Instrument Rating Cost
$11,700, fixed the day you enroll. No range, no block-rate arithmetic, no quote to request. This page shows what sits inside that number, what does not, and what the same rating looks like as one rung of a longer ladder.
How Much Does An Instrument Rating Cost In Los Angeles?
Here it is $11,700, and that figure is fixed on the day you enroll rather than estimated. It buys the instruction, the ground work across the seven subjects at 14 CFR 61.65(b), and the 250 nautical mile cross-country the regulation requires. It is phase two of five on a route that ends with a working certificate.
We publish one number rather than a spread because a spread is not a price. A range tells you what the school hopes and leaves you carrying the difference; a fixed figure moves that risk onto us, which is where it belongs, because we are the ones who decide how the syllabus is flown. That is a commercial position and we would rather state it than dress it up.
The honest caveat: a fixed program price cannot include the things we do not control. The FAA knowledge test fee, your medical examination and the examiner’s fee at the practical test are yours, and this site publishes no figure for any of them because none of the three is ours to set.
What Does $11,700 Actually Buy?
One rating, taught to the standard the practical test measures, with the long cross-country and the ground work inside the figure rather than beside it.
Instrument Rating
The whole rating as a program, priced once. Not an estimate, not a starting point.
- ✓Instrument instruction toward the 40 hours
- ✓The 15 taught hours at 61.65(d)(2)
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country
- ✓Ground work and written preparation
- ✓Fixed the day you enroll
Multi-Engine Add-On
The twin rating in the Piper Seminole. Frequently bought after the instrument rating rather than before it.
- ✓Flown in the Piper Seminole
- ✓Sits on a private or commercial certificate
- ✓No hourly figure published for the twin
Airline Career Track
Every certificate and rating in one sequence at one number, instrument rating included in it.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at a stage boundary
What Do Instrument Students Add To The Program?
Two optional lines, and both exist to protect the program price rather than to inflate it.
Assessment Flight
An hour of dual instruction before you commit to anything. Ask for time under a view-limiting device.
- ✓Loggable toward the certificate you hold
- ✓Credited whole against a program enrolled within a day
- ✓The only honest way to judge your own scan
Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion, fully enclosed, and immune to a marine layer sitting on the field until noon.
- ✓Procedures and instrument scan rehearse well
- ✓Landings do not, and we say so
- ✓As much as 20 instrument hours, at 61.65(i)
Every Course We Teach, By Price
Every course price here is a package rather than an hourly rate, and every one is fixed on the day you enroll. Each private pilot program arrives with its books and training materials already inside the figure. Financing From $2,500 Down →
Assessment FlightOne hour of dual instruction, loggable, and credited whole against a program you enroll in within a day.
FROM$229
Book →
Prices are the enrollment prices for the programs named and do not include the FAA knowledge test fee, your medical examination or the examiner’s fee at a practical test. No hourly figure is published for the Piper Seminole or the Cirrus SR22 Turbo. This site publishes no rental rate card.
What Actually Drives The Cost Of An Instrument Rating?
Four things, and the airplane is only one of them. Tempo comes first: instrument skill decays between sessions faster than visual skill, so a student flying twice a week re-flies material a student flying four times a week does not. That difference does not show up on our invoice because the program price is fixed, but it shows up in your calendar, and in a longer program it shows up in the risk we priced.
Second, the hours you arrive with. 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) wants fifty cross-country hours logged in command before the rating can be finished, and a private pilot who already holds them starts on day one rather than after a season of hour building at $179 wet.
Third, how much of the work happens on a device rather than in the airplane — within the ceilings 61.65(h), (i) and (j) impose. Fourth, and least discussed, the examiner. We do not employ one, cannot conjure one, and a checkride that slips by two months can expire the three-hour freshness window at 61.65(d)(2)(i) and cost you the training again.
How Do You Keep An Instrument Rating From Costing More?
Four moves. None of them is a discount and all four are within your control.
Arrive With The Cross-Country Hours
The fifty hours at 61.65(d)(1) cost less than anything else in this project, because they can be flown as travel you wanted to make anyway. Count what you already hold before you plan anything else.
Fly Three Or Four Times A Week
The strongest of the four. Concentrated training finishes nearer the regulatory minimums and spends far less time re-teaching a scan that was already built. If your diary genuinely will not allow it, plan for a longer calendar rather than pretending otherwise.
Use The Device For What It Is Good At
Approaches, holds and partial panel rehearse extremely well at $189 a session, and the marine layer never cancels one. Landings do not rehearse well and we will not pretend they do. Ours is an advanced aviation training device, which puts as much as 20 hours toward the 40 under 61.65(i) — one instructor-led total shared with any device time you already hold, not an allowance added to it.
Book The Checkride Before You Finish
Examiner availability sets your finish date more often than your flying does. A date on the calendar lets the last 3 hours of instruction land inside the 2-calendar-month window at 61.65(d)(2)(i) instead of expiring while you wait.
Where Does $11,700 Sit In A Whole Training Budget?
