How To Become A Commercial Pilot, Step By Step
Six steps, each with a rule number and a price attached. The first two cost very little and can end the plan, which is exactly why they come first rather than last.
How Do You Become A Commercial Pilot?
Get a medical certificate, learn to fly, add an instrument rating, accumulate 250 hours, pass a written test and pass a checkride. That is the whole sequence, and 14 CFR 61.123 lists it in almost that order: be eighteen, understand English and read, write and speak it, already hold a private pilot certificate, take the knowledge test with an instructor’s endorsement behind it, meet the aeronautical experience for the rating you want, and pass the practical test on the areas of operation in 61.127(b).
The order in that list is not the order in which the steps cost money, and that is where people go wrong. Two of the six steps are cheap and decisive: an hour in an aircraft, and a medical examination. Both can end the plan, both cost a rounding error against the total, and both are routinely left until after a deposit has been paid.
So here is the position this page takes throughout. Do the two cheap steps first, in the same fortnight, before anything is signed. Then treat the rest as one long exercise in accumulating hours deliberately instead of accidentally, because that is what the 250 really are.
What Should You Actually Do In The First Two Weeks?
Book a medical examination with an Aviation Medical Examiner, and book an hour in an aircraft. Two appointments, one fortnight, and between them they answer the two questions that no amount of reading answers.
Take the medical seriously and take it high. 14 CFR 61.23(a)(2) requires at least a second-class certificate to exercise commercial privileges, so sitting a third-class examination now tells you less than you need to know. If something in your history is going to be a problem, an examiner will see it in an afternoon. Finding that out before you have spent anything is worth more than any discount a school can offer you.
The hour in the aircraft answers a quieter question: whether you like the work. Not the idea of the work — the work. Some people are calm while an aircraft moves around them and take correction without flinching; some discover that what appealed to them was the photograph. Ours costs $229, you fly it, it goes into the logbook as dual instruction received, and the fee is refunded against the program if you enroll inside a day.
What Are The Six Steps, In Order?
Each step names the paragraph that sets it. Steps three and four overlap heavily, and sequencing them properly is the largest single saving available on this route.
Medical Certificate
An Aviation Medical Examiner issues it. 14 CFR 61.23(a)(2) asks for at least second class while you exercise commercial privileges, and a third-class certificate is enough only to train toward the rating. Sit the highest class your plans could ever need, and sit it before you pay a deposit anywhere.
Private Pilot Certificate
61.123(h) makes this a prerequisite: a private pilot certificate issued under part 61 has to be in your pocket already, or you meet 61.73 instead. 61.109(a) puts its aeronautical experience at 40 hours. The national figure people actually finish at is 50 to 70 hours, which AOPA publishes and which we quote rather than a number of our own.
Instrument Rating
Legally optional, practically close to mandatory. Without an instrument rating in the same category and class, 61.133(b)(1) writes a limitation onto the commercial certificate: no passengers for hire on cross-country flights beyond 50 nautical miles, and none at night. Fly it before the commercial phase and its cross-country hours work twice.
Hours To 250
61.129(a) wants 250 hours total, including 100 as pilot in command, 50 of those cross-country, and 10 hours of that cross-country time in airplanes. This is the longest step by a wide margin and the only one nobody can shorten for you. Fly it with a plan, not at random.
The CAX Knowledge Test
One hundred questions, two and a half hours, 70 to pass, on the aeronautical knowledge areas in 61.125. An instructor endorsement comes first under 61.123(c), and 61.39(a)(1) gives the pass a life of 24 calendar months before the practical test. Sit it while the ground study is fresh.
The Practical Test
Flown to FAA-S-ACS-7B against the eleven areas of operation in 61.127(b)(1), with three hours of preparation inside the two calendar months before the month of the test under 61.129(a)(3)(v). An oral first, then a flight. Then you are a commercial pilot.
Should The Instrument Rating Come Before The Commercial Phase?
