Multi-Engine Checkride And The V_MC Demonstration
What an examiner actually asks for on a twin practical test, why the control demonstration is flown high and shallow, and where the number printed in the flight manual came from in the first place.
What Happens On A Multi-Engine Checkride?
An oral that leans hard into systems, then a flight of roughly ninety minutes covering normal operations, asymmetric handling, the control demonstration and single-engine approaches. Nothing has to be sat at a testing centre beforehand, because 14 CFR 61.63(c)(4) waives the extra knowledge test wherever an airplane rating already sits on your certificate at that level.
That absence catches people out, because it removes the obvious way to prepare. There is no question bank to grind through, no score report to reassure you, and no external checkpoint telling you that the ground study is done. What there is instead is an examiner asking why the fuel system is arranged the way it is, and finding out in about four minutes whether you read the flight manual or a summary of it.
The flight itself is shorter than most people expect and denser than most people expect. Engine failures arrive without announcement. The examiner is not looking for a heroic recovery; they are looking for a correct one, arriving quickly, in the right order, with the airplane still going where you pointed it while all of that happens.
Where Does The V_MC In A Flight Manual Come From?
From a certification flight test flown by the manufacturer, under conditions the airworthiness rules prescribe. 14 CFR 1.2 gives the abbreviation one line: a minimum control speed, critical engine inoperative. The airworthiness rule at 14 CFR 23.2135(c) turns that into a calibrated airspeed at which control survives an abrupt critical loss of thrust, which the applicant has to establish for the most critical takeoff and landing configurations.
The FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook prints the list of conditions the speed is determined under, and every line on it is chosen to be unhelpful. Takeoff power on each engine to begin with. Propeller controls where a takeoff would have them. Weight and centre of gravity at their least favourable combination. Gear retracted, flaps in the takeoff position, trimmed for takeoff, airborne and out of ground effect. Bank held to no more than five degrees.
Two of those deserve a second look. Gear retracted raises the speed rather than lowering it, because legs hanging below the fuselage add keel area behind the centre of gravity and lend the rudder help it never asked for. And five degrees of bank is not a suggestion — it is the ceiling the certification test works to, which is why a candidate who rolls fifteen degrees into the good engine during the demonstration has changed the exercise into something else entirely.
One citation on this subject needs care, and it is the reason we spell it out. The handbook attributes that condition list to part 23 section 23.149, and labels it historical, which is correct: the modern part 23 was rebuilt around performance-based requirements and the old numbered paragraphs are gone. Controllability lives at 23.2135 now. Airspeed indicator markings, which used to sit at 23.1545, are at 23.2610. Any page that cites the repealed numbers with confidence is a page nobody checked.
Why Is The Control Demonstration Flown So High And So Gently?
Because the manoeuvre deliberately walks the airplane toward the edge of directional control, and at low altitude with a large bank angle that same manoeuvre has killed people. The FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook directs the pilot to pick an altitude leaving at least 3,000 feet of air beneath the exercise, and the reason is simply that recovery costs height and you want to be able to spend it.
What is actually being shown is a boundary, not a technique. Power is set on the operating engine, the other is at idle, and the airplane is decelerated until either full rudder is no longer holding the heading or the stall warning arrives. Whichever happens first defines the boundary for that airplane on that day, and the recovery is the same in both cases: reduce power on the operating engine, lower the nose, and fly out of it.
The stall side is the part instructors emphasise hardest, because it is the dangerous one. An airplane that stalls while yawing under asymmetric thrust does not stall symmetrically. At altitude that is a recoverable event and an educational one. Close to the ground it is not, and the whole design of this exercise — high, shallow, prompt — exists to keep it in the first category.
What Does The Examiner Actually Ask You To Fly?
Five groups of tasks. Tolerances come from whichever Airman Certification Standards match the certificate you hold, and the multiengine tasks live inside that same document rather than in a separate multi-engine standard.
Normal And Crosswind Operations
Taxi, takeoff, climb, circuit and landing, plus the gear and propeller flows. Nothing exotic, and it is marked. Candidates who spend every training hour on failures and none on ordinary handling arrive with sloppy landings and lose points they never expected to lose.
