Instrument Rating
The rating that lets you fly the airplane on the panel alone, file a clearance and go on a morning the visual pilots are still waiting out. It is the second phase of a career route and the one with the highest leverage in it.
What Is An Instrument Rating, And What Does It Let You Do?
It is an addition to a pilot certificate that permits flight under instrument flight rules — in cloud, in reduced visibility, on a clearance from air traffic control. 14 CFR 61.65(d) sets the entry price in two figures: fifty cross-country hours logged in command, ten of them flown in an airplane, and forty hours on instruments — cloud or a hood, the regulation counts both — of which fifteen have to be taught by an authorized instructor who holds an instrument-airplane rating.
The skill underneath the paperwork is an inversion of attention. A visual pilot builds a picture of the world outside and glances at the panel to confirm it. An instrument pilot builds the same picture out of six or seven indications and the world outside contributes nothing at all. Forty hours is roughly what it takes for that to become reliable rather than merely possible, and the number in the regulation is not an accident.
Take the position plainly: for anyone whose flying has a destination and a date attached, this is the rating worth buying next. A private certificate flies on the days the sky agrees. This one flies on the days the schedule says.
What Does An Instrument Rating Cost Here?
$11,700, fixed when you enroll, with no range attached and nothing to request. It is phase two of five on the route to a working certificate.
Instrument Rating
The rating built around 14 CFR 61.65, sold as a program rather than by the hour.
- ✓Instrument instruction toward the 40 hours
- ✓Preparation for the IRA knowledge test
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country flight
- ✓One number, fixed the day you enroll
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Phase one, if you do not hold a certificate yet. 61.65(a)(1) wants at least a private pilot certificate first.
- ✓60 hours logged, 55 of them single-engine
- ✓5 hours in the Redbird MCX
- ✓Books and training materials included
Airline Career Track
Every certificate and rating in one sequence at one published number, instrument rating included.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at a stage boundary
What Else Do Instrument Students Buy?
Two things, and neither is compulsory. One is an hour in the airplane before you commit to anything; the other is a machine that does not care what the weather is doing.
Assessment Flight
An hour of dual instruction with an instructor. Ask for time under a view-limiting device during it.
- ✓Loggable toward the certificate you hold
- ✓Credited whole against a program enrolled within a day
- ✓The fastest honest read on where your scan is
Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion, fully enclosed, and never scrubbed because the marine layer sat on the field until noon.
- ✓Approaches and holds rehearse extremely well
- ✓Landings do not, and we would rather say so
- ✓As much as 20 instrument hours, at 61.65(i)
What Do Forty Hours On Instruments Actually Buy You?
A scan that holds when something breaks. 14 CFR 61.65(d)(2) counts actual and simulated instrument time as the same thing — cloud, or a hood and a safety pilot — and 15 of the 40 must come from an authorized instructor holding an instrument-airplane rating. The other 25 are yours to build, within the device limits the same section sets.
The hours are not spent evenly. Basic attitude flying takes a handful and then stops improving; navigation and clearances take a few more; approaches take most of what is left, because an approach is where every earlier skill has to run at once while a controller talks to you. Students who finish near 40 rather than well past it are almost always the ones who flew three or four times a week.
Here is the honest limit of the number. Forty hours makes you legal and competent in the conditions you trained in. It does not make you experienced in weather, and Southern California will not hand you that experience for free — which is why we wrote a whole page about actual instrument conditions rather than a footnote.
How Does The Instrument Rating Run, Start To Finish?
Five stages. The first is arithmetic, the last is a checkride, and the three in between are where the flying gets built.
Count The Cross-Country Time First
14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) wants 50 hours of cross-country flying as pilot in command with 10 of them in an airplane. Count before you start, not at the end. If you are short, the fix is to go somewhere for lunch a few times, and those same hours also feed the commercial requirement at 14 CFR 61.129(a)(2).