Yes, and the argument is arithmetic rather than taste. 61.65(d) asks an instrument applicant for 50 cross-country hours flown as the pilot in command. 61.129(a)(2) asks a commercial applicant for 100 hours commanding the aircraft, half of that cross-country. Those requirements overlap almost completely, and a pilot who sequences them correctly flies one body of cross-country time that satisfies both.
Flown in the wrong order, the same hours still count, but you lose the second benefit: the instrument work makes the commercial flying easier. The commercial standard is largely precise aircraft control, and precise control is far simpler for a pilot who has already learned to hold an altitude and a heading with no horizon to help.
The counter-argument deserves a hearing. An instrument rating costs $11,700 here, and a pilot who only ever intends to fly banner tows in daylight may reasonably decide the limitation in 61.133(b)(1) never touches them. That is a real position. It is also a decision to buy a restricted version of an expensive certificate, and it should be made deliberately rather than by drift.
Why Is Building The Hours The Hard Step?
Because 150 of the 250 hours are not lessons. They are time, and time is bought at a rate or earned at a wage. This is the part of the route that decides both how long it takes and what it costs.
Where The Hours Come From
A private certificate typically leaves you somewhere in the sixties. An instrument rating adds forty or so. That is roughly 110 hours, against a requirement of 250, and the remainder has to be flown.
- Cross-country flying that also feeds 61.129(a)(2)
- Time flown with another pilot sharing the aircraft cost
- The 10 hours in 61.129(a)(4), flown solo or performing pilot-in-command duties
- Aircraft rented wet at $179 an hour once you are enrolled here
Why Tempo Beats Rate
The hourly rate gets all the attention and the flying frequency does almost all the damage. Skills decay between lessons, and a decayed skill is re-taught at full price. Two or three flights a week is efficient; one a fortnight quietly adds hours that teach nothing.
That is the whole reason we sell fixed program prices rather than a rate card. The program figure does not move when a lesson goes badly, so the incentive to fly frequently sits with you and the risk of a slow month sits with us.
What A Deliberate Hour Looks Like
Every hour flown in this phase should tick more than one box. A night cross-country over 100 nautical miles satisfies 61.129(a)(3)(iv) and adds to your night time and your cross-country total at once. A 300-nautical-mile trip with landings at three points, one of them 250 nautical miles out, satisfies 61.129(a)(4)(i) and a great deal of the cross-country requirement in the same afternoon.
- Plan the long cross-country early, not in the last month
- Log night time deliberately rather than by accident
- Keep pilot-in-command and cross-country columns totalled as you go
- Ask your instructor to audit the logbook at every twenty hours
The Honest Downside
This step is boring for some people and expensive for everyone. There is no version of it that is quick, and any school implying otherwise is selling the 190-hour figure in 61.129(i)(3) without mentioning that it applies only inside an approved part 142 course. We are a part 61 school. Our number is 250, and we would rather say so now than after your deposit clears.
What Does Each Step Cost At This School?
Three published figures covering the first two steps and the whole sequence. Every one is fixed at enrolment, and none of them is a range.
Private Pilot — Standard
Forty logged hours, built to the floor in 14 CFR 61.109(a) and no higher than it.
- ✓38 hours single-engine, 2 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓30 hours dual, 3 hours ground instruction
- ✓Books and training materials included
- ✓Suits a student who can fly twice or three times weekly
Private Pilot — Comprehensive
Sixty logged hours, which is closer to where an ordinary student finishes than the regulatory floor is.
- ✓55 hours single-engine, 5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓50 hours dual, 10 hours ground instruction
- ✓Books and training materials included
- ✓The step 61.123(h) makes compulsory
Airline Career Track
Every phase from an empty logbook to a flight instructor rating, priced once and held at that figure.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial and instructor phases
- ✓The 250 hours sit inside the program
- ✓Financing opens at $2,500 down
- ✓Part 61 throughout, at Van Nuys
What If You Already Hold Some Of This?
