Get your medical before you enroll
This is advice against our own short-term interest and we publish it anyway. An FAA medical examination costs a small fraction of any program on this site, and it settles the only question that training cannot answer. Sit it first. If the answer is no, you will have found out for the price of an appointment.
Do you need a medical certificate before flight training?
Not to start, and yes to continue. An assessment flight and a run of early lessons need nothing at all in the way of a medical, since the instructor holds legal command of the airplane. What you cannot do without one is fly solo, and solo arrives roughly a third of the way through a private pilot course. A medical is therefore a gate, not a formality, and it sits earlier in the syllabus than most people expect.
The classes map onto privileges rather than onto people. 14 CFR 61.23(a)(3) sets a third class as the floor for student, recreational and private privileges. 61.23(a)(2) raises that to at least a second class for commercial pilot privileges in an airplane, which is what being paid to fly requires. 61.23(a)(1) reserves first class for the command privileges of an airline transport pilot certificate.
Because a certificate steps down through the lower tiers as its windows expire, sitting the highest examination you might ever need is almost always the efficient move. One appointment, one fee, and the widest answer available.
The genuine argument for doing this before you enrol is not regulatory. It is financial. Money spent on training is not recoverable if a medical turns out to be unobtainable, and the appointment that would have told you costs less than a single flying hour.
What order should you do these things in?
Four steps, in this sequence, over roughly a month. Nothing in it commits you to a program and the first two together cost less than one lesson at any school in California.
Book the medical appointment
Find an Aviation Medical Examiner and book. If any part of your history looks like it might touch the mental, neurologic or cardiovascular standards, book a consultation first instead of an examination, and go in with records rather than recollections.
Fly the assessment flight
Sixty minutes of dual instruction at $229, with you handling the airplane. No medical is required for it. Do this in the same fortnight as the medical and you will hold both answers at once: can I hold a certificate, and do I want to.
Decide the program, then the money
Only now. Choosing between $10,900, $15,900 and $22,500 is a real decision and it deserves to be made by somebody who already knows the medical will hold. Financing conversations belong here too, not before.
Enrol and start the paperwork
Identity documents, the TSA position if it applies to you, the syllabus, the schedule. The enrolment page walks through all of it, and none of it is difficult once the medical question is closed.
Can BasicMed replace an FAA medical for training?
For most people reading this page, no, and the reason is a date. Part 68 is written for pilots who already hold or once held an FAA medical certificate. It is not an entry route for somebody who has never had one, and it does not support commercial privileges at all.
The eligibility condition people miss
14 CFR 61.23(c)(3) asks that, at some stage since 14 July 2006, you have held a certificate issued under part 67. The certificate may since have expired, and it may have carried a special issuance authorisation. Three things rule you out: a suspension or revocation of that certificate, a withdrawal of your latest special issuance authorisation, or a most recent application that was carried through and refused.
Read that last clause carefully, because it is the reason this page exists in the order it does. Submitting a part 67 application unprepared and having it denied removes part 68 as an alternative. Preparation is not optional here.
What part 68 lets you fly, and what it does not
14 CFR 61.113(i) draws the box. The airplane may be certificated for no more than seven occupants and 12,500 pounds maximum takeoff weight, with no more than six passengers aboard. The flight stays at or below 18,000 feet, at or below 250 knots indicated, and inside the United States unless the other country says otherwise.
Those limits are generous for private flying and irrelevant to a career. Part 68 supports private privileges. It does not support commercial pilot privileges, and no amount of it substitutes for the second-class certificate that being paid to fly requires.
- Seven occupants, 12,500 pounds, six passengers
- At or below 18,000 feet
- At or below 250 knots indicated
- Private privileges only — never commercial
The special issuance detail that is routinely reported wrongly
Part 68 handles three groups of condition differently and the difference is easy to garble. At 68.9(a)(3) a cardiovascular condition is limited to a special issuance granted once per diagnosis. That single-occasion wording belongs to cardiovascular conditions and to no other group.
Mental health and neurological conditions are handled elsewhere in the section and they recur. Certification every two years, under a State-licensed specialist, is required by 68.9(c)(2) for the first group and by 68.9(d)(2) for the second. Anybody telling you a mental health condition is handled by a single one-time issuance is reading the cardiovascular paragraph and applying it to the wrong subject.
What are you deciding between once the medical is settled?
Three private pilot programs and one career route, all published, all fixed at enrolment. The point of settling the medical first is that this page becomes a real decision rather than a gamble.
Private Pilot — Standard
Forty hours in the logbook. Thirty-eight are flown and two are simulator; thirty of the forty are dual, and three hours of ground school sit alongside. It is the smallest number on paper and it is seldom the smallest number at the end.
- ✓40 hours logged
- ✓2 simulator sessions
- ✓3 hours of ground school
- ✓Books and materials included
Private Pilot — Comprehensive
Sixty hours in the logbook: fifty-five airborne, five in the box, fifty of the total flown dual, and ten hours of ground school beside them. Built around the hours people genuinely need, not around the floor a regulation sets.
