FAA FIA
·Updated August 2026
The CFI written re-tests commercial-level airplane knowledge from the instructor’s seat and layers the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook on top — community estimates put FIA/CAX airplane-content overlap near 80%. If you just passed the CAX and FOI, the FIA is a consolidation exam; exclam.ai’s plan weights the truly-new instructional material.
100 multiple-choice questions, 2.5 hours, passing score 70%. Taken at PSI testing centers with the CT-8080-5H supplement. Minimum age 16; usually taken alongside or shortly after the FOI.
Two corpora in one test: the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook plus commercial-level airplane knowledge. Community estimates put the airplane-content overlap with CAX near 80%.
CY2025 pass rate 95.35% — lower than CAX and FOI individually, because the breadth is the challenge.
Take it close to the FOI: the instructing material is shared, and recency is worth points.
CY2025: 14,736 tests, 95.35% pass rate, 88.89% average score (FAA AKT Volume Report). Passing score is 70% on every FAA airman knowledge test. Verify current testing details at faa.gov/training_testing before scheduling.
Paraphrased from the FAA Airman Certification Standards and the source handbooks. Every FIA question maps to a knowledge element in the ACS.
FOI theory re-asked in flight-training scenarios rather than the abstract.
Commercial-depth aerodynamics, systems, and performance — now with "teach it" framing.
The instructor-specific layer: how maneuvers go wrong and how to correct them.
The paperwork spine of instructing: what a CFI may sign and when.
exclam.ai does not reproduce FAA test questions. Area names and focus points above are paraphrased from the publicly published ACS at faa.gov.
Every document below is a work of the U.S. federal government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. §105 — the same PDFs the test questions are written against. Upload them to exclam.ai to build a study plan from the source material itself.
THE source for the FOI written and the instructing half of the CFI written: learning theory, teaching methods, assessment.
The base aeronautical-knowledge text: aerodynamics, systems, performance, airspace, navigation, and weather theory.
Maneuvers, takeoffs and landings, emergency procedures, and night operations — the flight-procedure half of the written.
The consolidated weather reference — theory, hazards, and every weather product the ACS references.
The official blueprint for both the FOI and FIA writtens.
The FAA PDFs above are free and public domain. Upload them and exclam.ai builds the reading order, weighted by what the test actually asks — no paid course required.
Practice questions and quick checks generated from the handbooks themselves, mapped to the 4 FIA knowledge areas. Every answer traces back to a page.
~65 hours of weighted coverage paced to your test date, with review of weak areas and recomputation when you fall behind.
Most candidates take the FOI first or the same week — the instructing fundamentals overlap, and the FOI is the shorter test. Both come from the CT-8080-5H supplement family.
Community analyses put airplane-content overlap near 80%. The new material is the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook layer plus instructor regulations and endorsements. Weight your plan there.
With a recent CAX pass, 3-4 weeks focused on the AIH and instructor regs is common. From scratch, plan 8+ weeks — the corpus spans five documents.
Spin awareness and stall/spin instruction appear on the written; the actual spin training endorsement is a flight requirement (14 CFR 61.183). Know both the aerodynamics and the paperwork.
Upload the free FAA handbooks or your own ground-school notes and exclam.ai builds an adaptive daily plan around your test date.
Preparing for more than one exam? exclam.ai works across every major professional credential. Your flashcard history, spaced repetition data, and study preferences carry across verticals in a single account.