See the questions before the actual test! Try our free private pilot practice test. The written practice test will show you exact questions from the real FAA Written Test.
Your actual Private Pilot Written Exam will consist of:
Ready for some IFR written test prep? Take our Free instrument rating practice written test. On the practice IFR written exam you will see real questions from the FAA test.
Your actual FAA written exam will:
The Commercial Pilot Written Test is very similar to the Private Pilot test, however knowledge is tested to a deeper level of FAA regulations, aerodynamics, airspace, and weather.
On the FAA test you will have:
Hear it directly from our students! Our study methods work! If you want to jump right into one of the practice written exams, you can click one of the three links above. Those links will take you to the FAA Pilot Practice Test for that rating or certificate. If you want to learn more about how to study properly for the FAA written exam, you can click the button above to download our free guide and learn how to boost your up to 20% in 2 hours or less!
The FAA written test is:
| FAA Test | Time |
|---|---|
| Private Pilot Test | 2.5 hours |
| Instrument Rating Test | 2.5 hours |
| Commercial Pilot Test | 3.0 hours |
| Flight Instructor Test | 2.5 hours |
| Drone Pilot Test | 2.0 hours |
| Drone Pilot Test (recurrent) | 1.5 hours |
Most folks do not need the full amount of time to complete the FAA test, however, there is no penalty or advantage to finishing early. Your score is based solely on the questions you get right and wrong.
Each FAA Written Test has a different number of questions:
| FAA Test | Questions |
|---|---|
| Private Pilot Test | 60 questions |
| Instrument Rating Test | 60 questions |
| Commercial Pilot Test | 100 questions |
| Flight Instructor Test | 100 questions |
| Drone Pilot Test | 60 questions |
| Drone Pilot Test (recurrent) | 40 questions |
The national average is 78% on the FAA written exam, our students here at www.fly8ma.com have an average of 94%!
If you fail any FAA written test (receive a score below 70%), you can retake the test, but first, you will have to:
But hey, you can always make things simple and sign up for our Written Prep Bootcamp Course here. We guarantee you will pass on your first try, or we'll pay for your test PLUS $175.
One of the best things you can do to prepare for the "knowledge test" or Written Exam as it is common referred to is exactly what you are doing right now, take practice tests and find you strong and weak spots of knowledge.
We also have a free guide you can download here that lays out a study plan to ensure you are successful on the FAA written exam. The guide is made for the Private Pilot Written Test, but applies the same to all FAA exams as they are all structured the same way, multiple-choice with three possible answers.
The most common mistakes are due to three things:
The first is easy, slow down, pay attention to words like and, or, beside, under, and not. These small conditional statements are placed there for a reason, they are not trying to trick you. The FAA simply is testing not only your knowledge but your attention to detail.
The second is quite frankly, very annoying. For many years the FAA has provided test supplements (books with figures and pictures in them) that are not to scale. If you try to use a ruler or chart plotter to measure distance, the maps shown in the FAA booklet are often off by about 10% or so. You can "calibrate" your chart plotter scale against the scale printed on the map and do the math conversion in your head. We walk you through that process in our "Take the test the right way" lesson here.
Third is generally from folks rushing and not taking the time to draw out questions to help visualize the location of the aircraft in relation to some reference on the ground. Our Written Prep BootCamps will walk you through how to "draw out" certain types of questions so you will be prepared for them on the test.
Well, that depends what you mean by "important". You can't be a private pilot or any type of pilot for that matter without taking the written exam. I guess that makes is sort of important.
Now that being said, if someone gets a 70% on the written and someone gets a 100% score, you would still call both of those people "pilots" (almost).
So once you're a pilot does your score matter, no not really. What's the (almost) part all about? The written exam is the first of three "tests" to become a pilot.
There is the written, the oral exam, and the flight test (the oral and flight test are conducted on the same day back to back and commonly referred to as your FAA Checkride). If you walk into the oral exam (which you guessed it, is you and someone from the FAA talking for two hours while they quiz you on your knowledge) and you got a 100% on your written exam, the oral is typically much shorter and easier.
Note: many of the questions on the oral exam are centered around the questions you missed on the written exam, thus the lower your score, the longer your oral questioning will be.
Some folks fail the oral, and thus fail their checkride (a very expensive fail, the retraining and retesting is generally around $1,000+). So, if you score high on the written exam, your oral will be shorter, easier, less time for you to mistakenly say the wrong thing, and you're much more likely to pass the checkride, becoming a pilot, and saving more time and money in the process.
