Multi-Engine Rating Cost
$5,100, set on the day you enrol rather than estimated and revisited. This page prints what the figure carries, what it deliberately leaves out, and how to tell a large quote from an expensive one.
What Does A Multi-Engine Rating Cost, In One Number?
$5,100 at this school, flown in a Piper Seminole the operation owns, and the number is set the day you enrol rather than estimated and then revisited. There is no range on this page because a range is not a price, and there is nothing to request because the figure is already printed.
Two things make a fixed figure possible on this particular rating, and both are structural. The first is that 14 CFR 61.63(c) attaches no training-time minimum to an added class rating, so nobody has to build a price around a regulatory hour count that may or may not fit you. The second is that the airplane belongs to us. A school renting its twin from a third party is exposed to somebody else's rate card, and that exposure is exactly where estimates come from.
The honest cost of a fixed price is that it is not the cheapest possible outcome for a fast student. Someone who finishes in nine hours has paid the same as someone who needed sixteen. We think that trade is worth it, because the alternative asks you to carry the risk of a bad-weather fortnight, and you are far less able to absorb it than we are.
What Does The $5,100 Actually Cover?
Everything the school controls, and nothing it does not. A price published without its exclusions is a marketing number rather than a commercial one, so both halves are printed here.
Inside: the Piper Seminole time flown to practical test standard, with an instructor beside you on every hour of it. The systems ground instruction — fuel, electrical, hydraulic, propeller governors, the feathering mechanism and the accumulator that unfeathers — which is where a twin oral is actually won. Every engine-out drill, every feathering exercise, the V_MC demonstration, single-engine approaches and the go-around you will not really be given. A mock oral and a rehearsal flight before the test. And the logbook endorsement 61.63(c)(1) requires before an examiner will see you.
Outside, and named here rather than discovered in week two: the designated pilot examiner, whom you engage and pay directly, with no margin added by us and no invoice from us; your medical certificate, which is between you and an aviation medical examiner; and your own headset, charts and apps, which are yours to choose and yours to keep. We publish no dollar figures for any of those three, because none of them is money that passes through this school and quoting somebody else's fee as though it were ours would be inventing a number.
Not sold here at all: aircraft hire. There is no rate card on this site for any airframe, and no hourly figure for the Piper Seminole exists anywhere on it. The twin is available as this $5,100 rating and as the $499 multi-engine discovery flight, which is a fixed-price flight rather than a rate. The one hourly rate published on this site is $179 wet in a single-engine airplane, for students already enrolled, covering the airframe and its fuel and never the instructor.
Why Is Adding A Twin Rating Cheaper Than Earning A Certificate In One?
Because two different regulations apply and only one of them counts hours. Understanding which of the two a quote describes explains almost every alarming gap you will meet in twin pricing, so it is worth doing before anything else.
Route one is 14 CFR 61.63(c): airplane multiengine land bolted onto a certificate already in your pocket. It asks for an instructor endorsement and a passed practical test, and it lifts part 61's training-time floors for that certificate level. Nothing in it says ten hours, or fifteen. Route two is the commercial certificate itself, earned with a multiengine class rating under 14 CFR 61.129(b), and that paragraph counts relentlessly: 250 hours of flight time overall, with named items the regulation insists be flown in a twin.
Add those named items up. Five hours of the instrument training, ten hours in a multiengine complex or turbine airplane, a two-hour day cross-country, a two-hour night cross-country, three hours of test preparation flown within the two calendar months running up to the checkride, and ten hours of solo or instructor-supervised pilot-in-command duties. That is roughly thirty hours of twin flying before anyone argues about whether some of them may overlap. Thirty hours in a light twin is a very large sum of money, and a school quoting for that route is quoting for a different object, not gouging you.
Every Course We Teach, By Price
Every figure below is a package, set at enrolment. The multi-engine add-on is the row this page is about. Course books and study materials sit inside each private pilot program rather than beside it. Financing From $2,500 Down →
Multi-Engine Discovery FlightA fixed-price first flight in the twin, hands on the controls, loggable, credited in full against a program you enrol in inside a day.
$499
Book →
Every figure above is a package price set at enrolment. No ranges are published on this site and no price sits behind an enquiry form. The examiner's fee, your medical certificate and your own equipment are outside every package listed here.
What Sits Outside The $5,100, And Why We Name It?
Three things, and we would rather you read them here than find them later. The examiner is the largest. A designated pilot examiner is an individual with their own schedule and their own fee, engaged and paid by you. We do not collect it, we do not add to it, and we do not print a figure for it, because publishing another person's fee as though it were part of our price would be misleading in both directions.