Basic Attitude Instrument Flying
Straight and level, climbs, descents, turns and unusual attitudes with nothing outside to help, then the same again with instruments covered. This stage feels slow and then abruptly does not. A good deal of it belongs in the Redbird MCX, where a frozen instrument costs nothing.
Clearances, Navigation And Holding
Working inside the air traffic control system rather than around the edge of it. Van Nuys earns its keep here: a Class D tower on the field, under the Class B shelf that serves Los Angeles International, so clearances and frequency changes stop being an event by about the fourth flight.
Approaches, Then More Approaches
Three different kinds, each flown on the navigation equipment, per 14 CFR 61.65(d)(2)(ii), repeated until they are dull. Most of the 40 hours goes here. This is also where the 250 nautical mile cross-country sits, and it is the flight most people remember.
The Written, Then The Checkride
The Instrument Rating Airplane knowledge test, code IRA, is 60 questions in 2.0 hours with 70 to pass, per the FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix dated 22 October 2025. Then 3 hours of instrument flight training inside 2 calendar months of the practical test, and the test itself against the Instrument Rating — Airplane Airman Certification Standards.
What Is The 250 Nautical Mile IFR Cross-Country?
One flight, and the one the whole rating points at. 14 CFR 61.65(d)(2)(ii) asks for cross-country instrument training that includes one flight with an authorized instructor, in an airplane, under instrument flight rules: a minimum of 250 nautical miles, routed on airways or on whatever an air traffic control facility assigns, an approach flown at every airport it touches, and three approach types on the navigation equipment.
From Van Nuys the routes that satisfy it are genuinely useful ones — up the valley and over the Tehachapis, or out along the coast, with fields that have real approaches and controllers who are busy enough to be worth talking to. You file, you get a clearance you did not write, you fly it, you shoot an approach at a place you have never seen, and then you do it twice more.
It is the flight where the abstract turns ordinary. Everything the rating teaches is present in it at once, which is exactly why the regulation puts it there and why we schedule it late rather than early.
What Does The Rating Change About Your Flying?
Six things, in the order most pilots notice them.
Cloud Stops Being A Wall
A marine layer over the basin is a twenty-minute climb rather than a cancelled day. That is the change people buy the rating for and it is the one they feel first.
The Radio Gets Quiet
Not literally. You stop spending attention on the phraseology and start spending it on what the clearance actually asks the airplane to do.
Navigation Becomes A System
14 CFR 61.65(b)(4) and (b)(5) put navigation systems and chart use in the required knowledge. After the rating you read a plate the way you read a road sign.
Your Personal Minimums Get Written Down
The rating removes the legal ceiling and hands you the job of setting your own. Good instrument pilots write theirs on paper and revise them slowly.
A Commercial Certificate Stops Being Crippled
A commercial certificate issued with no instrument rating behind it carries a printed limitation, at 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1): paying passengers may not be carried on a cross-country flight longer than 50 nautical miles, nor at night.
The Instructor Route Opens
An instrument rating — or equivalent privileges on the certificate you hold — is a precondition of the airplane flight instructor certificate, at 14 CFR 61.183(c).
What Does 14 CFR 61.65 Require, In Order?
Six eligibility items, seven knowledge areas, eight areas of operation and two experience numbers. Everything else in the section is about devices.
Eligibility, At 61.65(a)
Hold at least a current private pilot certificate with a category rating appropriate to the instrument rating sought, or apply for one at the same time. Read, speak, write and understand English. Receive and log ground training, or complete a home-study course, on the knowledge areas of 61.65(b). Then two endorsements from an authorized instructor — one saying you are prepared for the knowledge test, one saying you are prepared for the practical test — with logged training on the areas of operation of 61.65(c) in between.
