First class medical certificate
This is the certificate an airline transport pilot must hold to command an airplane, and it is the quickest way to find out whether an airline career is open to you at all. It costs a fraction of one flight lesson. It can also end the plan on the spot, which is exactly why it goes first.
What is a first class medical certificate?
It is the highest of the three classes of FAA airman medical certificate, and 14 CFR 61.23(a)(1) demands it of anybody exercising the command privileges of an airline transport pilot certificate. Eight sections of part 67, subpart B set the standards, running from 67.101 to 67.115. Only an Aviation Medical Examiner can issue it. A flight school cannot, and neither can the physician who knows you best.
The reason to take it early is structural rather than medical. Nothing in a training syllabus asks for this certificate until the very end of a career track, so it is entirely possible to spend two years and a great deal of money before anybody checks whether you can hold one. That order is backwards, and it is the most expensive mistake on offer in this industry.
The examination itself is unremarkable. Sight and hearing, blood pressure, the usual systems looked over, a sample, and a history-taking that is longer and considerably more specific than the one your own doctor conducts. Past a certain age it adds a heart tracing. Healthy adults mostly walk out holding a certificate.
What catches people is history, not present health. A diagnosis written down a decade ago, a medication stopped years back, one episode nobody thought of as medical at the time — those are what produce deferrals, and a deferral is a delay counted in months.
What are the first class medical standards?
Eight sections, each a separate hurdle, and only two of them carry numbers most applicants would recognise. Below is what each governs and the figures inside it, taken from the current text of part 67, subpart B.
67.103 — Eye
Each eye on its own has to reach 20/20 at distance under 67.103(a), with lenses or without them. If lenses are what get you there, the certificate is issued carrying a limitation that says you must wear them. Near sight has to reach 20/40 at sixteen inches, again eye by eye.
From fifty the near check is run at two distances rather than one, sixteen inches and thirty-two, under 67.103(b). This is the paragraph that surprises people, because the third-class standard at 67.303 has neither the second distance nor the age condition. Reading glasses that solve the close range can fail the middle one, and the answer is usually a different prescription rather than a different career.
- 20/20 at distance, each eye on its own
- 20/40 near at sixteen inches
- From fifty, 20/40 at sixteen and at thirty-two inches
- Colour perception sufficient for airman duties
- Normal fields of vision
67.111 — Cardiovascular, and the heart tracing
Here first class parts company with the other two classes. 67.111(a) bars an established history or clinical diagnosis in six areas: heart attack, angina, coronary disease that has needed treatment or been clinically significant untreated, a replaced valve, a permanent pacemaker, a transplanted heart.
Then 67.111(b) adds a test the other classes never ask for. An electrocardiogram is required at your first application once you have passed thirty-five, and every year once you have passed forty. 67.111(c) will not accept a tracing more than sixty days old at the date of the application it accompanies. Second class asks for none of this, which is the sharpest practical difference between the two certificates.
- A tracing at the first application after thirty-five
- A tracing every year after forty
- Nothing older than sixty days at application
- Second class carries no ECG requirement at all
67.105, 67.107 and 67.109 — ear, nose, throat and equilibrium; mental; neurologic
Hearing is checked conversationally or by audiometry, and the middle ear and balance are examined because both matter far more aloft than they do on the ground. The mental and neurologic sections are the two worth reading before you book, because they are written around diagnoses and treatment histories rather than around something you either pass or fail on the day.
If either of those is likely to touch you, the useful move is a paid consultation with an Aviation Medical Examiner before you apply, rather than an application you are hoping will clear. An examiner can tell you what evidence the FAA will look for. An application that goes to deferral takes the timing of that conversation out of your hands.
67.113 and 67.115 — general condition, and the discretionary route
67.113 is the catch-all: no other organic, functional or structural disease that would make you unsafe performing airman duties. 67.115 then allows the Federal Air Surgeon to issue anyway where the letter of a standard is not met but the evidence supports issuance. That discretion is real and it is exercised. It is also not something to build a plan around.
How long does a first class medical last?