- ✓60 hours logged
- ✓5 simulator sessions
- ✓10 hours of ground school
- ✓Books and materials included
Private Pilot — Premium
Forty hours in the logbook, the airborne time all in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo, two of the forty in the simulator, thirty dual, three hours of ground school. It is the most expensive way to build early hours and we say so.
- ✓Glass cockpit from the first hour
- ✓2 simulator sessions
- ✓3 hours of ground school
Airline Career Track
Zero logged time to a commercial certificate with a flight instructor rating. The route that eventually wants the first-class certificate, which is precisely why the examination belongs at the front of it.
- ✓Five phases, one price
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing between phases
What can you verify about us before the medical comes back?
Nothing on this site asks you to take our word for anything, because a new school has not earned that. Five items, each one confirmable by somebody who has never met us.
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 impliedHow long does all this take?
A straightforward examination is one appointment and you leave holding the certificate. Deferral is different. Your file travels up to the FAA, and the answer returns in weeks or in months, depending on what has been asked for and how fast it arrives.
That variance is the argument for starting early rather than an argument for worrying. Most applicants are not deferred. The ones who are usually knew there was something in the history, and the ones who prepared for it move considerably faster than the ones who hoped.
Slower again is special issuance, at 14 CFR 67.401, and it is worth understanding as a documented process rather than as an appeal. Reports, test results and sometimes a period of demonstrated stability. It is not a fight; it is a file.
A downside worth stating plainly, because this site states one on every page: if you are deferred at the start of a $89,000 commitment, you will be waiting with your money still in your pocket. If you are deferred at the end of it, you will be waiting with the money gone. That asymmetry is the whole content of this page.
We do not read your records, we do not predict outcomes, and we do not have a relationship with any examiner that we could use on your behalf. What we can do is not take an enrolment from somebody who has not asked the question yet.
What this page does not do
This page is not medical advice. It describes 14 CFR 61.23, part 67 and part 68 as they currently read, and none of that binds an Aviation Medical Examiner or the FAA. Every determination about your certificate is made by them, on the evidence you present, and no flight school can influence it.
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.
Questions about the medical and when to sit it
Yes. An assessment flight and the early dual lessons need no medical at all, because the instructor is legally pilot in command. What you cannot do is fly solo: solo is exercised under student pilot privileges and 14 CFR 61.23(a)(3) requires at least a third-class certificate for those. Solo usually arrives around a third of the way through a private course.
First class, and early. It is the only one that tells you whether the top of the career is open, the examination is largely the same appointment, and the certificate steps down through commercial and private privileges as its windows close. Nothing about it is wasted if you later need only a second class.
Training already flown has been delivered and is not refundable, which is the entire reason this page argues for sitting the examination first. Our refund terms are published rather than negotiated case by case, and they are on the terms page. The least costly version of this problem, by a wide margin, is discovering it before you enrol.
No. Under 14 CFR 61.23(c)(3) you must have held a part 67 certificate at some stage since 14 July 2006. Somebody who has never held one has nothing for part 68 to attach to. It also supports private privileges only, so it is not a route to any paid flying.
No, and this is a commonly reported error. That single-occasion wording sits at 14 CFR 68.9(a)(3), where it applies to cardiovascular conditions. Mental health falls under 68.9(c)(2), neurological under 68.9(d)(2), and each demands certification at two-year intervals under a State-licensed specialist.
Weeks to months, depending on what the FAA asks for and how fast your treating physicians produce it. The examiner does not decide; the file goes upward. There is no fixed figure and anybody quoting you one is guessing, which is why this site publishes none.
Do both inside a fortnight and stop trying to order them. At $229 the assessment flight answers whether you want this. The examination answers whether it is available to you. Neither answer is much use without the other, and together they cost less than two per cent of a career track.
We can point you at the FAA’s own directory of designated examiners, which is the correct source and is public. We hold no relationship with any examiner, we receive nothing from anybody, and a school that steers you toward one particular examiner is doing something you should ask about.
Yes. It is an hour of dual instruction, logged as such, and it counts toward the aeronautical experience requirements it qualifies for. It also comes off the program price in full if you enrol within a day, which makes it one of the least risky hours you will ever buy.
They are unrelated and can run in parallel. The TSA position under 49 CFR 1552 turns on citizenship and immigration status, not on health, and the flight training security requirements page explains where you sit. Neither process waits for the other.
What to read next
The other gates before you start
TSA flight training approvalPart 61 training structureTerms and refundsThe decision behind it
Career change to airline pilotIs flight training worth itEvery program price on one pageTwo appointments, one fortnight, and the plan is either real or it is not
One with an Aviation Medical Examiner, one with an instructor and an airplane. Together they cost less than two per cent of a career track and they answer the two questions that everything else depends on.
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 →