Second rung of five, and the rung where the smallest sum changes the most. A private certificate at $15,900 gets you flying; the instrument rating at $11,700 gets you flying on a schedule and removes the limitation 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1) would otherwise print on a commercial certificate. Nothing else in the sequence changes that much for that little.
Bought separately, the private and the instrument rating come to $27,600 together. Bought as one route, with a commercial certificate and then the multi-engine and instructor ratings behind it, the whole sequence is $89,000, with a down payment starting at $2,500. The reason the combined figure exists is not a discount; it is that a route priced once cannot be repriced at a stage boundary.
A downside worth naming. Paying for the whole route in advance commits you to a plan before you have flown enough to know whether you want it. If you are not certain, buy the rating in front of you and decide again afterwards. We would rather sell one rung to someone who returns than five to someone who stops.
What Is Not Included In The $11,700?
Three categories. We name all three rather than leaving them for the invoice, and we publish no dollar figure for any of them because none is ours to set.
Things The FAA And Its Designees Charge For
The knowledge test is sat at a testing centre, which charges for it. The practical test is run by a designated pilot examiner, who sets and collects a fee of their own. The medical examination is billed by the aviation medical examiner who carries it out. We do not set, collect or mark up any of the three, and this site publishes no figure for them.
- The FAA knowledge test fee
- The examiner’s fee at the practical test
- Your medical examination
Things You May Already Own
A headset, a tablet, chart subscriptions and a logbook. Most people arriving at an instrument rating already hold all four from a private certificate, which is why they are not bundled into the program price. Each private pilot program does arrive with books and training materials inside it, because a student starting from nothing genuinely owns none of this.
Flying That Is Not Part Of The Syllabus
Cross-country hour building toward the fifty at 61.65(d)(1), currency flying afterwards, and any flight you take because you want to. Those are charged at $179 wet, per hour, in a single-engine airplane for enrolled students, which is the only hourly figure on this site.
There is no rental rate card here and there will not be one. The operation sells training, and pricing an airplane by the hour to the public is a different business with different insurance.
Should You Pay Up Front Or Finance The Rating?
Both are ordinary. The question is not which is cheaper in the abstract, it is which one keeps you flying three times a week rather than twice.
Pay As You Enroll
The program price, settled at enrollment, with nothing owed to anyone afterwards.
Best forsomeone with the cash and no competing use for it
- Program Price$11,700
- Fixed At EnrollmentYes
- Interest PaidNone
- Affects Training TempoNo
Finance From $2,500 Down
The same fixed program price, spread, so the tempo is set by your diary rather than by your balance.
Best formost people, and anyone whose alternative is flying once a week
- Program Price$11,700
- Fixed At EnrollmentYes
- Down Payment From$2,500
- Affects Training TempoUsually protects it
The Instrument Rating Against Its Neighbours
| Program | Price | What You Hold Afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Private Pilot — Comprehensive | $15,900 | A private pilot certificate, 60 hours logged |
| Instrument Rating | $11,700 | An instrument rating on that certificate |
| Multi-Engine Add-On | $5,100 | A multi-engine class rating |
| Airline Career Track | $89,000 | Every certificate and rating in the sequence |
Does The Price Rise If The Rating Takes Longer?
The price does not move. That is what fixed means here, and it is exactly why we publish a figure instead of a spread: the person who cannot predict how many hours you will need is you, and the person who can price that uncertainty is us.
What we ask in return is that the plan is real. A fixed price assumes a tempo, and a student who disappears for three months and returns to a scan that has gone is consuming a different amount of instruction than the one the number was built on. We would rather agree the tempo honestly at the start than renegotiate the price at the end, and if your circumstances change we would rather you told us early.
There is no block-rate discount, no bulk hour purchase and no walk-up alternative to compare against, because none of those exist here. There is one figure, on the page, and it is $11,700.
What Can You Verify About This Price?
Five things, all of them checkable without asking us anything.
One Figure, Published, Not Behind A Form
No range, no starting-from language, no quote request and no block-rate arithmetic. What you enroll at is what is printed above.
Published in full on this pageThe Only Hourly Rate On This Site
Wet, single-engine, enrolled students, covering the airplane and its fuel. No instructor rate is published, no rental rate card exists, and neither the Piper Seminole nor the Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries an hourly figure at all.
Published pricing policyAirframes, Owned Rather Than Brokered
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Ownership is why a program price can be fixed at all.
On the 100-hour cycle at 14 CFR 91.409(b)Flyable Training Days A Year, Measured
NOAA ASOS observations at Van Nuys through the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, 1 August 2025 to 1 August 2026, each hour tested against a ceiling of 3,000 feet or better with 5 statute miles or better, and a day counted only when four daytime hours qualified.
NOAA ASOS via Iowa Environmental MesonetThird-Party Fees We Mark Up
None. The knowledge test fee, the examiner’s fee and your medical examination are paid to the people who provide them, and we publish no figure for any of the three.
Stated on this pageIs An Instrument Rating Worth $11,700?
For anyone flying with a destination and a date attached, yes, and the argument is not romantic. A private certificate cancels when the marine layer is late clearing. An instrument rating turns that morning into a climb through a thin layer. Over a year of real trips, that is the difference between a licence you use and a licence you keep current.
