Multi-engine rating cost
$5,100, set on the day you enrol. This page shows what that figure carries, what it deliberately leaves out, and where it sits inside the total bill for a career.
What does a multi-engine rating cost, in one number?
$5,100 at this school, flown in a Piper Seminole, and the figure is set the day you enrol rather than estimated and revisited. There is no range on this page because a range is not a price, and there is nothing to request because the number is already printed.
Most twin quotes you will collect are not really quotes. They are an hourly rate for the airplane, an hourly rate for the instructor, and an assumed number of hours, multiplied together by whoever is reading the page. That arithmetic is fine until the hours run long, and in twin training they run long more often than they run short, because the syllabus is built around a drill you repeat until it is automatic rather than a list you complete.
So the meaningful question is not what an hour costs. It is what the rating costs, and who carries the risk when it takes longer than expected. Here that risk sits with us. Enrol at $5,100 and the number does not move because week two went slowly.
One honest caveat before the itemisation. $5,100 buys a rating, not a guarantee of one. If an examiner is not satisfied, you retrain and retest, and the retest carries its own examiner fee, which is paid by you like the first one. What does not happen is a second invoice from us for the extra instruction.
What does the $5,100 actually cover?
Everything the school controls, and nothing it does not. Below is both halves, because a price published without its exclusions is a marketing number rather than a commercial one.
Inside the figure
Flight time in the Seminole taken to the standard an examiner will test, with an instructor in the other seat on all of it. There is no version of this rating you fly solo, so pricing the airframe separately would describe something you cannot buy.
- Twin flight time through to checkride standard
- Dual instruction on every hour of it
- One-to-one ground and systems teaching for the oral
- All engine-out, identification, feathering and V_MC work
- Redbird MCX time where the syllabus uses it
- A mock oral and a full rehearsal flight
- The logbook endorsement 14 CFR 61.63(c)(1) requires
Outside the figure, and named rather than discovered
Three things, all of which you pay directly to whoever provides them. We take no margin on any of them and would rather you paid them at cost than through us.
Every honest quote in this industry excludes something. The difference worth caring about is whether the exclusions were volunteered on the price page or discovered in the fourth week.
- The designated pilot examiner, whom you engage and pay yourself
- Your medical certificate
- Your own headset, charts and personal equipment
What is not sold here at all
There is no hourly rate for the Piper Seminole on this site, and there will not be one. The twin is available as the $5,100 rating and as a $499 hour of dual instruction, and in no other form. No rate card for aircraft hire is published here.
The single hourly figure published anywhere on this site is $179 wet in a single-engine airplane, for students already enrolled in a program. That covers the airframe and the fuel it burns. It does not cover the instructor, because instruction is inside the program price rather than beside it.
Why is adding a twin rating so much cheaper than earning a certificate in one?
Because two different regulations apply, and only one of them counts hours. Adding a class rating falls under 14 CFR 61.63(c), which attaches no training-time floor at all. Earning a commercial certificate in a multiengine airplane falls under 14 CFR 61.129(b), which counts a great deal.
Route one: add the class rating
You already hold a certificate. You add airplane multiengine land to it under 61.63(c): an instructor endorsement, a practical test, and no minimum hours specified. This is the $5,100 product.
- Governed by14 CFR 61.63(c)
- Hour floorNone — 61.63(c)(3)
- Knowledge testNone, per 61.63(c)(4)
- Typical twin timeTen to fifteen hours
- Price here$5,100
Route two: earn the commercial certificate in the twin
You take the commercial practical test in a multiengine airplane. Now 61.129(b) applies, and it specifies more than thirty hours of the training and experience in a multiengine airplane before you are eligible.
- Governed by14 CFR 61.129(b)
- Total time250 hours
- Twin instrument training5 of the 10 hours, per (b)(3)(i)
- Complex or turbine twin10 hours, per (b)(3)(ii)
- Solo or PIC-duties in a twin10 hours, per (b)(4)
What that difference is worth
Route two is a legitimate way to hold a commercial multiengine certificate from the start, and some people want it. It also puts roughly thirty extra hours of twin time on your bill. Route one gets you the same class rating for the cost of the rating alone.
- Extra twin hoursRoughly thirty, under 61.129(b)
- Extra written testNone either way
- Our recommendationCommercial in a single, then add the twin
- Where we explain itThe commercial add-on page
What does the rating cost inside a whole career bill?
$5,100 is phase four of five. Priced separately it is the smallest line on the ladder; priced inside the career track it disappears into a single number. Both are published.
Multi-Engine Add-On
Bought on its own, added to a private or a commercial certificate you already hold.
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
- ✓Ten to fifteen hours is typical
- ✓No hourly rate for the twin anywhere
Airline Career Track
Zero hours to a commercial certificate with an instructor rating, priced once. The twin rating is inside it.
- ✓Five phases, one number
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Nothing is repriced at a boundary
Instrument Rating
Phase two. Worth finishing before the twin, because the instrument tasks on the twin test are easier when the scan already exists.
- ✓40 hours instrument under 61.65(d)
- ✓The 250 nm IFR cross-country
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Assessment flight in the twin
An hour of dual in the Seminole before you commit to anything. Loggable, and credited whole if you enrol inside a day.
- ✓Sixty minutes, dual, in the multi-engine trainer
- ✓You fly it
- ✓Credited against the program
What makes a fixed twin price possible?