- A current private pilot certificate, or a concurrent application
- English language proficiency
- Logged ground training on the 61.65(b) subjects
- An endorsement before the knowledge test
- Logged flight training on the 61.65(c) areas of operation
- An endorsement before the practical test
The Two Experience Numbers, At 61.65(d)
Fifty cross-country hours logged in command, ten of which have to be flown in an airplane. Forty hours on instruments, actual or simulated, fifteen of which have to be flight training given by an authorized instructor who holds an instrument-airplane rating.
The first number is the one that decides whether you can start next week or next quarter, and it is the one newly certificated private pilots have most often not met. The second is the one that gets budgeted for.
- 50 cross-country hours logged in command, 10 flown in an airplane
- 40 hours actual or simulated instrument time
- 15 of the 40 from an instrument-airplane instructor
- 3 of the 40 inside 2 calendar months of the practical test
The Eight Areas Of Operation, At 61.65(c)
Preflight preparation. Preflight procedures. Air traffic control clearances and procedures. Flight by reference to instruments. Navigation systems. Instrument approach procedures. Emergency operations. Postflight procedures. The practical test measures the same eight against the Instrument Rating — Airplane Airman Certification Standards, FAA-S-ACS-8C.
Devices, At 61.65(h), (i) And (j)
A flight training device, or a full flight simulator, may carry up to 30 hours of the requirement where the instrument time is completed under 14 CFR part 142 — and up to 20 hours where it is not. An aviation training device may carry up to 10 hours if it is a basic device and up to 20 if it is an advanced one. Paragraph (j) then caps the lot: outside a part 142 course, no more than 20 total hours across every device combined.
Ours is an advanced device, so 20 is the figure that applies here, and 61.65(i) hangs three conditions on it: the FAA has approved and authorized the device, an authorized instructor provides the instrument time in it, and the training and the tasks flown there are FAA-approved too. Paragraph (j) is then a ceiling rather than a bonus — the same 20 covers every device you have ever credited, so hours logged in a box at another school come off it.
Should You Fly The Rating Twice A Week Or Four Times?
Same syllabus, same $11,700, materially different outcome. Instrument flying decays between sessions faster than visual flying does, and the gap shows up as repeated lessons rather than as a bigger invoice.
Two Flights A Week
The pattern most working students land on, and it works. It simply costs calendar.
Best forsomeone whose weekday evenings are not negotiable
- Typical Calendar Time4 to 6 months
- Rust Per LessonNoticeable
- Weather ExposureWider — you see more of the year
- Program Price$11,700
Three Or Four Flights A Week
Every lesson picks up where the previous one stopped, rather than paying again for a scan you already had.
Best formost people, if the diary can be made to allow it
- Typical Calendar Time2 to 3 months
- Rust Per LessonMinimal
- Weather ExposureNarrower — one season only
- Program Price$11,700
Side By Side
| Two Flights A Week | Three Or Four A Week | |
|---|---|---|
| Program Price | $11,700 | $11,700 |
| Typical Calendar Time | 4 to 6 months | 2 to 3 months |
| Hours Re-Flown For Rust | More | Fewer |
| Seasons Seen In Training | Two or three | One |
| Simulator Useful For Gaps | Yes, $189 a session | Yes, $189 a session |
Which Airplanes Do You Fly The Rating In?
Single-engine airplanes from a fleet of six owned types — Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole — maintained in-house, and on the 100-hour inspection cycle that 14 CFR 91.409(b) forces on any airplane carrying students for hire.
The useful part of owning both panel styles is the order you can learn in. Building a scan on conventional round instruments first and then moving onto glass produces a pilot who can fly either. Starting on glass and stopping there produces a pilot who is very good until the screen goes dark, and partial-panel work is on the practical test for a reason.
One caveat we would rather state than bury: the airplane you fly most of the rating in is the airplane you will be comfortable in afterwards. If your flying after the checkride will be in a glass panel, say so at the start and we will weight the syllabus that way rather than at the end.
What Can You Verify About Instrument Training Here?