Your medical certificate is the second. It comes from an aviation medical examiner, not from us. The third is personal equipment — headset, charts, whatever apps you settle on. Those stay yours when the rating is finished, which is the argument for buying your own rather than borrowing ours.
What is deliberately not on this list is anything you might reasonably have assumed was included. Ground instruction is inside. The rehearsal flight is inside. Extra hours, if the weather or your progress demands them, are inside. If a quote you are comparing puts any of those outside, that is not a cheaper quote — it is a smaller one.
How Do You Read Any Multi-Engine Quote In Five Lines?
Write these five down the side of a page and fill them in for everyone you are considering, ourselves included. Most twin quotes are not comparable as issued, and usually not because anyone is being dishonest — they are simply describing different objects. No school is named on this site and no competitor's figure appears anywhere on it.
Line One — What Shape Is The Number?
A total you will owe, or a rate that gets multiplied later? Write down which. A rate with an assumed hour count printed beside it is a forecast wearing a price tag, and forecasts of that kind run optimistic more often than they run pessimistic.
Line Two — Is The Right Seat Inside It?
Nobody earns this rating without an instructor on essentially every hour. A quote that prices the airframe and mentions instruction separately reads cheaper on the page and settles dearer at the end of it. Ask for one figure with both in.
Line Three — What Happens If It Overruns?
Ask what changes if you need five hours past the syllabus, and get the answer in writing. Ours changes nothing, because $5,100 is set at enrolment and an unusually slow fortnight is our problem. Any other answer is a variable price wearing a fixed one's clothes.
Line Four — Does It Carry The Ground?
Does the figure include the systems instruction the oral will actually test, or only flight time? Twin orals are won on fuel, electrical and propeller systems, and ground teaching is the easiest thing in the world to leave quietly out of a quotation.
Line Five — Which Exclusions Were Volunteered?
Every honest quote excludes something. The useful question is whether the exclusions were offered to you or discovered by you. Ours are three, they are printed above the price rather than below it, and none of them is billed through this school.
How Do You Tell A Large Quote From An Expensive One?
Ask one question before any of the five: is this quote for a class rating under 61.63(c), or for a commercial certificate earned in a multiengine airplane under 61.129(b)? Everything else follows from the answer, and most of the alarming gaps in twin pricing resolve into it.
If the answer is the class rating, you are buying ten to fifteen hours of twin time and an endorsement, and quotes should land in the same neighbourhood. If the answer is the commercial route, you are buying roughly thirty hours of multiengine flying on top of a 250-hour certificate, and the number will be several times larger for reasons that are structural rather than commercial.
A school that cannot tell you which of the two it is quoting for has not thought about your training carefully enough to be trusted with it. A school that can, and that explains the difference before you ask, is showing you something more useful than a discount.
What Are The Ways To Buy Time In The Seminole?
Two, and only two. The rating, and the fixed-price discovery flight. There is no third option and there is no rate card, on this page or anywhere else on this site.
Multi-Engine Add-On
Airplane multiengine land, added to whatever certificate you hold now. Priced as a rating, not as a stack of hours.
- ✓Seminole time flown to practical test standard
- ✓An instructor on every hour of it
- ✓Systems ground instruction for the oral
- ✓Mock oral and rehearsal flight
- ✓The 61.63(c)(1) endorsement
- ✓Unchanged if you need longer than average
Multi-Engine Discovery Flight
A fixed-price first flight in the twin with an instructor. You handle the airplane and the time is loggable.
- ✓Hands on the controls of the multi-engine trainer
- ✓Credited in full against a program you enrol in inside a day
- ✓The cheapest way to test the idea before committing
Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion, fully enclosed, never scrubbed for weather. Cheaper than the airplane for drilling identification and flows.
- ✓Good for checklists, flows and failure recognition
- ✓Weak on landings, and we say so
- ✓Bookable on its own
Where Does $5,100 Sit In The Whole Bill?
Phase four of five on the career route, and the smallest line on it. Read the ladder as a running total rather than a menu, because the cumulative figure is the one that actually decides anything.
Phase One — Private Pilot
The Comprehensive program: sixty logged hours, five of them in the Redbird. Running total, $15,900.
- ✓55 hours single-engine, 5 hours full-motion simulator
- ✓50 hours dual, 10 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Phase Two — Instrument Rating
Flying on a clearance, in weather. Running total, $27,600.
