and the first two are longer than most candidates expect. The flying is usually the shortest part of the day.
Paperwork And Eligibility
The examiner checks that 14 CFR 61.39(a) is satisfied: knowledge test reports in date, the training endorsement inside the two calendar months before the month of application, the aeronautical experience logged, and the certificate and ratings 61.183(c) requires.
The Oral, Which Is A Teaching Session
Areas I and II carry most of it. You will be asked to teach a topic rather than answer a question about it, using whatever you brought — whiteboard, model, printed lesson plan. Answering correctly and briefly is not the same as teaching.
A Preflight Lesson On One Manoeuvre
Area IV of the standards, and a distinct event. You brief a single manoeuvre to the examiner on the ground, in full, before it is flown. Candidates who wrote their lesson plans the night before are visible here.
The Flight, From The Right Seat
Everything demonstrated and narrated from the instructor's seat, with the examiner playing a student who makes plausible mistakes. Under 14 CFR 61.195(a) no instructor may conduct more than eight hours of flight training inside any 24 consecutive hour period, which is a useful reminder that a checkride day is a long one even before the flight.
How Different Is Flying From The Right Seat?
Different enough that it needs deliberate practice rather than a single familiarisation flight. Every landing in your logbook so far has been flown from the left, and the runway sits at a different angle in the windscreen from the other side. The flare is where candidates notice it, which is an unhelpful place to notice anything.
The control hands swap as well. Throttle and yoke change sides, and the trim wheel and flap lever are now reached across rather than down. None of that is difficult. All of it is unfamiliar, and unfamiliar competes for attention with the talking you are supposed to be doing at the same time.
The Redbird MCX helps more here than it does anywhere else in training, at $189 a session. Full motion, fully enclosed, never cancelled for weather, and completely indifferent to how many times you want to rehearse the same narrated approach. It is poor for landing practice, so the landings still have to be flown in the aeroplane.
Which Written Should You Sit First?
Both are required and the order is yours. Here are the two orders with what each one costs you, because there is a real trade-off and it depends on your calendar rather than on preference.
Sit The FOI Test Early
Take the 61.183(e) written on the fundamentals of instructing before the instructor course starts.
Best forsomebody who will begin the course within a year
- Needs An AeroplaneNo
- Effect On Course LengthShortens it
- Lesson Plan QualityBetter, because the theory is already in
- Main RiskThe 61.39(a) clock, if the course is years away
Sit The Rating Written First
Take the 61.183(f) written on the aeronautical knowledge areas first, while commercial study is still fresh.
Best forsomebody straight out of a commercial checkride
- Needs An AeroplaneNo
- Effect On Course LengthNeutral
- Lesson Plan QualityUnchanged
- Main RiskFundamentals left to the end, where it hurts
Side By Side
| Item | Fundamentals First | Rating Written First |
|---|---|---|
| Rule | 61.183(e) | 61.183(f) |
| Subject Matter | 61.185(a)(1) | 61.185(a)(2) and (a)(3) |
| Aviation Content | None | All of it |
| Shelf Life | 24 calendar months, per 61.39(a) | 24 calendar months, per 61.39(a) |
| Exemption Available | Yes, under 61.183(e) | No |
| Repeated For An Added Rating | No, per 61.191(b) | Yes |
What We Can Actually Show A Stranger
No checkride pass rate appears anywhere on this site, because we do not have one worth publishing and will not borrow anybody else's. These five items are verifiable instead.
Flight Instructors
Eleven instructors, every one carrying an instructor certificate, a current medical, and a commercial certificate or an ATP beneath both. Legal command of the flight is the instructor's, which is a matter of law rather than of politeness.
FAA Airmen RegistryAircraft Types, Owned In-House
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Owned rather than brokered, with both glass and round-dial panels on the field so a candidate can teach either.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Redbird MCX
$189 a session, on the field, full motion and fully enclosed under an FAA approval. It is where narrating an approach out loud becomes cheap enough to repeat. It is not where you learn to land.
On the field at Van NuysFlyable Training Days, Measured
The figure comes from a year of NOAA ASOS reports at Van Nuys ending 1 August 2026. A day counted only with the ceiling at 3,000 feet or better, five statute miles or better, and four qualifying daytime hours. Method and limitations published.
NOAA ASOS, Van Nuys (KVNY)Pass Rates Published
We opened this year, so we do not print a pass rate. It would be a number with no denominator behind it, and schools that publish one rarely say how it was counted.
Stated deliberatelyFour Things This Page Will Not Tell You
An instructor certificate is usually a step toward an airline cockpit, so this page carries the same four statements every page here carries when it touches that subject.
Training here happens under Part 61 at Van Nuys Airport. No airline owns us, partners with us or has agreed to consider our students, and there is no cadet scheme. There is no queue here that we could move you up.