Three phases sold on their own, for pilots who arrive part way along the sequence. Put the logbook in front of us and we will say which of these you actually need.
Instrument Rating
The rating that removes the cross-country and night limitation in 61.133(b)(1) from a commercial certificate.
- ✓Its 50 cross-country hours also feed 61.129(a)(2)
- ✓Redbird MCX time inside the program
- ✓Actual instrument conditions available on the coast
Multi-Engine Add-On
The multi-engine class rating, flown in the Piper Seminole, added to a private or a commercial certificate.
- ✓No aeronautical experience floor on an added class rating
- ✓Flown in a twin we own rather than broker
- ✓Commonly taken straight after the commercial checkride
Assessment Flight
An hour of dual instruction with you flying, and a written read on what the rest of the sequence would demand.
- ✓Logged as dual instruction received
- ✓Credited against any program within a day
- ✓Step one, and the only cheap step
Where Does A Multi-Engine Rating Fit Into The Sequence?
After the commercial checkride, for most people. A multi-engine class rating added to an existing certificate carries no aeronautical experience floor of its own, which makes it the smallest figure on the whole ladder at $5,100 and the one most easily taken out of order.
The reason to wait is that a commercial certificate flown in a single-engine airplane is examined against 61.129(a), while the multi-engine version sits in 61.129(b) and asks for the same 250 hours arranged differently. Taking the single-engine commercial first and adding the class rating afterwards is usually the shorter and cheaper path, and it is what we recommend unless you have a specific reason to do the reverse.
The reason not to wait is employment. Some low-time jobs want multi-engine time, and time in a twin is expensive to accumulate later. If you already know that is your target, say so at the start and we will sequence the Seminole earlier. That decision belongs to you and it should be made with a calendar in front of you.
Six Decisions That Set The Total
Each of these is made early, quietly, and often by default. Made deliberately, they are worth more than any negotiation over price.
Which Class Of Medical To Sit
Take the highest class your plans could ever require. 61.23(a)(2) puts commercial privileges behind a second-class certificate. A third-class examination is cheaper and tells you less, and the information is the point.
How Often You Can Genuinely Fly
This decides duration and cost more than any other factor on the page. Three flights a week is efficient, two is workable, one is expensive. Answer honestly rather than optimistically, and build the plan around the honest answer.
Which Airframe The Early Hours Go In
A simpler aircraft teaches flying; a highly automated one teaches flying and systems management at the same time. In the first forty hours the flying is the harder half. Move up later, not first.
When To Sit The Written Test
61.39(a)(1) gives a knowledge test pass 24 calendar months before the practical test. Sit the CAX while ground study is fresh and well before the checkride, rather than adding it to the busiest month of the route.
Whether To Instruct Afterwards
Most pilots close the gap between 250 hours and the 1,500 in 61.159(a) by teaching. Deciding during the commercial phase rather than after it saves months, because the instructor course can start the following month.
How The Route Is Financed
From $2,500 down, through an outside aviation lender or an in-house plan. Which suits you depends on your credit profile rather than on anything we control. Read what happens to the loan if the training stops.
What Does The Route Look Like As A Ladder?
The same six steps, arranged by what you hold at the end of each one. Two rungs are not sold separately here, and the note says why.
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Rung 1
Private Pilot Certificate
$15,900Comprehensive program, priced against 60 logged hours. The floor in 61.109(a) is 40 hours; very few students finish there, so we price against the honest figure instead of the legal one.
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Rung 2
Instrument Rating
$11,700Not a legal prerequisite for the commercial certificate, and the rating that removes the limitation in 61.133(b)(1). Its 50 cross-country hours flown as the pilot in command feed straight into 61.129(a)(2).
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Rung 3
Commercial Certificate
Not Sold SeparatelyPriced inside the $89,000 program. A standalone figure would be dishonest, because the cost depends entirely on how many of the 250 hours in 61.129(a) you already hold when you arrive.
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Rung 4
Multi-Engine Class Rating
$5,100The least expensive rung, because an added class rating carries no aeronautical experience floor. Flown in the Piper Seminole. Optional, and usually taken after rung three.