Longer than most people assume, because a single certificate runs three separate clocks. Under 14 CFR 61.23(d) it stops supporting airline transport pilot privileges a long time before it stops supporting private ones. It steps down a class rather than becoming worthless.
Airline transport pilot privileges
The short clock, and the one an airline career is scheduled around. It halves in the month you turn forty, which is worth building into a renewal plan a year in advance.
- Beneath forty12 calendar months
- Forty and above6 calendar months
- Rule14 CFR 61.23(d)
Commercial pilot privileges
Once the first-class window shuts, the same piece of paper still supports commercial privileges out to twelve months. This is the reason a first-class examination is rarely wasted money.
- Any age12 calendar months
- Also met byA second-class certificate
- Rule14 CFR 61.23(a)(2)
Private, student and flight instructor privileges
The long tail. The certificate keeps supporting these for years after it has stopped supporting anything you could be paid for.
- Beneath forty60 calendar months
- Forty and above24 calendar months
- Rule14 CFR 61.23(d)
What does the training this certificate leads to cost?
$89,000 from no logged time at all to a commercial certificate with a flight instructor rating, or the phases bought singly, one at a time, where a staged commitment suits you better. The medical is not one of these numbers and never reaches an invoice from us.
Airline Career Track
Every phase from the first logged hour to a flight instructor rating, priced once and fixed at the point of enrolment.
- ✓Five phases under a single number
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at a phase boundary
- ✓Part 61 from start to finish
Private Pilot — Comprehensive
Sixty hours in the logbook: fifty-five airborne, five in the box, fifty flown dual, plus ten hours of ground school.
- ✓60 hours logged
- ✓5 simulator sessions
- ✓10 hours of ground school
- ✓Books and materials included
Instrument Rating
Phase two of the career route, and the rating that changes how you fly more than any other single step.
- ✓40 instrument hours under 61.65(d)
- ✓An IFR cross-country of 250 nautical miles
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Multi-Engine Add-On
The class rating that opens twin-engine flying, and later the ability to instruct in one.
- ✓No hour floor under 61.63(c)(3)
- ✓Ten to fifteen hours is typical
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
What can be verified about this school today?
Nothing that resembles a review, a rating or a customer quotation appears anywhere on this site, because the operation is new and would have to make one up. What follows instead is a short list of things anybody can confirm.
Airframe types on the ramp, owned rather than brokered
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. The airplanes belong to the operation, so the maintenance calendar is ours and not a lessor’s.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors working here
Each carries a commercial certificate or an ATP beneath, an instructor certificate above it, and a medical in date. You are matched with one of them, and you may ask for another if the fit is wrong.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23 · 61.195Training-capable days measured across twelve months at this field
Counted from NOAA ASOS observations for the year ending 1 August 2026, admitting a day only where the ceiling held at 3,000 feet with five statute miles of visibility across four qualifying daylight hours.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetA session in the full-motion simulator
Two of those sessions sit inside the Standard and the Premium private pilot programs and five inside the Comprehensive, and weather never takes one away.
Published, not quoted on requestProgram prices withheld until you enquire
None. Every program figure is printed on the site, nothing is offered as a spread, and the price you sign for is the one you read.
Stated rather than impliedWhat happens if you do not pass?
Two very different things, and confusing them causes a lot of unnecessary alarm. Most applicants who leave without a certificate have been deferred rather than denied, and a deferral is an administrative pause while the FAA asks to see more.
A denial is a decision recorded against you, and its consequences reach past aviation medicine. Under 14 CFR 61.23(c)(3), an application that has been completed and denied also shuts off the driver’s-licence medical route that part 68 otherwise opens. That is a real reason not to submit an application casually and not to submit one you have not prepared.
14 CFR 67.401 sets out the way back for a condition that misses a standard, and it is called special issuance. The process runs on evidence rather than argument: reports, results, sometimes a documented period of stability under a treating specialist. It is slow, it is thoroughly worn, and a great many working pilots fly on certificates issued this way.
Here is the position, and it is not a comfortable one to publish. If any part of your history might touch 67.107, 67.109 or 67.111, pay for a consultation with an examiner before you apply, and go in prepared for the answer to be no. Losing an enrolment costs this school less than taking $89,000 from somebody whose medical was never going to hold.
