Instrument rating
The rating the rest of a career leans on. It teaches you to fly an airplane on the instruments alone, and it is the difference between a licence that works on good days and one that works on a schedule.
What is an instrument rating?
It is an addition to a pilot certificate that permits flight under instrument flight rules, in cloud and in weather that a visual rating cannot legally enter. 14 CFR 61.65 fixes the price of entry: fifty cross-country hours logged in command, and forty hours on instruments — real cloud or a view-limiting device — fifteen of which an instrument instructor has to teach you.
The training changes what you do with your attention. A visual pilot builds a picture from outside the airplane and cross-checks it on the panel. An instrument pilot builds the same picture from the panel, and the outside contributes nothing. That inversion is the whole skill, and it takes roughly 40 hours to become reliable rather than merely possible.
It is also the rating with the highest leverage in a career plan. 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1) puts a limitation on a commercial certificate earned without an instrument rating: no carrying paying passengers at night, and none on a cross-country beyond 50 nautical miles. And 14 CFR 61.183 requires an instrument rating before you can begin a flight instructor rating. Two separate rules point at the same conclusion.
A downside worth stating on the first screen, because most schools bury it. Southern California is an excellent place to train and a poor place to log actual instrument conditions. You can finish this rating here having flown almost all of your 40 hours behind a view-limiting device rather than in cloud. That is legal, it is normal, and it is a gap you should close deliberately afterwards. We wrote a whole page about it rather than a footnote.
What does 14 CFR 61.65 actually require?
Two experience figures, one long flight, and a recency rule. Everything else in the section is about who may teach you and what has to be covered.
Fifty cross-country hours, logged in command
Ten of those 50 have to be in an airplane. This is the requirement that decides whether you can start the rating tomorrow or in six months, and it is the one new private pilots most often have not met.
It is also the reason the instrument rating sits where it does in a career sequence. You need 50 hours of cross-country command time for this rating, and 50 hours of cross-country command time for a commercial certificate under 14 CFR 61.129(a)(2)(ii). The same flights serve both.
Forty hours on instruments, real or simulated
Fifteen of the 40 have to come from an authorized instructor holding an instrument-airplane rating. The other 25 may be flown with a safety pilot under a view-limiting device, or in real instrument conditions, or partly in an approved simulator or training device inside the limits the section sets.
Simulated means a hood or a set of view-limiting glasses that removes the outside world while a safety pilot watches for traffic. Actual means cloud. The regulation treats them as equivalent for the purposes of the 40 hours, which is a legal fact rather than a claim about what they teach you.
- 40 instrument hours, actual cloud or a hood
- 15 of them from an instrument instructor
- 3 hours of instrument flight training inside 2 calendar months of the test
- The long IFR cross-country sits inside the 40
The 250 nautical mile cross-country
One cross-country with an authorized instructor, flown under instrument flight rules on a filed plan, running 250 nautical miles along airways or on routing an air traffic control facility hands you, landing at airports where an approach is flown each time, and covering three different kinds of approach on the navigation equipment.
It is the most useful flight in the syllabus and usually the most memorable. It is also the flight that turns the abstract into the ordinary: a clearance, a route, a hold, an approach, another approach, and a landing at a field you have never seen.
The eight areas of operation
14 CFR 61.65(c) lists what the training has to cover: preflight preparation, preflight procedures, air traffic control clearances and procedures, flight by reference to instruments, navigation systems, instrument approach procedures, emergency operations and postflight procedures. The practical test covers the same eight, measured against the FAA’s Instrument Rating — Airplane Airman Certification Standards.
How does the instrument rating actually run?
Five stages. The first is paperwork, the last is a checkride, and the three in the middle are where the skill gets built.
Confirm the cross-country time
Before anything else, count. 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) wants 50 hours of cross-country flying as pilot in command, 10 of them in an airplane. If you are short, the answer is to go flying somewhere rather than to start the rating and discover the gap at the end.
Basic attitude instrument flying
Straight and level, climbs, descents and turns on instruments alone, then the same with instruments failed. This stage feels slow and then suddenly does not. Some of it is well suited to the Redbird MCX, which is full-motion, fully enclosed, never scrubbed for weather and $189 a session.
Navigation, clearances and holds
Working inside the air traffic control system rather than around it. Van Nuys helps here. The field carries its own tower inside Class D airspace, set beneath the Class B shelf that serves LAX, so clearances, frequency changes and controller instructions become ordinary flying rather than an exercise.
Approaches, and then more approaches
Three different kinds using navigation systems, flown until they are unremarkable. This is where most of the 40 hours goes and where the rating is actually earned.
The knowledge test and the checkride
The FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix lists the Instrument Rating Airplane test, code IRA, at 60 questions with 70 to pass. Then three hours of instrument instruction falling inside two calendar months of the checkride, and the practical test itself, flown against the Instrument Rating — Airplane ACS.
What does an instrument rating cost?
$11,700, fixed when you enrol. It is phase 2 of five on the career route and the phase that pays for itself soonest.
Instrument Rating
The rating built around 14 CFR 61.65, priced as a program rather than by the hour.
