Instrument rating cost
$11,700, agreed when you enrol and not revisited afterwards. The number that moves is not the rating itself but the fifty cross-country hours the regulation wants you to arrive with.
What does an instrument rating cost?
$11,700 here, printed, fixed at enrolment and free of any range. The training is built around the forty hours of instrument time that 14 CFR 61.65(d) asks for, and the price does not change if the weather or your calendar misbehaves.
What that figure does not include is the fifty hours of cross-country flying in command that 61.65(d)(1) wants before you sit the checkride. That is a prerequisite rather than part of the rating, and most people acquire it the ordinary way, by flying places. Where extra hours are needed, enrolled students fly a single at $179 wet.
So the honest description of this rating’s cost has two halves. The taught half is fixed and published. The prerequisite half depends on where you are starting from, which is why any school quoting one number for an instrument rating is making an assumption about your logbook whether it mentions it or not.
A position, and it is the important one on this page. The instrument rating is the best value of the five phases. It is the least expensive rating after the private certificate, it removes the limitation 14 CFR 61.133(b)(1) would otherwise print on your commercial certificate, and it unlocks the flight instructor rating under 61.183. Nothing else on the route does three useful things for one price.
Should you buy the rating alone or inside the career track?
If the instrument rating is the destination, buy it alone. If it is phase 2 of five, the career track prices the whole route once and stops the number moving.
Instrument Rating
A single program at a single price, taken when you are ready and finished when you pass.
Best forA private pilot who wants to fly to a schedule rather than a forecast.
- Price$11,700
- Built around14 CFR 61.65
- PrerequisitePrivate certificate, 50 hrs XC PIC
- Extra hours$179/hr wet
Airline Career Track
Zero hours through to a commercial certificate and a flight instructor rating, priced once before you start.
Best forAnyone whose plan is a career and whose budget has to hold.
- Whole route$89,000
- PhasesAll five
- Financing from$2,500 down
- RepricingNone
The ladder, with a running total
| Phase | What you hold afterwards | Program | Price | Running total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Private pilot certificate | Comprehensive Private Pilot | $15,900 | $15,900 |
| 2 | Instrument rating | Instrument Rating | $11,700 | $27,600 |
| 3 | Commercial certificate | Inside the career track | — | — |
| 4 | Multi-engine class rating | Multi-Engine Add-On | $5,100 | — |
| 5 | Flight instructor rating | Inside the career track | — | — |
| — | All five, agreed before you begin | Airline Career Track | $89,000 |
What actually makes an instrument rating cost more?
Three things, and the price of the program is not one of them. Two are inside your control and one is a fact about the airplane you learn in.
1. How widely you space the lessons
Instrument flying decays faster between sessions than visual flying does, because it is a scan rather than a picture. A gap of ten days does not merely cost you sharpness; it costs the opening twenty minutes of the next lesson while the scan comes back.
Across a rating built on forty hours, that recovery is the difference between finishing at forty and finishing well past it. Three or four flights a week is the tempo this rating rewards, and it rewards it more than any other phase on the route.
2. How much cross-country time you already have
14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) wants fifty hours of cross-country flying with you in command, ten of them in an airplane. A pilot who has been flying locally since their private checkride will have to buy some of that, and at $179 wet in a single it is worth planning rather than discovering.
The efficient move is to overlap. The commercial certificate at 14 CFR 61.129(a)(2)(ii) also wants fifty hours of cross-country command time, and the same flights satisfy both. Nobody has to fly a hundred.
3. What the simulator can and cannot absorb
A device is cheaper than an airplane and it never cancels for weather, so it looks like the obvious lever. The ceilings are lower than people assume: 14 CFR 61.65(h) permits at most 30 hours in a flight training device or full flight simulator when the instrument time was completed in accordance with part 142 and at most 20 hours when it was not, 61.65(i) sets its own ceilings for aviation training devices, and 61.65(j) caps combined device credit at 20 hours outside a part 142 course.
A session in the Redbird MCX costs $189. It rehearses an approach or a hold extremely well, and it builds none of the seat-of-the-airplane judgement instrument flying also asks for. We use it accordingly rather than to make a price look smaller.
What sits outside every figure here
The IRA knowledge test fee, your medical examination and the examiner’s fee at the practical test are yours to pay. So is your own headset, and whatever charts or applications you choose to use. We name these rather than pricing them, because the amounts depend on the provider and a guessed number is worse than an honest gap.
There is no rate card for aircraft hire anywhere on this site. We sell training.