Engine Failure Before And After Lift-Off
The rejected takeoff, and the failure that arrives once you are airborne with the gear still coming up. The decision is briefed on the ground before every departure precisely so that it is already made when it is needed, and the examiner will ask you to state it aloud.
Manoeuvring With One Engine Inoperative
Straight flight, turns and configuration changes with an engine shut down or at zero thrust, held to the tolerances for your certificate. This is where the rudder load is constant and where precision quietly disappears if the training was rushed.
The Control Demonstration
Flown at least 3,000 feet above the ground, decelerating until either directional control or the stall warning arrives first, with a prompt and coordinated recovery. Prompt is the operative word: a candidate who hangs on to prove something has failed the exercise, not passed it.
Single-Engine Approach And Landing
An approach flown with one engine inoperative, to a landing. The single-engine go-around is discussed on the ground rather than flown, because in a light twin at approach speed and low altitude it is a manoeuvre with a very thin margin and no training value worth the risk.
What Aerodynamics Will The Examiner Make You Explain?
Three mechanisms, and they are asked about because a pilot who can explain them handles the airplane differently from a pilot who has memorised a checklist. Expect each of these to be pushed past the first answer.
Why Asymmetric Thrust Produces A Speed Rather Than A Feeling
The live engine pushes along a line offset from the fuselage by several feet. Force times that offset is a yawing moment, and the rudder is what opposes it. The examiner is after the next step: that the yawing moment is set by engine power and therefore does not shrink as the airplane slows, while the rudder's authority depends on the air flowing past it and therefore does shrink, steeply.
One quantity roughly steady, one falling away. They meet somewhere, and where they meet is a speed. That is why V_MC is a certificated number established by a manufacturer rather than a skill you develop with practice.
- Yawing moment: set by power, near enough flat with speed
- Rudder authority: falls off sharply as speed decays
- Their crossing point is the certificated control speed
- Below it, full rudder no longer holds the heading
Why The Stopped Propeller Costs So Much
The Airplane Flying Handbook's comparison is the one to have ready: a propeller windmilling fast at a low blade angle can produce parasite drag on the order of the entire airframe's. Feathering turns the blades edge-on, stops the rotation, and drops that drag to about the minimum the installation allows.
NTSB Safety Alert SA-091 supplies the detail most candidates have never met. Once propeller rpm decays below the speed at which the start locks engage, feathering is no longer available at all, so the alert's instruction is to feather before rpm falls that far. Partial power loss is where this bites hardest, because the engine is still turning and the decision feels less urgent than it is.
- Windmilling drag compares with the whole airframe's
- Feathering drops it to roughly the minimum available
- Start locks impose a deadline on the decision
- Partial power loss is the case that catches people
Which Engine Is Critical, And Why It Might Not Be Either
On a twin whose propellers turn the same way, P-factor puts each engine's effective thrust line slightly outboard of its own centreline. On the right engine that pushes the thrust line further from the fuselage. So losing the left engine leaves the remaining thrust acting on the longer arm, producing the larger yawing moment, which makes the left engine the critical one.
The follow-up question is whether your airplane has a critical engine at all. Twins built with counter-rotating propellers bring both descending blades inboard and the asymmetry disappears. Which arrangement a given airframe uses belongs to its type certificate data sheet and its flight manual, not to a web page, so read it there and be ready to say where you read it.
Which Speeds Will You Be Asked About, And Which Are Regulatory?
Four come up almost every time, and only one of them is defined in 14 CFR 1.2. Knowing which is which is exactly the sort of distinction an examiner enjoys, because it separates a pilot who has read the regulations from one who has read a summary.
V_MC — The Red Radial Line
Defined in 14 CFR 1.2 and established under 14 CFR 23.2135(c) by the manufacturer. The only speed in this list that the regulations themselves fix, and the reason the demonstration exists.
V_YSE — The Blue Radial Line
Best rate of climb with one engine out, shown as a blue radial mark on most airspeed indicators. Not in 14 CFR 1.2. It belongs to the flight manual and the instrument face.
V_XSE
Best angle of climb with one engine out — for clearing an obstacle rather than gaining height fastest. Also absent from the abbreviations 14 CFR 1.2 defines.