- ✓Removes the VFR-only limitation risk on the twin test
- ✓Actual instrument conditions available at this field
- ✓Priced as a rating, not an hour count
Phase Four — Multi-Engine
The rating this page is about. Taken after the commercial certificate, not inside it. Running total at this point, well under the career price.
- ✓Ten to fifteen Seminole hours in the ordinary case
- ✓No knowledge test standing in front of it
- ✓Ten to fourteen days flying consecutively
All Of It, One Price
Private, instrument, commercial, multi-engine and instructor, bought as a single sequence rather than five purchases.
- ✓Nothing repriced at a phase boundary
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓The multi-engine rating disappears into the total
Can A Multi-Engine Rating Be Financed?
Yes. Deposits start at $2,500, either through Stratus Financial or on an in-house payment plan, and choosing between the two is usually a question of how fast you want the balance gone rather than which is cheaper on the day.
A $5,100 rating is unusual on the finance side because it is small and short. Most flight training finance is designed around a multi-year certificate, so a two-week rating either sits awkwardly inside it or is better handled by a payment plan that ends when the training does. We will say which we think fits you, and if the answer is that you should simply pay for it, we will say that too.
One thing worth being blunt about: financing does not change the price. $5,100 is $5,100 whether it arrives in one payment or twelve, and any structure that quietly increases the total is a structure you should be shown in full before you sign it. Ask for the total repayable, not the monthly figure. A monthly figure is designed to be comfortable; a total is designed to be true.
Which Route Is A Quote Actually Pricing?
Set the two regulatory routes side by side and most pricing confusion in multi-engine training disappears. One counts no hours at all. The other counts about thirty of them in a twin, and that is where the money is.
Add The Class Rating
14 CFR 61.63(c). Endorsement, practical test, no training-time floor of any kind.
Best foranyone adding a twin to a certificate they already hold
- Governing Paragraph61.63(c)
- Required Twin HoursNone specified
- Extra Knowledge TestNone — 61.63(c)(4)
- Typical Aircraft Time10–15 hours
- Price Here$5,100
- Calendar Time10–14 days
Commercial AMEL In The Twin
14 CFR 61.129(b). The commercial certificate itself, with its aeronautical experience flown in a multiengine airplane.
Best fora pilot who needs multiengine time on the logbook page, not only the rating
- Governing Paragraph61.129(b)
- Total Flight Time250 hours
- Twin Time In The Named ItemsAbout 30 hours
- Extra Knowledge TestCommercial written required
- Where It Is PricedInside the career track
- Calendar TimeMonths
Side By Side
| Add The Class Rating | Commercial AMEL In The Twin | |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation | 14 CFR 61.63(c) | 14 CFR 61.129(b) |
| Minimum Training Hours | None specified | 250 total, about 30 in a twin |
| Knowledge Test | Not required | Commercial written required |
| Instructor Endorsement | 61.63(c)(1) | 61.39(a)(6) |
| Typical Twin Time | 10 to 15 hours | About 30 hours |
| Calendar Time | Ten to fourteen days | Months |
| Published Price Here | $5,100 | Inside $89,000 |
What Happens If The Rating Takes Longer Than Average?
Nothing happens to the invoice. $5,100 is the figure at enrolment and it is the figure at the checkride, whether the airplane took you nine hours or seventeen. A fortnight of low cloud, a week when the aircraft is in for an inspection, a plateau in the engine-out drills — those are our problems to absorb, not yours to fund.
We can hold that line for one reason. The Seminole belongs to the operation. A school hiring its twin in has a meter running against somebody else's rate card, and no amount of goodwill lets it absorb an extra five hours. That is why the ownership question is worth asking of every quote you compare, and why the answer predicts how the last week of your training will feel.
The limit of the promise, stated plainly: it covers training to the standard. It does not cover a second checkride fee if you fail the first, because that fee belongs to the examiner rather than to us. The retraining before that second attempt is inside the price. The examiner is not.
What Makes A Fixed Twin Price Possible?
Four structural facts, each of which you can check by asking a direct question. A fixed price is not a promise about our character. It is a consequence of who owns the airplane and how many instructors can fly it.
The Seminole Is Owned, Not Hired For The Day
The twin belongs to the operation and sits on the field. That is what lets a price be fixed rather than estimated, and it is the difference between a booking and a queue. Because it is used to give instruction for hire, it carries the inspection regime that rule imposes.
14 CFR 91.409(b)Flight Instructors, So A Slow Week Can Be Rescheduled
Each carries a commercial certificate or an ATP, then a flight instructor certificate above that, then a current medical. A fixed price only survives if a lost day can be replaced by another one, and that needs more than a single diary.
