Flight instructor requirements
An eligibility audit rather than a summary. Work down this page with your logbook open and you will know today whether you can start a flight instructor course, and what is missing if you cannot.
Flight instructor requirements: what does the regulation ask for?
Eleven paragraphs of 14 CFR 61.183, and one of them does most of the gatekeeping. Paragraph (c) wants a commercial certificate, or else an ATP, carrying the right category and class — and an instrument rating too, for the airplane and instrument versions of the instructor rating. Everything else on the list is achievable in weeks; that one takes 250 hours.
So the honest way to read the requirements is as two groups. There is what you must already have before a school can usefully talk to you, and there is what the course itself produces. Confusing the two is why people arrive expecting a six-week course and discover they are eleven months away.
This page separates them. Below is a prerequisite audit you can run against your own logbook in about five minutes, then the list of things the course delivers, then the items that are neither and are easy to leave until they become a delay.
One thing worth saying at the top. There is no total flight time figure anywhere in 61.183. The number people quote is the 250 hours behind the commercial certificate, which the section requires you to hold rather than requiring directly.
Can you start a flight instructor course today?
Four questions. If all four answer yes, the remaining requirements are things a course produces rather than things you need first.
One. Are you 18, and does English present no obstacle?
Paragraph (a) puts the floor at eighteen years of age. Paragraph (b) covers reading, speaking, writing and understanding English, and allows the Administrator to place operating limitations on the certificate where a medical reason is what stands in the way.
These two stop almost nobody, and they are on the list because the regulation is a checklist rather than a narrative.
Two. Do you hold a commercial certificate or an ATP, in the right category and class?
This is the expensive prerequisite. Paragraph (c) requires the certificate to carry a category and class rating matching the instructor rating you are applying for, so a commercial certificate carrying airplane single-engine land supports an instructor rating in that class, and in no other.
If you do not hold one yet, the instructor rating is not the next thing to plan. The commercial certificate is, and 14 CFR 61.129(a) puts 250 hours behind it.
Three. Do you hold an instrument rating?
Paragraph (c)(2) requires an instrument rating, or privileges appropriate to the rating sought, where the instructor certificate applied for carries an airplane single-engine rating, an airplane multiengine rating, a powered-lift rating or an instrument rating.
In practice, for anybody in this country pursuing an airplane instructor rating, that means yes. Two separate rules already push you the same way: 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1) puts limitations on a commercial certificate that lacks one, and this paragraph blocks the instructor rating outright.
Four. Do you have fifteen hours as pilot in command in the right category and class?
Paragraph (j) asks for fifteen hours or more, logged as pilot in command, in whichever category and class of aircraft matches the rating you are seeking. For a commercial pilot who has been flying anything at all, this is usually already satisfied several times over.
It becomes a live question in one situation: adding an instructor rating in a class you have only just added to your own certificate. A pilot who earned a multi-engine class rating in twelve hours does not yet have fifteen hours of pilot-in-command time in twins, and that gap has to be closed before an examiner can be approached.
- Count only pilot-in-command time
- Count only the category and class matching the rating sought
- Fifteen hours is the floor, not a target
- The gap most often appears on a newly added class rating
Which requirements does the course produce, and which must you bring?
A clean split, because a school can only sell you the second column. Anything in the first column is homework, and it is where the eleven-month surprise comes from.
What you bring
None of these can be produced by a flight instructor course. They are the prerequisites 61.183 assumes are already true on the day you start.
- Age18, per (a)
- EnglishPer (b)
- CertificateCommercial or ATP, per (c)
- Instrument ratingPer (c)(2), for airplane and instrument ratings
- PIC time15 hours in category and class, per (j)
What the course produces
Everything else on the list. These are the items a syllabus, an instructor and a test centre deliver between them.
- FOI endorsementPer (d)
- First knowledge test61.185(a)(1) areas, per (e)
- Second knowledge test61.185(a)(2) and (a)(3), per (f)
- Training and endorsement61.187(b) areas of operation, per (g)
- Spin endorsementPer (i), airplane and glider
- Practical testPer (h)
What is neither, and delays people anyway
Administrative items that sit outside 61.183 and reliably become the reason a checkride slips by three weeks.
- Medical certificateCurrent, under 14 CFR 61.23
- Knowledge test validityWithin the preceding 24 calendar months, per 61.39(a)
- Training endorsement timingWithin 2 calendar months of application, per 61.39(a)
- Examiner availabilityBooked around your progress
- An aircraft certificated for spinsNeeded for the (i) endorsement
What does meeting these requirements cost?
Almost all of it is the cost of the commercial certificate and the instrument rating that 61.183(c) requires you to hold first. The instructor rating itself is not sold as a separately priced product on this site, and it sits inside the $89,000 career track instead.
Airline Career Track
Zero hours through to a commercial certificate with a flight instructor rating on top. Every prerequisite on this page is inside it.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Nothing repriced at a phase boundary
Instrument Rating
Required by 61.183(c)(2) before an airplane instructor rating, and useful long before that.
- ✓40 instrument hours under 61.65(d)
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Multi-Engine Add-On
Needed before a multiengine instructor rating, and the 15 hours of pilot-in-command time under (j) has to be built in the class as well.
- ✓No hour floor under 61.63(c)(3)
- ✓Ten to fifteen hours typically
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Assessment flight
An hour of dual instruction if you are at the start of the sequence rather than the end of it.
- ✓Sixty minutes of dual instruction
- ✓Loggable time
- ✓Credited whole if you enrol inside a day
What can you verify before choosing where to train?
Instructor training is taught by instructors, which sounds circular and is actually the whole question. Four things are countable.
