Instrument written test
Sixty questions drawn from ten knowledge areas, seventy per cent to pass, and a result that stays usable for two years. Sit it while the procedures are live in your hands, not eight months before.
What is the instrument written test?
It is the Instrument Rating Airplane knowledge test, code IRA. The FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix lists it at 60 questions with 70 required to pass and 2.0 hours allowed. It is delivered on a computer at an FAA-approved testing center, and the result is in your hand before you leave the building.
Its subject matter comes straight from 14 CFR 61.65(b), which names ten areas: the regulations governing flight under instrument flight rules, the relevant parts of the Aeronautical Information Manual, the air traffic control system and its procedures, IFR navigation and approaches, the use of en route and instrument approach procedure charts, obtaining and using aviation weather reports and forecasts, safe and efficient operation under instrument flight rules, recognising critical weather and avoiding windshear, aeronautical decision making and judgment, and crew resource management.
The character of the test is different from the commercial one. Where the commercial written asks you to compute, this one asks you to interpret. A great deal of it is chart reading: minimums, missed approach segments, altitudes, what a note in a plan view actually obliges you to do. The rest is weather and the rules that surround filing and flying an instrument flight plan.
That has a scheduling consequence, and it is the one useful piece of advice on this page. Take this test while you are flying approaches, not before. Chart interpretation is a skill that transfers straight from the airplane to the desk and back again, and a candidate who has flown twelve approaches finds the chart questions almost obvious. A candidate who has flown none finds them abstract.
The commercial test is the opposite case, which is why the two writtens want opposite timing.
When should you sit the instrument written?
Alongside the flying, and this is the one written test that genuinely rewards being sat late rather than early. The comparison below is the reason.
Instrument Rating Airplane
Interpretive. Charts, clearances, approach procedures and the weather rules around them. Sit it while you are flying approaches every week.
Best forAnyone who learns charts faster by using them than by reading about them.
- Questions60
- Passing score70
- Allotted time2.0 hours
- Subject list14 CFR 61.65(b)
- Best satDuring instrument training
Commercial Pilot Airplane
Computational. Weight and balance, performance charts and the regulations governing paid flying. Sit it during hour-building, well before the checkride.
Best forAnyone who wants one requirement off the list on a rainy afternoon.
- Questions100
- Passing score70
- Allotted time2.5 hours
- Subject list14 CFR 61.125(b)
- Best satEarly, during hour-building
The two knowledge tests compared
| Instrument (IRA) | Commercial (CAX) | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | 60 | 100 |
| Passing score | 70 | 70 |
| Allotted time | 2.0 hours | 2.5 hours |
| Knowledge areas | Ten, at 14 CFR 61.65(b) | Sixteen, at 14 CFR 61.125(b) |
| Dominant skill | Chart and procedure interpretation | Computation from charts and tables |
| Report validity | 24 calendar months | 24 calendar months |
| Endorsement needed first | 14 CFR 61.65(a) | 14 CFR 61.123(c) |
| Ideal timing | While flying approaches | During hour-building |
What is actually on the instrument written?
Ten knowledge areas from 14 CFR 61.65(b), which sort into four kinds of question. Knowing which kind you are looking at is most of the technique.
Chart questions
The biggest group, and the one that decides most results. You are given an approach plate or an en route chart and asked what it obliges you to do: which minimums apply, where the missed approach begins, what altitude protects you on a segment, what a note in the plan view actually means.
There is no way to learn these except by using charts. Bring the plates you flew last week to your study session and work through them properly; the transfer to the test is close to one for one.
Regulation questions
The rules that govern flight under instrument flight rules: what a clearance obliges you to do, what happens when you lose communications, alternate airport requirements, fuel requirements, and the currency provisions at 14 CFR 61.57(c) that will govern you for the rest of your flying life.
Read the actual regulation rather than a summary of it. The questions are often written close to the text.
Weather questions
Obtaining and using reports and forecasts, recognising critical weather situations, and avoiding windshear. Icing, thunderstorms and fog appear frequently, and the useful framing is not what the phenomenon is but what it obliges a pilot to decide.
There is an honest local point here. Southern California does not hand you a great deal of hazardous weather to learn from, so this section has to be studied rather than absorbed. We say the same thing on the actual instrument conditions page.
System and judgment questions
Navigation systems, the air traffic control system and its procedures, aeronautical decision making and crew resource management. Crew resource management surprises people in a single-pilot context, but the ideas apply: workload, checklists, external resources and knowing when to ask for help from a controller.
How do you get from studying to a passing report?
Five steps. The endorsement is the one people discover late.
Get the ground training and the endorsement
14 CFR 61.65(a) requires ground training from an authorized instructor, or a completed home-study course, on the knowledge areas in 61.65(b), and an endorsement to that effect before you sit the test.
Study with charts in your hand
Approach plates, en route charts and the rulebook, rather than a question bank alone. A question bank teaches you to recognise answers; the test rewards being able to read a plate you have not seen before.