We opened this year and have no track record to wave at you. What follows is five things a stranger can check without taking our word for any of them.
Hours That Must Come From An Instrument Instructor
14 CFR 61.65(d)(2) requires 15 of the 40 from an authorized instructor holding an instrument-airplane rating. All eleven of our instructors hold a commercial certificate or an ATP, an instructor certificate above it, and a current medical.
14 CFR 61.65(d)(2)Airframes, Owned Rather Than Brokered
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole, with both conventional and glass panels on the field.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Control Tower On The Field, Under A Class B Shelf
Van Nuys is a Class D field at 802 feet elevation, sitting beneath the Class B airspace that serves Los Angeles International. Clearances and hand-offs are ordinary here rather than an exercise.
KVNY, elevation 802 ftFlyable Training Days A Year, Measured
NOAA ASOS observations at Van Nuys through the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, 1 August 2025 to 1 August 2026, testing each hour against a ceiling of 3,000 feet or better with 5 statute miles or better, and counting a day only when four daytime hours qualified. Method and limitations published.
NOAA ASOS via Iowa Environmental MesonetPrices Sitting Behind A Contact Form
There are none. This page prints $11,700 for the instrument rating, with no range attached and nothing to request.
Published in fullHow Do You Stay Instrument Current After The Checkride?
14 CFR 61.57(c) is the rule and it is short. Inside the 6 calendar months before the month you fly, you must have performed and logged six approaches, holding work, and the interception and tracking of courses on the navigation equipment. Miss it and you cannot legally command a flight under instrument flight rules.
There is a second window behind the first. Under 14 CFR 61.57(d), a pilot who has been out of currency for more than six further calendar months can only get it back by completing an instrument proficiency check. Inside that period you may fly the approaches back with a safety pilot; past it, you cannot.
Plan for this on the day you pass, not the day you notice. Six approaches, some holding and some tracking is roughly two purposeful flights or a couple of sessions in the Redbird at $189 each, and 14 CFR 61.51(g) tells you what to write down: the location and type of each approach, and the name of the safety pilot where one was required.
What We Will Not Claim On This Page
This is a part 61 flight training operation at Van Nuys Airport. It is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and there is no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier attached to anything on this page. Nothing here promises an interview, a job or a salary.
We publish no pass rate and no graduate count. The business is new, any figure would come from a sample too small to mean anything, and a number you cannot check is worse than no number. What we publish instead is the syllabus, the price, the hours and the regulation behind every requirement, and you are welcome to check all four.
We will also not tell you how many hours you personally will need. The regulation sets 40 and most people finish close to it; some do not, and the honest version of that sentence has a name in it — yours — which is exactly why the assessment flight exists.
Common Questions About The Instrument Rating
14 CFR 61.65(d) asks for fifty cross-country hours logged in command, ten of them flown in an airplane, and forty hours on instruments — actual or simulated — fifteen of which must be flight training from an authorized instructor holding an instrument-airplane rating. Most students finish near 40 rather than well beyond it, because the rating is largely procedural.
$11,700 here, fixed when you enroll, with no range attached. If the rating is one step of a career route rather than the destination, the whole sequence from no certificate at all to a commercial certificate and an instructor rating is priced once at $89,000, and financing starts at $2,500 down.
Two to three months at three or four flights a week, and four to six months at two. The difference is not the syllabus, it is rust: instrument skill decays between sessions faster than visual skill does, so widely spaced lessons spend hours re-teaching a scan that was already there.
Not to be issued the certificate, but you want it. A commercial certificate held with no instrument rating in the same category and class is issued with a limitation printed on it, at 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1): paying passengers may not be carried on a cross-country flight longer than 50 nautical miles, nor at night. 14 CFR 61.183(c) then makes an instrument rating a precondition of the airplane flight instructor certificate.