V_SSE
The safe speed for deliberately shutting an engine down, which is to say the slowest speed at which an instructor ought to be failing one on you on purpose. A training speed, published in the flight manual and nowhere in the regulations.
No Figures For Our Airplanes, Anywhere
This site publishes no V-speed number for any aircraft the school operates. The speed you will fly belongs to that airframe, at that weight, on that day, and the flight manual is the only authority on it.
How To Check Any Of This
14 CFR 1.2 lists every V-speed the regulations define, and it takes a minute to read. If anyone hands you a V-speed as though the FAA set it, that list settles the question.
What Must Be True Before You May Take The Test?
14 CFR 61.39 sets the prerequisites for any practical test under part 61, and it is worth reading rather than assuming, because two of its lines catch multi-engine candidates specifically.
The first is the endorsement. 61.39(a)(6) wants a signature from an authorized instructor certifying that you received and logged training in preparation for the test within the two calendar months before the month you apply, and that you are prepared for it. That is a rolling window, not a one-off box, and a candidate who trains hard and then waits three months for an examiner has to fly again before applying. The second is 61.63(c)(1), which adds an endorsement of its own attesting to competence in the knowledge areas and to proficiency in the operations the class rating covers.
The rest of 61.39(a) is administrative and easy to overlook until it stops you: a medical certificate if one is required, the age requirement, the completed and signed application form. None of that is difficult. All of it is capable of postponing a checkride by a week if it is discovered on the morning.
What Does Checkride Preparation Cost?
Nothing separate. Preparation for the practical test sits inside the $5,100 rating: the mock oral, the rehearsal flight, and the endorsement 14 CFR 61.63(c)(1) requires before an examiner will see you.
Multi-Engine Add-On
The rating, with every part of the test preparation inside the figure rather than beside it.
- ✓Every engine-out, feathering and control-demonstration exercise
- ✓Systems ground instruction for the oral
- ✓A mock oral before the day
- ✓A rehearsal flight with a second instructor
- ✓The 61.63(c)(1) endorsement
- ✓Retraining after a failed attempt, at no extra charge
Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion and fully enclosed. The cheapest place to drill identification and flows before a checkride.
- ✓Never scrubbed for cloud or wind
- ✓Strong on failure recognition and checklist discipline
- ✓Weak on landings, and we say so
Multi-Engine Discovery Flight
A fixed-price first flight in the twin. Ask the instructor to show you an engine failure at altitude.
- ✓Hands on the controls of the multi-engine trainer
- ✓Loggable as instruction
- ✓Credited in full on enrolment inside a day
Airline Career Track
Every certificate and rating in one sequence, with each checkride prepared for the same way.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Nothing repriced at a phase boundary
How Does This Compare With The Other Practical Tests?
The twin test is the only one on the route with no knowledge test standing in front of it, which changes how you prepare for it and how quickly it can be booked.
Multi-Engine Practical Test
Inside the rating. No knowledge test beforehand, and an oral weighted heavily toward systems.
- ✓61.63(c)(4) waives the extra written
- ✓Ninety minutes airborne is typical
- ✓Preparation and endorsement inside the price
Instrument Practical Test
Inside the instrument rating. The written comes first, which sets the earliest date you can sit the flight.
- ✓Knowledge test required beforehand
- ✓Actual instrument conditions available here
- ✓Worth holding before the twin test
Commercial Practical Test
Inside the career track. Tighter tolerances, and the standards that will be applied to your twin test if you hold a commercial certificate.
- ✓250 hours under 14 CFR 61.129
- ✓Commercial tolerances carry across to the twin test
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
What Happens If You Fail The Multi-Engine Checkride?
A notice of disapproval is issued, naming the tasks marked unsatisfactory, and those are what you retake rather than the whole test. The examiner will tell you what went wrong on the day; a good one will also tell you what to practise, and will be specific about it.
On our side the retraining is inside the $5,100 and no additional training charge appears on your account. What is not inside it is the second examiner appointment, because that fee belongs to the examiner rather than to us. We will not pretend otherwise and we do not collect it, so we cannot waive it.