What we will not do is guess on your behalf. We are not physicians, we do not read your records, and no opinion offered by a flight school is worth anything against the FAA’s own determination.
What this page is not
This is not medical advice and it is not a substitute for an Aviation Medical Examiner. It summarises part 67 of 14 CFR, together with 61.23, as both currently read, and rules move. Your certificate is issued by an examiner acting under FAA authority on the evidence in front of them, and nothing written here binds that decision.
Airline Pilot Flight School trains under part 61 of 14 CFR, at Van Nuys Airport. It is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and no carrier holds a cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring arrangement with us. We do not guarantee an interview, a job or a salary.
No pass rate, no graduate count and no rating of any kind is published on this site. The operation is new, any such figure would come from a sample too small to mean anything, and inventing one is the easiest lie available in this industry. What is published instead is the syllabus, the price, the hours and the regulation behind each requirement.
First class medical questions
Each eye on its own must reach 20/20 at distance under 14 CFR 67.103(a), corrected or uncorrected, and 20/40 near at sixteen inches. From fifty, 67.103(b) runs the near check at sixteen inches and again at thirty-two. Glasses and contact lenses are permitted; the certificate is then issued with a limitation that says you must wear them.
Past a certain age, yes. 14 CFR 67.111(b) requires an electrocardiogram at your first application after turning thirty-five, and annually after turning forty. 67.111(c) will not accept a tracing more than sixty days old at the date of the application it accompanies. A second-class certificate carries no such requirement anywhere in 67.211.
For airline transport pilot command privileges it holds twelve calendar months from the examination if you were beneath forty on the day, and six if you were forty or above, under 14 CFR 61.23(d). It does not then become useless: the same certificate continues to support commercial privileges to twelve months and private privileges to sixty months, or twenty-four from age forty.
Yes. 14 CFR 67.103 measures sight with or without corrective lenses, so any correction that reaches 20/20 at distance and 20/40 near is acceptable. A limitation then appears on the certificate obliging you to wear that correction whenever you exercise your privileges, which is among the most common limitations in circulation.
Applicants aged fifty or over, at first and second class only. 14 CFR 67.103(b) and 67.203(b) both run the near check at sixteen inches and at thirty-two from that age. The third-class standard at 67.303 has no intermediate distance and no age condition, so passing a third-class eye examination tells you very little about how the first-class one will go.
Before, and ideally before you have paid for anything at all. An examination costs a small fraction of any program on this site and it settles the one question no amount of training can work around. If you want to fly first to find out whether you enjoy it, book a $229 assessment flight instead, which needs no medical because the instructor is legally in command.
It is not. Deferral means the examiner has passed your application up to the FAA for decision instead of issuing or refusing it there and then, usually because a point in your history wants supporting evidence. It typically costs weeks or months. A denial is a recorded decision, and under 14 CFR 61.23(c)(3) a completed and denied application also closes off the driver’s-licence route in part 68.
Frequently. 14 CFR 67.401 provides special issuance and 67.115 provides a discretionary route. Both turn on documented evidence rather than on how well you argue, both take time, and a very large number of working pilots hold certificates issued through one of them. Neither is safe to assume in advance of trying.
No, and it never reaches an invoice from us. You pay the Aviation Medical Examiner directly, we set nothing about that fee, and no figure for it appears anywhere on this site because it is not ours to set. The same is true of knowledge test fees and the examiner fee for a checkride.
At least a second class, under 14 CFR 61.23(a)(2)(ii), for commercial pilot privileges in an airplane. First class is required only for the command privileges of an airline transport pilot certificate under 61.23(a)(1). Most career students still sit the first-class examination early, because it answers the harder question sooner and costs no more time.
Where this sits in the site
The career route it gates
Airline pilot requirementsAirline pilot flight hour requirementsPilot certificates and ratings in orderBefore you commit money
Career change to airline pilotFlight training financingEvery program price on one pageAnswer the medical question before you answer the money question
A medical examination is the least expensive component of an airline career plan and the only one that can stop it outright. Sit it early. Then come and fly an hour, and find out whether you want the rest.
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 →