One flight, in an airplane, with an authorized instructor, under instrument flight rules: a minimum of 250 nautical miles routed on airways or on a clearance an air traffic control facility assigns, an approach flown at every airport it touches, and three approach types on the navigation equipment. The paragraph is 14 CFR 61.65(d)(2)(ii).
Some of it, and the ceiling depends on the machine. 14 CFR 61.65(h) allows as much as 30 hours in a flight training device or full flight simulator where the instrument time is completed under part 142, and 20 hours where it is not; 61.65(i) allows up to 10 hours in a basic aviation training device or up to 20 in an advanced one; and 61.65(j) caps combined device credit at 20 total hours outside a part 142 course. The Redbird MCX here is an advanced aviation training device, so 20 is our figure, and it is the combined one rather than an extra allowance.
No. Under 14 CFR 61.51(g)(4), device time counts toward instrument aeronautical experience only where an authorized instructor is present to observe it and signs the logbook or training record for it. 14 CFR 61.65(i) says the same thing from the other direction by requiring the instrument time to be provided by an authorized instructor. A session flown alone is practice, and it is often good practice, but it reaches no requirement.
The Instrument Rating Airplane knowledge test, test code IRA, is 60 questions with 2.0 hours allotted and 70 required to pass, per the FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix dated 22 October 2025. The subject matter comes from 14 CFR 61.65(b) and runs from IFR regulations and the air traffic control system through charts, approaches and weather.
Some, and less than you might expect at this field. Southern California produces few days of persistent instrument conditions and most of what it does produce is a morning marine layer that burns off by late morning. Most of your 40 hours here will be flown behind a view-limiting device, which is legal and normal and worth planning around rather than discovering.
14 CFR 61.57(c) asks for six approaches, holding work, and course interception and tracking on the navigation equipment, all performed and logged inside the preceding 6 calendar months. After more than six further months out of currency, 14 CFR 61.57(d) allows currency to be regained only through an instrument proficiency check.
You need whatever medical certificate supports the pilot privileges you are exercising, under 14 CFR 61.23, and you already hold one as a private pilot. The instrument rating itself adds no new medical class. If a first-class medical is part of a longer plan, get it early rather than late.
What The Rating Permits, And What It Does Not
The instrument rating at Airline Pilot Flight School is flown in aircraft the school owns, with device time given by an instructor rather than logged alone.
An instrument rating permits flight under instrument flight rules within the privileges of the pilot certificate you already hold. It does not make weather safe, it does not exempt an airplane or a pilot from any equipment or currency rule, and it does not travel with you into an airplane you are not otherwise qualified to fly.
Every regulatory figure on this page was read against the current text of 14 CFR part 61 at eCFR and cross-read at the Legal Information Institute before it was published. The knowledge test figures come from the FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix dated 22 October 2025. Our own device is an advanced aviation training device, which is what fixes its instrument ceiling at the 20 hours 61.65(i) allows; what it may contribute toward a private or commercial certificate is set by its FAA letter of authorization rather than by those sections, and no figure for that is published here.
Prices on this page are the enrollment prices for the programs named. They do not include the FAA knowledge test fee, the medical examination or the examiner’s fee at the practical test, and this site publishes no figure for any of those three.
An Hour Under The Hood Tells You More Than Any Brochure
Book an assessment flight and ask for time under a view-limiting device while you are up there. It is the quickest honest read on how your attention behaves when the world outside stops helping, and you come back with a schedule built from what actually happened rather than from an average. Enroll within a day and the fee comes off the program price.
Keep Reading
The Instrument Cluster
Instrument Rating Requirements Under 61.65Instrument Rating Cost, ItemisedInstrument Written Exam, Test Code IRAInstrument Training And Actual IMCBefore The Instrument Rating
Commercial Pilot License RequirementsFull Motion Simulator TrainingPilot Certificates In OrderAfter The Instrument Rating
Commercial Pilot LicenseCFII And MEI RatingsEvery Program Price On One PageFly 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 →