The part worth saying honestly: most unsatisfactory twin checkrides are not caused by dramatic mishandling. They are caused by hesitation in the identification step, by drifting outside tolerances during single-engine work, or by an oral that revealed the systems study had been thin. All three are visible in training long before checkride day, which is why the rehearsal flight is flown with an instructor who has not been teaching you.
How Does A Private-Level Twin Test Differ From A Commercial-Level One?
Same tasks, different tolerances. The practical test is flown against the standards for the certificate you already hold, so the syllabus does not change and the marking does. Here is where the difference actually shows up.
Private Pilot Adding The Twin
The same task list, marked to private pilot tolerances.
Best fora private pilot who wants the class rating now
- Task ListIdentical
- TolerancesPrivate pilot standards
- Oral DepthSystems, thoroughly
- Knowledge Test FirstNone
- Price Here$5,100
Commercial Pilot Adding The Twin
The same task list again, marked to commercial tolerances, with an oral that pushes further.
Best fora commercial pilot heading toward multiengine work
- Task ListIdentical
- TolerancesCommercial standards
- Oral DepthSystems, and why
- Knowledge Test FirstNone
- Price Here$5,100
Side By Side
| Private Level | Commercial Level | |
|---|---|---|
| Governing Paragraph | 14 CFR 61.63(c) | 14 CFR 61.63(c) |
| Task List | The same | The same |
| Altitude And Heading Tolerances | Private standards | Tighter |
| Oral Emphasis | How the systems work | How and why |
| Knowledge Test Beforehand | None | None |
| Published Price Here | $5,100 | $5,100 |
What Limitation Can You Collect On The Day?
One, and it is avoidable. 14 CFR 61.45(b)(2) permits a practical test in an aircraft whose operating characteristics prevent the applicant demonstrating every required task, and then issues the certificate or rating with a limitation to match. For a multi-engine test flown by a pilot who does not hold an instrument rating, the limitation printed on the certificate reads Airplane Multiengine VFR Only.
It is removable later, but removing it means another practical test and another examiner appointment, so it is cheaper to avoid than to fix. The decision point is before you enrol rather than on checkride morning, and we will raise it with you rather than waiting to be asked.
A second limitation exists in the regulations and does not arise here. Testing in an airplane whose engines sit on the fuselage centreline produces a centerline-thrust limitation, because that airplane cannot demonstrate the asymmetric tasks at all. Our twin carries its engines out on the wings, so the asymmetric work is genuinely flown and nothing attaches.
What Makes Checkride Preparation Credible Rather Than Reassuring?
Repetition in the right airplane, with instructors who clear a legal bar, at a field where the flying actually happens on the days it was booked. Each of these is a fact you can confirm before you enrol.
Make-And-Model Hours Behind Every Multi Instructor
14 CFR 61.195(f) keeps an instructor out of multiengine rating instruction until five hours as pilot in command of that exact make and model are already logged. Ask how many people on a staff clear it in the airplane you would be tested in.
14 CFR 61.195(f)A Twin That Belongs To The Operation
The Piper Seminole is owned rather than chartered in, which is what allows drills to be repeated on consecutive days in the run-up to a test. Because it gives instruction for hire it carries the inspection regime that rule imposes.
14 CFR 91.409(b)Training Days A Year, Counted At This Field
From NOAA ASOS observations over the twelve months ending 1 August 2026, counting only days that held 3,000 ft of ceiling and 5 sm of visibility across four qualifying daylight hours. Checkride preparation decays when days are lost, so this figure matters more than it looks.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetFlight Instructors, So The Rehearsal Is Flown By A Second Pair Of Eyes
Each carries a commercial certificate or an ATP, then a flight instructor certificate on top, then a current medical. The dress rehearsal is deliberately flown with somebody who has not been teaching you, because your own instructor has stopped noticing your habits.
FAA Airmen Registry · 14 CFR 61.23Charged For Retraining After A Failed Attempt
Nothing. The retraining is inside the $5,100. The second examiner appointment is not, because that fee is the examiner's rather than ours.