For a career, the arithmetic is even simpler. Without an instrument rating in the same category and class, a commercial certificate 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 beyond 50 nautical miles, nor after dark. And 14 CFR 61.183(c) makes an instrument rating a precondition of the airplane flight instructor certificate. Two independent rules, one conclusion.
For somebody who flies twice a year in good weather near home, no. The rating is a perishable skill with a currency rule attached at 14 CFR 61.57(c), and buying it without intending to use it means paying twice: once for the training and again, repeatedly, to stay legal. We would rather say that than sell it.
The Limits Of Everything Above
This is a part 61 training operation at Van Nuys Airport. It is not an airline, is not owned by one, and has no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier. No price on this page buys an interview, a job or a salary, and nothing here implies one.
We publish no pass rate and no graduate count. The business is new; any figure would be drawn from a sample too small to mean anything, and an unauditable number is worse than silence. What is published instead is the price, the syllabus, the hours and the regulation behind each requirement.
One more limit. A fixed price is a promise about our side of the arrangement, not a prediction about yours. It does not promise a finish date, because examiner availability and your own tempo decide that, and neither of those is in our control or in the number.
Questions About What An Instrument Rating Costs
$11,700 here, fixed the day you enroll, with no range attached. That covers the instruction, the ground work across the seven knowledge areas at 14 CFR 61.65(b) and the 250 nautical mile IFR cross-country the regulation requires. Separate from it: the FAA knowledge test fee, your medical examination, and whatever the examiner charges. This site publishes no figure for any of the three.
Because a range is not a price. A spread moves the risk of a longer program onto the student, who cannot control the syllabus, and away from the school, which can. We publish one figure and hold it, and the trade is that we expect a realistic training tempo to be agreed at the start.
No. The program price is fixed at enrollment and does not move because a rating took longer than the plan assumed. What we ask instead is that the tempo agreed at the start is real, and that you tell us early if your circumstances change.
Yes, from $2,500 down. The program price is the same either way at $11,700. The practical argument for financing is not the interest arithmetic, it is that a student who can fly three times a week finishes closer to the regulatory minimums than one flying once a week around a cash-flow problem.
$179 wet, per hour, in a single-engine airplane, for enrolled students. That is the only hourly figure published anywhere on this site and it covers the airplane and its fuel. Instruction sits inside program prices rather than in that number, and no hourly figure is published for the Piper Seminole or the Cirrus SR22 Turbo.
A Redbird MCX session is $189. Full-motion, fully enclosed, and no weather has ever scrubbed one, which is what makes it worth buying between lessons. How much of that time counts toward the 40 hours follows from how the device is approved: 14 CFR 61.65(i) allows up to 10 hours from a basic aviation training device and up to 20 from an advanced one, and ours is advanced. 61.65(j) makes that 20 the combined total across every device, and an authorized instructor has to be the one delivering the time.
It is not discounted, it is fixed differently. The whole sequence from no certificate at all through the instructor rating is $89,000 as one route, priced once, with no repricing at a stage boundary. Bought rung by rung, a comprehensive private certificate and an instrument rating come to $27,600 between them.
Three things: fees charged by the FAA and its designees, equipment you probably already own from a private certificate, and flying that is not part of the syllabus. This site publishes no dollar figure for the knowledge test, the medical examination or the examiner’s fee, because none of the three is ours to set.
No, and there is no plan to. The operation sells training programs. The single hourly figure published anywhere here is $179 wet in a single-engine airplane for enrolled students, and it exists so that hour building toward 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) has a price attached rather than a conversation.
The twin add-on is $5,100; this rating is $11,700. They are not alternatives to one another. The instrument rating removes the limitation 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1) prints on a commercial certificate; the multi-engine rating adds a class rating. Most people who buy both buy the instrument rating first.
How These Prices And Citations Were Checked
The figures on this page are the prices Airline Pilot Flight School charges, fixed at enrolment rather than estimated and revised upward later.
Every price on this page is an enrollment price for the program named and is fixed at enrollment. There are no ranges, no block-rate discounts and no hourly figure other than $179 wet, single-engine, for students who are enrolled. No hourly figure is published for the Piper Seminole or for the Cirrus SR22 Turbo, and no rental rate card exists on this site.
Every regulatory reference above was read against the current text of 14 CFR part 61 at eCFR and cross-read at the Cornell Legal Information Institute before publication. The knowledge test figures used across this cluster come from the FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix dated 22 October 2025.
Prices exclude the FAA knowledge test fee, the medical examination and the examiner’s fee at a practical test, and this site deliberately publishes no figure for any of the three because none of them is set by us.
Get A Start Date, Not An Estimate
Bring your logbook to an assessment flight and have someone add up the cross-country time you already hold against the fifty hours 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) wants. An hour of dual instruction, some of it under a view-limiting device, and you leave knowing what the rating will cost you in calendar as well as in money. Enroll within a day and the fee comes off the program.
Keep Reading
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 →