Every published number around the rating
Printed, fixed, and free of ranges. What you enrol at is what appears here.
Instrument Rating
The rating itself. Built around 14 CFR 61.65 and priced as a program rather than by the hour.
- ✓Instrument instruction toward the 40 hours
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country
- ✓IRA knowledge test preparation
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Airline Career Track
This rating and the four phases around it, at one figure fixed before the first lesson.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at stage boundaries
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Phase 1, and the certificate 61.65(a)(1) requires you to hold before the instrument checkride.
- ✓55 hours single-engine
- ✓5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓10 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Redbird MCX session
Full-motion, fully enclosed, and never cancelled by weather. Useful inside the ceilings 61.65 sets.
- ✓Approaches, holds, partial panel
- ✓Poor for landings, and we say so
- ✓Credit limits at 61.65(h) to (j)
What lets a rating be priced before it is flown?
A fixed figure is only honest if the operation controls the aircraft, the instructors and the schedule. These are the things that make it possible here.
Aircraft owned rather than chartered
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo, Piper Seminole. Owning the fleet is what allows a price to be quoted for training that will happen over several months.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors, enough that a schedule survives
A commercial certificate or an ATP, an instructor certificate above it, and a current medical, on every one. An instrument rating flown three times a week needs a roster deep enough to absorb one person being away.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23A simulator session with a printed price
The Redbird MCX. Full-motion, enclosed, and immune to the weather, which is exactly the property a tightly scheduled instrument rating wants.
$189 standaloneDays the field supports training
Measured from NOAA ASOS observations recorded here across the twelve months to 1 August 2026, counting a day only where four daylight hours held a 3,000 ft ceiling and five statute miles.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetFigures held back until you enquire
None at all. The rating is $11,700 on the page, the hourly rate is printed, and there is no spread anywhere on this site.
Published in fullWhat a fixed price does and does not cover
A published program price is the price of that program. It is not a forecast of how many hours you will personally need, because that depends on how often you fly, and no school can promise it honestly without knowing your calendar.
This school teaches at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. It is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier exists here. Nothing on this page promises an interview, a job or a salary.
We publish no pass rate and no graduate count. The business is new and the sample would mean nothing. What is published instead is the price, the hours, and the regulation behind each requirement.
What people ask about the cost of an instrument rating
$11,700 here, fixed at enrolment, with no range attached and nothing behind a quote form. If the rating is phase 2 of a career route rather than a destination, the whole route from zero hours to a commercial certificate and a flight instructor rating is $89,000.
Mostly because different schools include different things. Some quote the taught hours only and leave the fifty cross-country hours at 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) out; some quote an hourly rate and let you do the arithmetic. Ask any figure what it assumes about your logbook before comparing it with another.
No, and it should not be. 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1) treats fifty hours of cross-country command time as a prerequisite you arrive with. Most pilots accumulate it by flying places. Where extra hours are needed here they are $179 wet in a single for enrolled students.
The IRA knowledge test fee, your medical examination and the examiner’s fee at the practical test, plus a headset and whatever charts or applications you use. These are named rather than priced here, because the amounts vary by provider and inventing one would be worse than an honest gap.
Yes. Financing begins at $2,500 down on monthly terms, either through a third-party lender or on an in-house payment plan. The financing page sets out what each route asks of you.
A little, and less than people expect. A Redbird MCX session is $189, but the credit ceilings at 14 CFR 61.65(h) to (j) limit how much of the forty hours a device may carry. It earns its place by protecting a schedule, not by shrinking a bill.
It is cheaper overall, yes, because the cross-country command time counts twice. 61.65(d)(1) wants fifty hours for the rating and 61.129(a)(2)(ii) wants fifty for the commercial certificate, and the same flights satisfy both requirements.
Two to three months at three or four flights a week. At a weekend tempo it stretches well beyond that, and the extra calendar time usually shows up as extra hours, because the instrument scan decays between sessions faster than visual handling does.
No, and none is published anywhere on this site. You reach the Cirrus SR22 Turbo through the Premium private program at $22,500, and the Piper Seminole through the $5,100 add-on.
Yes. An assessment flight is $229. The hour goes into a logbook as dual instruction, and the entire fee comes off your program when you enrol inside a day of flying it.
Related reading
A logbook total is a better budget input than a price list
Bring your logbook to an assessment flight. We will total the cross-country command time you already hold against 14 CFR 61.65(d)(1), fly an hour, and give you a written read on tempo. Those two things turn $11,700 into an actual plan. Enrol 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 →