Working instructors to learn the job from
Each holds a commercial certificate or an ATP, with a flight instructor certificate above it and a medical in date. On flights they teach, each is legally the pilot in command. Learning to instruct beside people who instruct daily is materially different from learning it beside people who do not.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23Types available to teach in
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. A new instructor who can teach in more than one type is more employable, and a single-type fleet cannot produce that.
Owned and maintained in-houseCalendar months a knowledge test result stays usable
14 CFR 61.39(a) requires the test to have been passed within the preceding 24 calendar months when you apply for the practical test. With two written examinations in this rating, that clock is worth watching rather than assuming.
14 CFR 61.39(a)Training days a year measured at this field
From NOAA ASOS observations across the year ending 1 August 2026, requiring a ceiling of 3,000 feet with five statute miles of visibility across four qualifying daylight hours before a day counted. Prerequisites built on flying hours are built on flyable days.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetPrices behind an enquiry form
None, other than the instructor rating itself, which has no published standalone figure and is flagged as such on this page rather than hidden.
Published in full, with one stated exceptionWhat is the most efficient order to meet these requirements?
Commercial certificate, instrument rating, then the instructor rating, and take both knowledge tests before the flight training rather than during it. That order costs less than any other, for two specific reasons.
The first reason is that flight training is the expensive part and study is the cheap part, so anything that can be finished on the ground before the airplane is running should be. Both written examinations fall into that category, and a candidate who arrives with both passed converts a course into flying rather than into revision.
The second reason is 14 CFR 61.39(a). A knowledge test has to have been passed within the preceding 24 calendar months when you apply for the practical test, and the training endorsement has to fall within two calendar months of the application. Take the tests far too early and the first clock runs out; leave the endorsement too long and the second does.
A position worth stating. If you are choosing between adding an instrument rating and starting an instructor course, there is no choice: 61.183(c)(2) makes the instrument rating a prerequisite for the airplane instructor ratings, so the sequence is decided for you.
The downside of doing it in this order, stated rather than hidden: it front-loads the cost. You spend the money on the commercial certificate and the instrument rating before the rating that earns anything arrives, and that is a real cash-flow problem for a lot of people rather than a theoretical one.
What this page is not
It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for reading 14 CFR 61.183 yourself. Regulations move, and the instructor certificate rules moved on 1 December 2024, which is exactly the kind of change that leaves old pages confidently wrong. Every citation here was checked against the current text before publication and it is still worth checking again before you rely on one.
Training happens at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. This is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and there is no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier. Nothing on this page offers an interview, a job or a salary, and no job at this school is promised to anybody who trains here.
No pass rate and no graduate count are published on this site. The operation is new and the sample would be too small to mean anything; the syllabus, the prices and the regulation behind each requirement are published instead.
What people ask about qualifying as an instructor
14 CFR 61.183, paragraphs (a) to (k). Age 18; English; a commercial or ATP certificate with matching category and class plus an instrument rating for the airplane and instrument ratings; a fundamentals of instructing endorsement; two knowledge tests; flight training and an endorsement on the 61.187(b) areas of operation; a spin awareness endorsement for airplane and glider ratings; fifteen hours as pilot in command in category and class; the practical test; and compliance with the part's other applicable sections.
One figure only appears in 61.183: paragraph (j) and its fifteen hours, logged as pilot in command, in whichever category and class matches the rating sought. There is no total-time requirement in the section. The larger number people quote is the 250 hours behind the commercial certificate that paragraph (c) requires you to hold already.
For the airplane ratings, yes. Paragraph (c)(2) requires an instrument rating, or appropriate privileges, where the instructor certificate sought carries an airplane single-engine rating, an airplane multiengine rating, a powered-lift rating or an instrument rating.
No. Paragraph (c) wants a commercial certificate or an ATP, which makes the commercial certificate the gate. That is the part of the sequence carrying 250 hours behind it under 14 CFR 61.129(a), and it is why an instructor rating is a year away rather than a month away for most people starting out.
Under 14 CFR 61.39(a) the test must have been passed inside the 24 calendar months that precede your application for the practical test. With two written examinations in this rating, taking them years apart is a way to have the first one expire while you are still working on the flying.
Fifteen hours, logged as pilot in command, in whichever category and class of aircraft matches the instructor rating you are seeking, under 61.183(j). It rarely bites a working commercial pilot, and it frequently bites somebody who has just added a new class rating and wants to instruct in it immediately.
You need one to act as pilot in command, and on a training flight the instructor is the pilot in command. 14 CFR 61.23 sets the class required for the privileges being exercised. The medical is not itself listed in 61.183, which is exactly why it gets forgotten until it delays a checkride.
Eighteen, under 61.183(a). In practice the commercial certificate requirement at paragraph (c) is the binding constraint for most people rather than the age, since 14 CFR 61.123 already puts the commercial certificate at eighteen as well.
An endorsement under 61.183(i)(1) from an authorized instructor, saying you are competent and instructionally proficient across stall awareness, spin entries, spins and recoveries, written after training in those areas in an aircraft certificated for spinning. It needs an aircraft approved for spinning, which is a scheduling item worth raising early.
Commercial certificate, then instrument rating, then both knowledge tests, then the flight training and the practical test. Study is cheaper than flying, so anything that can be finished on the ground should be, and 61.39(a) then wants the training endorsement inside two calendar months of the application.
The flight instructor cluster
If paragraph (c) is what is missing, start there instead
Most people reading this page are short of the commercial certificate rather than short of anything on the instructor list. An hour of dual instruction is where that begins, it is loggable toward the 250 hours, and enrolling inside a day takes the fee off the program.
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 →