A flight instructor and student in the cockpit of a training aircraft

The Honest Version

How Hard Is It To Become A Pilot?

Harder than most hobbies, easier than most people fear, and difficult in a different place than they expect. The flying is a motor skill. The written exam is 60 questions at a passing score of 70. What actually stops people is money and calendar discipline, and both of those are visible before you start.

40-hour minimum, 14 CFR 61.10950 to 70 hours in practice, AOPA60 questions, 70 to pass$10,900 at Van Nuys, published

Book A $229 Discovery Flight Call (818) 290-8249

40 hrsFAA minimum for a private certificate, 14 CFR 61.109

70minimum passing score on every FAA airman knowledge test

5.0★70 reviews on Google

355flyable days a year at Van Nuys, from our NOAA study

The Short Answer

How Hard Is It To Become A Pilot?

The flying is the easy part to underestimate and the easy part to over-worry about. Handling an aircraft is a motor skill on the same shelf as driving a manual car or learning to ski: awkward for about ten hours, then steadily less so. The FAA sets the minimum at 40 hours of flight time for a private pilot certificate under 14 CFR 61.109, and AOPA puts what students actually need at somewhere between 50 and 70 hours. Almost nobody fails because they cannot fly the aeroplane.

The knowledge is a real workload and it is finite. The private pilot airplane knowledge test is 60 questions with a two-hour allowance and a minimum passing score of 70, according to the FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix. Weather, airspace, aerodynamics, regulations, navigation and aircraft systems. It is a semester of evening study, not a degree, and everything on it is published in advance.

The part that actually stops people is neither. It is money and calendar. Flight training is priced in aircraft hours, and the surest way to spend more of them is to fly infrequently, because skills decay between lessons and you pay to rebuild them. That is why this page treats training frequency as the difficulty, and why we publish a fixed package price — $10,900 for the standard private pilot program at Van Nuys — instead of an hourly meter that rewards a slow student.

Where It Is Actually Hard

What Is The Hardest Part Of Flight Training?

Four honest answers, in the order students hit them.

Landings, For About Fifteen Hours

Everyone plateaus on landings. The approach is a continuous judgement problem — height, speed, drift, aiming point, all changing at once and all interacting — and it is the first thing in training that cannot be broken into separate pieces and drilled. Students who are excellent at everything else land badly for a while, and it feels personal.

It resolves. The mechanism is repetition close together in time, which is why a school with aircraft availability matters more than a school with a clever syllabus.

The Radio, For About Five Hours

Van Nuys is a Class D field beneath the Los Angeles Class B shelf, which means real radio work from lesson one. Talking to a controller while flying an aircraft you are not yet comfortable in is genuinely hard for most people, and the fix is boring: listen to the tower before you fly, write down what you are going to say, and accept sounding like a student for a fortnight.

The upside is that radio work learned at a towered field under a Class B shelf transfers anywhere. Students who learn at quiet uncontrolled fields have to do this later, alone, in less forgiving airspace.

The Written Exam, If You Leave It Late

The private pilot airplane knowledge test is 60 questions, 2 hours, and a passing score of 70 under the FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix. Under 14 CFR 61.35 you need an instructor endorsement or other authorised evidence of ground training before you sit it, and under 14 CFR 61.49 a failed test requires an additional endorsement before you can retake it.

The mistake is doing it last. Students who pass the written before their first solo consistently spend fewer aircraft hours afterwards, because the aeroplane stops being where they learn airspace and weather.

The Checkride, Which Is A Performance

An oral examination followed by a flight test with an FAA-designated examiner. Under 14 CFR 61.43 you have to meet the standards for every required task, and 14 CFR 61.39 sets out the prerequisites and endorsements before you can even present yourself. Candidates who are rattled do worse than candidates who are undertrained but calm, which is why mock checkrides exist and why we would rather tell you no than send you early.

The Gates, In Order

What Do You Actually Have To Pass To Become A Pilot?

Every hard gate between you and a private pilot certificate, with the regulation that creates it. Nothing on this list is subjective.

Gate	Regulation or source	The standard
Student pilot certificate	14 CFR 61.83	Age 16, read and speak English
Medical certificate before solo	14 CFR 61.23	At least third class
Pre-solo knowledge test and endorsement	14 CFR 61.87	Instructor-written test, endorsement valid 90 days
Private pilot knowledge test	FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix	60 questions, 2 hours, pass mark 70
Minimum flight time	14 CFR 61.109	40 hours, of which 20 dual and 10 solo
Solo cross-country	14 CFR 61.109(a)(5)(ii)	150 nm total, full-stop landings at three points
Night training	14 CFR 61.109(a)(2)	3 hours, one flight over 100 nm, 10 full-stop landings
Practical test prerequisites	14 CFR 61.39	Instructor endorsement and passed knowledge test
Practical test standard	14 CFR 61.43	Every required task to the published standard
Minimum age to hold the certificate	14 CFR 61.103	17

What is not on this list: a degree, a maths qualification, perfect eyesight, or any aptitude test. There is no FAA aptitude screening for a private pilot certificate.