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Rung 5
Flight Instructor Certificate
Not Sold SeparatelyThe rung that reverses the direction of the money. From here your flying is paid, which is how the 1,250 hours between a commercial certificate and 61.159(a) are ordinarily flown.
Buying the sequence at $89,000 is not the arithmetic sum of the rungs, because two of the five are not sold on their own. Compare the two routes against your own logbook rather than against a spreadsheet.
How Long Does The Whole Route Take?
Full time, from nothing, expect eighteen months to two years to a commercial certificate. Part time around a job, expect the same work spread across three years or more. We will not give you a shorter number than that, and we would be suspicious of anyone who does without seeing your logbook and your calendar first.
The variable is not talent. It is flights per week, weather, aircraft availability and how quickly you close the written test. Van Nuys helps with one of those four: NOAA ASOS observations across the twelve months to 1 August 2026 gave the field 355 days on which a ceiling of 3,000 feet and five statute miles held for at least four qualifying daylight hours. Weather is rarely the constraint here. Your diary usually is.
There is a second clock worth watching. 61.39(a)(1) gives a knowledge test pass 24 calendar months before the practical test, and 61.129(a)(3)(v) wants three hours of preparation inside the two calendar months before the month of the test. Miss the first and you resit the written. Miss the second and you fly three hours you have already flown.
What Can You Check About A School In One Afternoon?
We opened recently, so there are no reviews of ours worth quoting and we will not display anybody else’s. Five things you can verify instead, on the ramp, in an afternoon.
Aircraft Types, Owned In-House
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Ask to see the airframe hours on any of them, and ask who signs the maintenance.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors, Each With A Current Medical
All eleven hold a commercial certificate or better plus an instructor certificate. Eleven matters because a schedule that depends on one person’s calendar stalls the moment that person is ill.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23Days The Weather Permitted Training
Measured from NOAA ASOS reports at Van Nuys across the year that ended on 1 August 2026, counting only days with four qualifying daylight hours above five statute miles of visibility beneath a 3,000 foot ceiling.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetFull-Motion Simulator On The Field
A Redbird MCX, fully enclosed and FAA-approved, at $189 for a standalone session. Two hours sit inside the Standard program and five inside the Comprehensive. It is poor for landings and we say so.
Redbird MCX · on site at Van NuysFigures We Ask You To Call For
Every program price is printed on the site, with no ranges and no quote gate. Ask any school what it does not publish; the answer is usually more informative than the brochure.
Published in full at /pages/programs-and-pricingBecoming A Commercial Pilot: Common Questions
From no flying experience, eighteen months to two years training full time, and three years or more part time around a job. The variable is flights per week rather than ability: the 250-hour requirement in 14 CFR 61.129(a) is a great deal of flying, and it cannot be compressed below the rate at which you can actually get airborne.
No. 14 CFR 61.123 lists the requirements for the certificate and a degree is not among them: age eighteen, English language ability, a private pilot certificate, a knowledge test, the aeronautical experience for the rating, and a practical test. Some employers ask for a degree; the FAA does not.
Book a medical examination and an hour in an aircraft, in the same fortnight, before spending anything larger. 14 CFR 61.23(a)(2) wants a second-class medical certificate, at least, before commercial privileges are exercised, and an examiner can tell you in one appointment whether that is going to be a problem.
No. 14 CFR 61.123(h) asks that you already hold a private pilot certificate issued under part 61, or that you meet 61.73, which is the military route. No other starting point leads to a commercial certificate.
A 250-hour total logged as a pilot for an airplane single-engine rating, under 14 CFR 61.129(a). That total contains 100 hours in powered aircraft with 50 in airplanes, 100 hours commanding the aircraft, half of that cross-country, 20 hours of training and 10 hours flown solo or performing pilot-in-command duties.