Nothing on this page guarantees an interview, a job or a salary. Passing this practical test produces one reliable thing: the legal right to be paid to teach flying. Everything after that belongs to a hiring market neither of us controls.
There is no pass rate here and there will not be one until we have a real denominator and a published method for counting it. A first-time pass figure with no sample size behind it is marketing, not evidence.
What is published: the syllabus, the price wherever one exists, the hours, and the regulation or standards document behind every claim, each of them read from the current text before it went on the page.
How Should You Prepare For The Oral?
Build the lesson plans before you build the flying. Areas I and II of FAA-S-ACS-25 carry the longest part of the day, and they are examined by being taught rather than recited. A folder of plans written the night before is visible in the first ten minutes.
Then practise teaching to somebody who is not a pilot. The failure mode in the oral is aviation shorthand: a candidate who says the aeroplane is behind the power curve to a person who has not yet met the phrase. If a non-pilot friend can follow your explanation of adverse yaw, an examiner will have no trouble.
Finally, rehearse being interrupted. The examiner will play a student who asks the wrong question at the wrong moment, and recovering a lesson from that is an examined skill. Candidates who have only ever rehearsed uninterrupted find this the hardest part of the day.
CFI Checkride And FOI Questions
The fundamentals of instructing test is taken at a test centre rather than at Airline Pilot Flight School, and the school neither administers nor profits from it.
Two. 14 CFR 61.183(e) requires one on the fundamentals-of-instructing areas at 61.185(a)(1), and 61.183(f) requires a second on the aeronautical knowledge areas at 61.185(a)(2) and (a)(3) for the rating being sought. Holders of a flight or ground instructor certificate, holders of a state teaching certificate for the seventh grade or above, and teachers at accredited colleges and universities are excused from the first.
The fundamentals of instructing. 14 CFR 61.185(a)(1) sets out six subject areas: how learning happens, what makes teaching effective, how students are evaluated and tested, how a course is developed, how a lesson is planned, and how a classroom is handled. It is the one knowledge test on a pilot's route that contains no aviation at all.
Paragraph (d) calls for a fundamentals-of-instructing endorsement, written in your logbook by an authorized instructor. Paragraph (e) is the knowledge test on those same areas. Two separate eligibility items, the endorsement first, and confusing them is one of the commonest errors on flight school websites.
Fourteen for an airplane single-engine instructor rating, under 14 CFR 61.187(b)(1), and fifteen for airplane multiengine under 61.187(b)(2), which adds multiengine operations and drops spins from its slow flight and stalls area. FAA-S-ACS-25, the Flight Instructor for Airplane Category airman certification standards, numbers its own fourteen areas I through XIV, with area XIII being multiengine operations.
The Flight Instructor for Airplane Category Airman Certification Standards. It is the document a designated examiner tests you against on the flight instructor practical test, and it is published by the FAA rather than by any school. Its fourteen areas of operation run from Fundamentals of Instructing at I to Postflight Procedures at XIV.
Most candidates find it harder, and the difficulty is in a different place. The flying tolerances are not the hard part; you demonstrated those on the commercial ride. The hard part is that every manoeuvre must be explained before it, narrated during it, and diagnosed afterwards, from the right seat, to an examiner acting as a student who makes plausible mistakes.
14 CFR 61.183(h) allows the practical test to be taken in an aircraft representative of the rating sought or in an approved flight simulation training device. In practice most airplane instructor tests are flown in the aeroplane, and simulation is used to rehearse instrument work and emergency procedures beforehand.
Twenty-four calendar months, set by 14 CFR 61.39(a), which will not accept a knowledge test taken more than 24 calendar months before the month in which you apply for the practical test. The report has to be handed over at application. The instructor's training endorsement is much shorter lived and has to fall inside the two calendar months before that same month.
No. Under 14 CFR 61.191(b), somebody applying for an additional rating on a flight instructor certificate does not sit the knowledge test covering the 61.185(a)(1) areas, which are the fundamentals of instructing. The rating written and the practical test still apply.
There is no standalone published number for it, because the work varies from a full course to a handful of polish flights. The instructor certificate sits inside the $89,000 airline career track. Priced in public: a Standard private pilot programme, $10,900; a Comprehensive, $15,900; a Premium in the Cirrus, $22,500; an instrument rating, $11,700; a multi-engine add-on, $5,100; a Redbird MCX session, $189.
Rehearse The Teaching, Not Just The Flying
The part of this test that fails candidates is talking clearly while their hands are busy, and that is a skill you build in an aircraft with somebody listening. Come and fly one, or bring the logbook and we will map what is left.
Keep Reading
Fly The Aeroplane Once, Then Decide
The assessment flight is the first hour of the syllabus and a two-way evaluation. You fly it from the left seat with an instructor beside you, they write down what they saw, and you get an honest read on whether the plan is realistic. It is loggable, and it is credited in full against enrolment if you enroll within 24 hours.
What happens on an assessment flight →