Owning the airplane. A school that charters its twin in has to price the risk of somebody else's rate card, and that is where estimates come from.
The Seminole is owned, not hired for the day
Because the twin belongs to the operation, its availability and its cost are ours to manage rather than a third party's to quote. That is the whole reason a fixed figure is possible on a multi-engine rating at all.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Airframe types on the ramp
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Owning the progression means the single-engine hours before the twin are priced by the same operation on the same terms.
Owned and maintained in-houseA Redbird MCX session, priced in public
Full-motion and fully enclosed. Identification drills and flows rehearse well in it and cost less than doing the same repetitions in the airplane. Weather never cancels it.
$189 a sessionTraining days a year at this field
Counted from NOAA ASOS observations across the twelve months ending 1 August 2026, requiring a ceiling of 3,000 feet and five statute miles for four qualifying daylight hours before a day counted. Cancelled days are what turn a fixed price into an estimate elsewhere.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetHeld back behind an enquiry form
Nothing. Every program price is on the site, including this one, with no spread and no gate.
Published in fullHow do you check whether another quote is really cheaper?
Convert both quotes into the same object before comparing them. No school is named here and no rival's figure appears on this site, so what follows is a method rather than an argument.
Start by writing down whether each quote is a total or a rate. If it is a rate, find the assumed hour count and write that down too, then ask what happens when the assumption is wrong. That single question usually moves the numbers more than anything else on the page.
Then check whether instruction is inside the figure. Twin training is dual on effectively every hour, so an airframe-only rate is describing part of the purchase. Add the instruction back in before you compare anything.
Then ask what the ground and systems teaching costs, because the oral on a multi-engine checkride is systems-heavy and it is the easiest component for a quotation to omit silently.
Finally, list the exclusions on both sides. Ours are three and they are named above: examiner, medical, personal equipment. If another quote names fewer, that is worth a question rather than an assumption.
Where the resulting total lands above $5,100 for the same class rating in the same class of airplane, something specific is being bought with the difference. Asking what it is before paying it is ordinary diligence, and a school that answers the question clearly has earned the premium or has not.
What the price does not promise
$5,100 buys training to the standard of the practical test and the endorsement required to take it. It does not buy the certificate, because the certificate is issued by an examiner on the day against the Airman Certification Standards, and no school can sell that outcome. Anyone who implies otherwise is selling something they do not control.
Training here happens at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. This 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 offers an interview, a job or a salary.
No pass rate and no graduate count appear on this site. The operation is new and any such figure would come from a sample too small to be worth printing. The syllabus, the price, the usual hours and the regulation behind each requirement are published instead, which is what you can actually check.
What people ask about the price
$5,100, fixed at enrolment. It carries the Seminole flight time to checkride standard, the instructor on all of it, the ground and systems teaching, every engine-out and V_MC exercise, the simulator time the syllabus uses, and the 61.63(c)(1) endorsement. Examiner, medical and personal equipment are outside it.
No. $5,100 is set when you enrol and does not move because you needed fifteen hours rather than ten. That is the difference between a package and an estimate, and it is the question worth asking of anybody quoting for this rating.
There is not one on this site and there will not be. The twin is sold as the $5,100 rating and as a $499 hour of dual instruction, and in no other shape. The only hourly figure published here is $179 wet in a single-engine airplane for enrolled students, which covers the airframe and its fuel but not the instructor.
No. You book the designated pilot examiner and pay them directly, with no margin added by us. It is one of exactly three exclusions, the others being your medical certificate and your own headset and charts, and all three are named on the price band above rather than left to be discovered.
Yes. Financing opens at $2,500 down, on monthly plans, and it covers the add-on as readily as the larger programs. If the twin rating is one phase of a career route rather than a standalone purchase, the whole route is $89,000 and is financed the same way.
No, and the regulation explains why. An added class rating falls under 61.63(c), which attaches no hour minimum whatever. Sitting the commercial test in a multiengine airplane instead brings 61.129(b) into play, and that paragraph specifies ten hours of training in a complex or turbine twin, five of the ten instrument hours flown in a twin, and a further ten hours either solo or on pilot-in-command duties in one. Roughly thirty extra hours of twin flying, in other words.
Ten to fifteen in the airplane for most people. Pilots who are instrument-current and flying weekly sit at the lower end; pilots returning after a long gap sit at the upper end. The regulation sets no floor at all, so the hours are a description of what usually happens rather than a rule.
You retrain and retest. The additional instruction is not re-invoiced by us, because the $5,100 covers training to standard. The examiner's fee for the retest is paid by you, exactly as the first one was, since we do not employ or bill for the examiner.
There is no written test to include. Where an airplane rating already sits on your certificate at that level, the extra knowledge test disappears under 61.63(c)(4) — one of the reasons this rating stays short and inexpensive next to the others.
As phase four of five. Comprehensive Private Pilot sits at $15,900; the instrument rating adds $11,700 for a running total of $27,600; the twin add-on is $5,100 on top. Taken instead as one continuous route from zero hours through to a commercial certificate with an instructor rating, the entire sequence carries a single price of $89,000.
Where to read next
Spend $499 first and find out whether you want the twin at all
An hour of dual instruction in the Seminole settles more than any price page can. You do the flying, the hour goes in a logbook, and enrolling inside a day takes the fee off the program rather than leaving it beside one.
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 →