No. The 190-hour figure in 14 CFR 61.129(i)(3) applies only to somebody who has finished, to the required standard, a commercial course approved under part 142, which governs certificated training centers. It is not a part 141 provision and it is not available at a part 61 school like this one.
Once ground study is fresh and well before the checkride. 14 CFR 61.39(a)(1) puts the knowledge test pass inside the 24 calendar months ending with the month of the test, so there is room to sit it early, and every reason to do so before the flying gets expensive.
Legally yes, within the limits of 14 CFR 61.133 and whatever part the operation runs under. Practically, most newly certificated commercial pilots add a flight instructor certificate and teach, because 61.159(a) puts 1,500 hours behind an unrestricted airline transport pilot certificate and instructing is the ordinary way to fly the difference.
Usually, and the reason is skill decay rather than any discount. Flying twice or three times in a week keeps what you learned last week available this week; flying once a fortnight means re-teaching, and re-teaching is billed at the same rate as teaching. Our program prices are fixed, so the saving from a good tempo is yours rather than ours.
For ten hours, or a turbine-powered or technically advanced airplane instead, under 14 CFR 61.129(a)(3)(ii). We fly them in the Piper Arrow II, which has gear that retracts, flaps, and a propeller whose pitch you set, and 61.31(e) asks for one logbook endorsement before you command such an airplane.
What We Are, And What We Will Not Claim
Airline Pilot Flight School is a part 61 flight training provider at Van Nuys Airport. It is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and it holds no cadet scheme, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier. No course here is an approved part 142 commercial pilot course, so the 190-hour reduction in 61.129(i)(3) is not something we can offer you.
No sentence on this page promises an interview, a job or a salary. The sequence described here ends at a certificate, and a certificate is permission to be paid to fly rather than an offer of work.
We publish no pass rate and no graduate count. The operation is new, neither figure would mean anything yet, and inventing one is how a school begins lying to its own students. What we publish instead is the curriculum, the price, the hours and the rule behind each requirement.
Third-party costs sit outside every figure here: the knowledge test, the examiner’s fee, your medical examination and your own equipment. We neither set nor collect them, and we do not print other people’s prices as though they were ours.
Come And Watch A Working Ramp First
Everything above is checkable in person, and an hour spent walking the flight line tells you more about how a school runs than any page can.
We are at 7900 Balboa Blvd, on the field at Van Nuys. Come at a busy time rather than a quiet one, because a training operation on a Tuesday afternoon tells you what your Tuesday afternoons would look like. Watch how aircraft come back, how briefings run, and how long the gap is between a lesson finishing and the next one starting.
Bring the questions people feel awkward asking. What are the airframe hours. Who signs the maintenance. How many students is one instructor carrying this month. What happens to my slot when a lesson is scrubbed for weather. What are the refund terms if I stop after phase one. We would rather answer all five now than have you find them out later.
The Aircraft You Would Start In
Most first hours happen in the Piper Warrior or the Diamond DA20. Sit in both. They are different to fly, and the choice is worth making with your hands on the controls rather than from a list.
The Instructor You Would Fly With
You are matched with one instructor, and a change is available if the fit is wrong. Ask to meet them before enrolling, because you are about to spend a great many hours in a small cabin with this person.
The Redbird MCX
Full-motion, fully enclosed, $189 for a standalone session. Ask what it is used for in each program and ask what it is bad at. If nobody names a weakness, keep asking.
The Training Agreement
Refund terms, the overrun clause, and what happens if you stop between phases. Read it in the building rather than at home under time pressure.
Find Out In An Hour Whether Step One Is Worth Taking
Six steps is a long way to plan on paper. One hour in an aircraft, with you flying and an instructor alongside, answers the one question paper cannot: whether the work suits you. It is logged, and the fee is refunded against the program if you enroll inside a day.
Read The Detail Behind Each Step
The Commercial Cluster
What A Commercial Pilot License IsCommercial Pilot License Requirements In FullWhat A Commercial Pilot License CostsThe Commercial Pilot CheckrideFly 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 →