Published in fullWhat We Can And Cannot Say About The Checkride
The examiner is not employed by Airline Pilot Flight School, and no school anywhere can influence the outcome of a practical test.
The examiner is independent of this school. A designated pilot examiner is authorised by the FAA, keeps their own diary, sets their own fee and reaches their own conclusion about your flying. Nothing we do influences that outcome, and any school implying otherwise is describing a relationship that should not exist.
No pass rate is published here, and none will be. The operation is new, any figure would rest on a sample too small to mean anything, and a pass rate is in any case a statement about who a school puts forward for a test rather than about how well it teaches.
Tolerances quoted on this page come from whichever Airman Certification Standards match your certificate, and those documents are revised from time to time. Read the current version rather than trusting a summary, including this one. Training happens at Van Nuys Airport under part 61; this is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and nothing here offers you a job.
What People Ask About The Twin Practical Test
An oral weighted heavily toward systems, then roughly ninety minutes airborne covering normal operations, engine failures before and after lift-off, manoeuvring with one engine inoperative, the control demonstration and a single-engine approach to a landing. Tolerances come from the Airman Certification Standards matching the certificate you hold.
The FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook directs the pilot to choose an altitude that leaves at least 3,000 feet of air beneath the manoeuvre. Recovery costs height, and the exercise deliberately approaches the edge of directional control, so the altitude exists to make that spend affordable.
The abbreviation is defined in 14 CFR 1.2: a minimum control speed, critical engine inoperative. The airworthiness rule at 14 CFR 23.2135(c) then makes it a calibrated airspeed at which control survives an abrupt critical loss of thrust, and obliges the manufacturer to establish it for the most critical takeoff and landing configurations. A certificated number, in other words, rather than a technique.
No, where an airplane rating already sits on your certificate at that level, because 14 CFR 61.63(c)(4) waives the additional knowledge test in that situation. There is still an oral at the practical test, and it goes considerably deeper into fuel, electrical and propeller systems than most candidates expect.
Because a small bank toward the operating engine lets a component of weight help the rudder hold the heading, which lowers the speed at which control is lost. The certification conditions cap that assistance at five degrees, so the published figure assumes no more than five degrees of help, and a candidate who banks fifteen has changed the exercise rather than performed it.
It raises it. Legs hanging below the fuselage add keel area behind the centre of gravity, so the airplane weathervanes toward the relative wind more willingly and the rudder gets unasked-for help. The certification conditions specify gear retracted, which is the unhelpful case, so the book figure assumes that help is absent.
The blue radial line marks V_YSE, the best rate of climb with one engine inoperative. The red radial line marks V_MC. Only V_MC is defined in 14 CFR 1.2; V_YSE belongs to the flight manual and the instrument face rather than to the regulations, and knowing that distinction is worth a mark in the oral.
No. The multiengine tasks sit inside the Airman Certification Standards for the certificate level you are testing at, alongside the single-engine tasks, which is why the tolerances applied to you depend on the certificate you already hold rather than on the rating you are adding.
You get a notice of disapproval naming the unsatisfactory tasks and you retake those rather than the whole test. Retraining is inside the $5,100 and no extra training charge appears on your account. The second examiner appointment is not included, because that fee belongs to the examiner rather than to this school.
Hesitation in the identification step, and thin systems study. Neither is dramatic and both are visible in training weeks before the test, which is why the rehearsal flight is flown with an instructor who has not been teaching you and can still see the habits your own instructor stopped noticing.
It is discussed on the ground rather than demonstrated in the airplane. In a light twin at approach speed and low altitude the manoeuvre has a very thin margin, and the training value does not justify the exposure. Expect to be asked to talk through the decision instead, in detail.
Training has to be received and logged toward the practical test inside the two calendar months preceding the month you apply, which is what 14 CFR 61.39(a)(6) asks for. It is a rolling window, so a candidate who finishes training and then waits several months for an examiner has to fly again before applying.
Keep Reading
Ask An Instructor To Show You An Engine Failure At Altitude
Book the multi-engine discovery flight and ask for it directly. Watching the airplane yaw, and feeling how much rudder it takes to stop, teaches you more about this page in thirty seconds than the page can in two thousand words.
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 →