Book at an FAA-approved knowledge testing center
Take government-issued photo identification. The test is delivered on a computer, scored immediately, and you leave with a printed report listing the knowledge codes for anything you missed.
Keep the report and note the expiry
The report has to be no older than 24 calendar months counted back from the month of your practical test, which is 14 CFR 61.39(a)(1); and 61.39(a)(2) wants it in your hand at the application.
Close the gaps the report names
An examiner may work back through the codes you missed once the practical test reaches its oral section. Treat the report as a study list rather than a receipt.
What does the ground training cost?
The test fee goes to the testing center and is not published here. The instruction that prepares you for it sits inside the program price.
Instrument Rating
The rating, with the ground preparation for the IRA test inside it rather than sold alongside.
- ✓Instrument instruction toward the 40 hours
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country
- ✓IRA knowledge test preparation
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Airline Career Track
Every phase to a commercial certificate and an instructor rating, with the ground training for each written test included.
- ✓Five phases, one figure
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at stage boundaries
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Ten hours of ground instruction, which is where the habit of studying properly gets built.
- ✓55 hours single-engine
- ✓5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓10 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Redbird MCX session
An approach flown in the simulator and then read back off the plate is the fastest way to make chart questions concrete.
- ✓Full-motion, fully enclosed
- ✓Never scrubbed for weather
- ✓Poor for landings, and we say so
What can you check about instrument ground training here?
Five things, each with the rule or the dataset it comes from. None of them is a claim about how good the teaching is.
Instructors who can sign the endorsement
The 61.65(a) ground-training endorsement comes from an authorized instructor after the training has actually happened. All eleven here hold a commercial certificate or an ATP, an instructor certificate above that, and a current medical.
14 CFR 61.65(a) · 61.183A simulator where a chart becomes an approach
The Redbird MCX is full-motion and enclosed. Flying the plate you have just been reading is the fastest way to turn a chart question into something you already know.
$189 a sessionGround hours inside the Comprehensive program
Ground instruction hours are not simulator hours, and the two get confused. Comprehensive carries ten ground hours and five in the Redbird; Standard and Premium carry three and two.
Program inclusions, published in fullAircraft whose avionics you will be reading about
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo, Piper Seminole. Navigation-system questions stop being theoretical when the equipment is in an airplane you fly on Thursday.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Prices we hold back
None. The instrument rating is $11,700 on the page and every other program figure is printed alongside it, without ranges.
Published in fullCheck the current matrix before you book
Question counts, time allowances and passing scores are set by the FAA and revised from time to time. The controlling sources are the current FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix and the current 14 CFR at eCFR. Confirm the figures on this page against them before you book a test.
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 for this test or any other. The business is new, any percentage would come from a sample too small to be worth anything, and a made-up figure would tell you less than nothing.
What people ask about the instrument written
Sixty. The FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix lists the Instrument Rating Airplane test under code IRA at 60 questions, with 70 as the passing score and 2.0 hours allowed. Check the current matrix before booking, because the FAA revises it.
The ten knowledge areas at 14 CFR 61.65(b): IFR regulations, the relevant Aeronautical Information Manual material, the air traffic control system and procedures, IFR navigation and approaches, en route and approach chart use, weather reports and forecasts, safe and efficient IFR operation, critical weather and windshear, aeronautical decision making, and crew resource management.
Twenty-four calendar months, and the rule is 14 CFR 61.39(a)(1): the test has to have been passed inside the 24 calendar months ahead of the month you sit your practical test. 61.39(a)(2) then wants the report presented at the application.
Deeper rather than harder, and narrower. It concentrates on chart interpretation and the rules around instrument flight instead of ranging across everything, which suits people who study with plates in front of them and frustrates people who work from a question bank alone.
While you are flying approaches. Chart questions get much easier once you have flown a dozen plates, and the transfer runs both ways. That is the opposite advice from the commercial written, which is better sat early during hour-building.
Yes. 14 CFR 61.65(a) requires ground training from an authorized instructor or a completed home-study course covering the 61.65(b) knowledge areas, and an endorsement recording it, before you may take the test.
You retake it after additional training from an authorized instructor and an endorsement certifying that you are competent to pass, under 14 CFR 61.49. The cost is the delay and the fee. Nothing is recorded against your certificate.
Yes. It lists knowledge codes for the questions you answered incorrectly, and an examiner may return to those areas once the practical test reaches its oral section. Treat it as a study list rather than a receipt.
You can, once you hold the ground-training endorsement, but it is usually the wrong order. The material is interpretive and it lands far better once you have flown approaches, which is why most students here sit it partway through the rating rather than before it.
Yes. The $11,700 instrument rating includes the ground preparation for the IRA test. What you pay to sit the test goes to the testing center, and no figure for it appears on this site.
Related reading
Charts make sense once you have flown a few of them
Book an assessment flight and ask for some instrument time inside it. An hour under a view-limiting device tells you more about how you will find this rating than any practice test will, and you leave with a written read and a realistic schedule. 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 →