What Makes It Easier

How Do You Make Flight Training Less Hard?

Six levers, ranked by how much difference they actually make.

Fly Two Or Three Times A Week

This is the whole game. Fly once a fortnight and the first fifteen minutes of every lesson rebuilds what decayed; fly twice a week and skills compound. It is the difference between finishing near the 40-hour minimum in 14 CFR 61.109 and drifting past 70.

Finish The Written Before You Solo

The private pilot knowledge test is 60 questions at a pass mark of 70. Getting it out of the way early means you arrive at each lesson already knowing the airspace and the weather, so the aircraft is where you practise rather than where you learn.

Use The Simulator For Procedures

An hour in the Redbird MCX full-motion simulator, $189 a session, is where you should first meet an engine failure, an instrument scan or an unfamiliar approach. Simulator sessions are never cancelled for weather, and 2 hours are built into the $10,900 standard private pilot program.

Train Where The Weather Cooperates

Our NOAA study of twelve months of hourly observations counted 355 flyable days a year at Van Nuys against a 3,000 ft ceiling and 5 statute miles. In June at Van Nuys only 40% of 7am observations met training minima, rising to 93% by 11am, so book late-morning lessons in early summer.

Fix The Instructor Fit Early

Not every instructor suits every student, and staying with the wrong one out of politeness costs real money. Ask on day one what happens if you want to change. At Van Nuys we have a team of instructors and we will move you without a conversation about it being awkward.

Buy A Package Rather Than A Meter

An hourly meter charges a slow student more. A fixed package price does not. The standard private pilot program is $10,900 at Van Nuys, the comprehensive is $15,900, and enrolled students fly at $179 an hour, wet, single-engine. Financing starts at $2,500 down.

Who Finds It Hard

Who Struggles With Flight Training, And Who Does Not?

After enough students, patterns show up. None of them is what people expect.

Age Is Not The Predictor

There is no maximum age for a pilot certificate in the Federal Aviation Regulations. 14 CFR 61.103 sets a minimum of 17 for a private pilot certificate and 14 CFR 61.83 a minimum of 16 to fly solo, and there is no ceiling. Students in their sixties do fine. What changes with age is usually the medical, which is a separate question with its own regulations in Part 67.

Video Game Hours Are Not The Predictor Either

Simulator experience helps with instruments and radio and does very little for landings, because a screen removes the peripheral cues and the seat-of-the-pants feedback that a landing is actually judged with. Students who arrive with several hundred hours of desktop simulator time are often surprised by this, and they get over it in the same fifteen hours as everyone else.

The Real Predictor Is Schedule Stability

The students who finish are the ones who can hold two or three slots a week for four to six months. That is a life-logistics question rather than a talent question, and it is worth being honest with yourself about it before you spend anything. A discovery flight is $229 and answers a different question — whether you enjoy it — which is also worth answering first.

What We Will Not Pretend

We do not publish completion statistics, graduate counts or first-time checkride figures, and we would be sceptical of any school that does, because there is no independent way for you to check them. What is checkable is the price, the fleet, the 100-hour inspection interval in 14 CFR 91.409(b) and the number of instructors. Ask about those.

Priced, Not Quoted

What Does It Cost To Find Out If You Can Do It?

One hour answers most of the question, and the price of it comes off the program if you enrol.

Discovery Flight For One

$229

60 minutes. You fly the aircraft from the left seat with a certificated instructor beside you, and the hour is logged as dual instruction toward the 40 hours in 14 CFR 61.109.

Book A Discovery Flight

Standard Private Pilot

$10,900

40 logged hours, 30 hours of dual instruction, 2 simulator hours and 3 hours of ground school. Books and materials included.

Private Pilot Program

Comprehensive Private Pilot

$15,900

60 logged hours, 50 hours of dual, 5 simulator hours and 10 hours of ground school. Built for the student who expects to need more than the minimum, which is most students.

Comprehensive Program

Redbird MCX Simulator Session

$189

Full-motion, FAA-approved, and never cancelled for weather. The cheapest place to be bad at something new.

About The Simulator

Sport Pilot License

$8,400

20 hours of flight time under 14 CFR 61.313. A shorter syllabus and a smaller set of privileges.

Sport Pilot Program

Solo Certificate Program

$5,500

Train to first solo and stop there if you want to. A real milestone, priced on its own.

Solo Program

Enrolled students fly at $179 an hour, wet, in a single-engine aircraft. That is the only hourly figure we publish. Financing starts at $2,500 down.

Next Step

The Question Answers Itself In About An Hour

A $229 discovery flight from Van Nuys is a real lesson: you fly it, the hour is loggable, and the full price comes off any program if you enrol within 24 hours. If you would rather talk through the calendar and the money first, the in-person consultation is free. Call (818) 290-8249.

Call (818) 290-8249 Free Consultation

Discovery Flight For One

$229

60 minutes, you fly the aircraft, credited in full on enrolment within 24 hours

Book A Discovery Flight Or Call (818) 290-8249

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