FAA Airmen Registry · 14 CFR 61.23Make-And-Model Hours Behind Every Multi Instructor
14 CFR 61.195(f) shuts an instructor out of multiengine rating instruction until five hours as pilot in command of that exact make and model are already logged. It is a small bar and a real one, and it is fair to ask who on the staff clears it.
14 CFR 61.195(f)Training Days A Year, Counted Rather Than Asserted
From NOAA ASOS observations at this field across the twelve months ending 1 August 2026, counting only days where the ceiling held at 3,000 feet or better with five statute miles of visibility across four qualifying daylight hours. Weather risk is what a fixed price is really absorbing.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetPrices Held Behind An Enquiry Form
None of them. $5,100 is on this page with its exclusions above it, and every other course price is in the board further up.
Published in fullWhat The Price Does Not Promise
The price quoted here is what Airline Pilot Flight School charges for the rating, at any tempo you choose to fly it.
$5,100 buys training to the standard of the practical test. It does not buy the rating itself, because only a designated pilot examiner can issue that, and it does not buy a guaranteed date, because weather, maintenance and examiner availability are all real and none of them takes instruction from us.
No pass rate, graduate count or completion-time guarantee is published here. The operation is new and any such figure would be drawn from a sample too small to mean anything. What is published instead is the syllabus, the price, the hours people typically need, and the paragraph of part 61 sitting behind every claim on this page.
Training happens at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. This is not an airline and it is not owned by one. No cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier exists, and nothing on this page offers you an interview, a job or a salary.
What People Ask About The Price
$5,100, set on the day you enrol. It covers the Piper Seminole time flown to practical test standard, an instructor on every hour, the systems ground instruction, every engine-out and V_MC exercise, a mock oral, a rehearsal flight and the endorsement 61.63(c)(1) requires. Outside it: the examiner, your medical certificate, and the equipment you buy for yourself.
No. $5,100 is fixed at enrolment and stays there whether the airplane took you nine hours or seventeen. That is possible because the twin belongs to the school rather than being chartered in, which is the thing worth checking in any quote you compare against this one.
There is not one, and there will not be one. No rate card for aircraft hire is published on this site for any airframe. The twin is available as the $5,100 rating and as the $499 multi-engine discovery flight, which is a fixed-price flight rather than a rate. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries no hourly figure here either.
No, and no figure for it is published on this site. A designated pilot examiner is an independent individual whom you engage and pay directly. We add no margin and take no cut, and quoting somebody else's fee as part of our price would misrepresent both.
Yes. Deposits start at $2,500, either through Stratus Financial or on an in-house plan. Financing moves when you pay rather than what you pay: $5,100 is $5,100 either way. Ask for the total repayable rather than the monthly figure, because a monthly figure is designed to be comfortable and a total is designed to be true.
Almost never. 14 CFR 61.129(b) requires named items to be flown in a multiengine airplane which add to roughly thirty hours, whereas 61.63(c) attaches no hour floor to an added class rating at all. Thirty hours of light-twin flying is a large sum. The usual advice is the commercial certificate first, then the twin rating added afterwards.
Ten to fifteen in the airplane is the ordinary range, with instrument-current pilots flying consecutive days finishing nearer the bottom of it. No regulation sets a floor, so this is an observation about people rather than a rule, and the price does not move with it.
The retraining is inside the $5,100. The second examiner appointment is not, because that fee belongs to the examiner rather than to us. We will tell you plainly what went wrong and what has to change before you go back, and no additional training charge appears on your account.
There is no written exam to include. 14 CFR 61.63(c)(4) waives the additional knowledge test for anyone already holding an airplane rating at the same certificate level. There is still an oral at the practical test, and preparing for it is inside the price.
The $499 multi-engine discovery flight. You handle the airplane, the time goes in your logbook, and the whole fee is credited against a program you enrol in inside a day. Ten minutes aloft settles a question that no quantity of reading will.
No, and there is no premium for financing either. The published price is the price in both directions. We would rather run one honest number than a discount structure that rewards whoever asks the most persistently.
It is the smallest line on the route. Bought separately alongside the other phases it sits between the instrument rating and the instructor certificates. Bought inside the zero-to-airline program it disappears into the $89,000, which carries every certificate and rating in one sequence with nothing repriced at a phase boundary.
Spend $499 First And Find Out Whether You Want The Twin
A fixed-price first flight in the Piper Seminole, hands on the controls, logged as instruction. It is the least expensive possible test of a $5,100 decision, and the whole fee is credited if you enrol inside a day.
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 →