- ✓Instrument instruction toward the 40 hours
- ✓IRA knowledge test preparation
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Airline Career Track
If the instrument rating is a step rather than a destination, the whole route is priced once.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at stage boundaries
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Phase 1, if you do not hold a certificate yet. 14 CFR 61.65(a) needs at least a private pilot certificate first.
- ✓55 hours single-engine
- ✓5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓Books and materials included
Redbird MCX session
Full-motion and fully enclosed. Weather never cancels it, which makes it useful when the schedule is tight.
- ✓Excellent for procedure and scan
- ✓Poor for landings, and we say so
- ✓Credit limits are set by 14 CFR 61.65
What can you verify about instrument training here?
An instrument rating depends on airplanes with usable panels, instructors qualified to teach on them, and a field where clearances are routine. All three are checkable.
Airframes, from basic panels to glass
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Learning the scan on conventional instruments and then moving to glass is a better order than starting on glass, and owning both makes it possible.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Hours that have to 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. Every one of our eleven instructors holds a commercial certificate or an ATP with an instructor certificate above it and a current medical.
14 CFR 61.65(d) · 61.183A full-motion simulator, priced in public
The Redbird MCX is enclosed and full-motion. Approach procedures, holds and partial-panel work rehearse extremely well in it, and the credit you may take toward 61.65 depends on the device’s approval level rather than on our opinion of it.
$189 a session · limits at 14 CFR 61.65(h)–(j)Control tower on the field, under a Class B shelf
Van Nuys is Class D beneath the shelf that serves LAX. Clearances, hand-offs and vectors are ordinary here, which is exactly the environment an instrument student needs to stop finding the radio difficult.
KVNY, elevation 802 ftPrices behind a form
None. The instrument rating is $11,700 on the page, with no range attached and no quote to request.
Published in fullWhat the rating does, and what we do not claim
An instrument rating permits flight under instrument flight rules within the privileges of the certificate you hold. It does not make weather safe, and staying legally current afterwards is a separate obligation: 14 CFR 61.57(c) wants six approaches, holding work, and the interception and tracking of courses on the navigation equipment, all performed and logged inside the preceding six calendar months.
This school teaches at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. 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 here. Nothing on this page promises an interview, a job or a salary.
We publish no pass rate and no graduate count, because the business is new and any figure would be drawn from a sample too small to be meaningful. What we publish instead is the syllabus, the price, the hours and the regulation behind each requirement.
What people ask about the instrument rating
14 CFR 61.65(d) asks for fifty cross-country hours logged in command, ten of them in an airplane, plus forty hours on instruments — cloud or a view-limiting device — of which fifteen come from an authorized instrument instructor. Most students fly close to the 40 rather than well beyond it, because the skill is procedural.
$11,700 here, fixed at enrolment, with no range attached. If it is one step of a career route rather than an end in itself, the whole route from zero hours to a commercial certificate and an instructor rating is $89,000.
Not to be issued the certificate, but you want it. 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1) prints a limitation on a commercial certificate held without one: paying passengers may not be carried at night or on a cross-country beyond 50 nautical miles. 14 CFR 61.183 also requires it before a flight instructor rating.
One flight, flown with an authorized instructor under instrument flight rules on a filed plan, running 250 nautical miles along airways or on routing given by an air traffic control facility. An approach at every airport it touches, and three different kinds of approach on the navigation equipment. The paragraph is 14 CFR 61.65(d)(2)(ii).
Two to three months at three or four flights a week, and a great deal longer on weekends only. Instrument flying decays faster between sessions than visual flying does, so spacing lessons widely costs more here than it does for a private certificate.
Some of it. 14 CFR 61.65(h) permits at most 30 hours in a flight training device or a full flight simulator when the instrument time is completed in accordance with part 142, and at most 20 hours when it is not; 61.65(i) sets separate ceilings for aviation training devices; and 61.65(j) caps combined device credit at 20 hours outside a part 142 course.
Some, but less than you might expect at this field. Southern California produces few days of persistent instrument conditions, and what there is tends to arrive as a morning marine layer that lifts. Most of your 40 hours here will be flown behind a view-limiting device, which is legal and normal and worth knowing in advance.
The Instrument Rating Airplane knowledge test, code IRA. The FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix lists it at 60 questions with 70 required to pass. The subject matter is set by 14 CFR 61.65(b) and runs from IFR regulations and the air traffic control system to charts, approaches and weather.
Inside the preceding six calendar months you have to have performed and logged six approaches, holding work, and the interception and tracking of courses on the navigation equipment. That is 14 CFR 61.57(c). Fall far enough behind and 61.57(d) requires an instrument proficiency check to get back.
Alongside, in practice. You need 50 hours of cross-country command time for the rating and another 50 for the commercial certificate, and the same flights count for both, so planning cross-country trips during the rating is the efficient order.
The instrument cluster
An hour under the hood tells you what the rating will ask of you
Book an assessment flight and ask your instructor for some time on instruments during it. It is the quickest way to find out how your attention behaves when the outside world stops helping, and you leave with a written read and a realistic schedule. Enroll within a day and the fee comes 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 →