Leveraging Online Training: How an Online Course Saves You Money by Julie Boatman

When you set off to learn how to fly, you follow steps towards your goal of obtaining a pilot certificate. You’ll need a medical certificate, then pass a knowledge exam, and learn to fly in stages that prepare you to pass a checkride. 

In order to streamline the process—and ensure you come to the airport ready to fly—many flight schools ask you to pass the required knowledge exam (the “written test” though it’s completed online) before you begin flying. You may hear this referred to as “ground school.”

The best way to achieve the ground school goal quickly and economically is to complete an online home study course, which educates you on the topics you need to understand to become a pilot. Then, it prepares you to take the knowledge exam when you “graduate” the course. Making the right choice here can save you a lot of time—and money—in the long run, because you will:

• come to each flight lesson with a base understanding of the material,

• hear critical topics explained by a variety of experienced instructors,

• have time to formulate follow-up questions for your flight instructor, and

• go “direct” to practicing the maneuvers and scenarios you need to pass the checkride rather than spending time in the airplane or on the ground reviewing the basics.

You will simply spend less time on the ground reviewing lessons with your instructor, and you will leverage your time in the simulator and in the airplane so that you complete the course with few flying hours—for less money overall.


Choosing the Right Course—It’s All About Structure

To understand why selecting the best online ground school helps you leverage this requirement, you should understand how an expert training provider develops its courses.

The Av8 Prep Private Pilot Course uses a combination of high-energy videos featuring a certificated flight instructor (CFI) delivering the critical portions of the lesson alongside in-flight aerial photography and crisp animations—but how they execute on this makes all the difference in your experience as a learner. 

Take a look at the instructors who deliver AV8 Prep’s course. The lessons within have been developed by CFIs who have logged more than 50,000 collective hours of training learners and building experience in the air. They hold advanced certifications—well beyond the minimum required by the FAA—and they have helped thousands of pilots learn how to fly. So each engaging video segment is built upon this solid foundation. 

Plus, review questions follow each segment, to allow you to check your comprehension of the material. The online course will conclude in a final exam—and you’ll aim for a score of 90 percent or higher on it.


A Note on That Final Score

Why would you need to pass the final exam with more than 90 percent when the FAA exams only require a passing grade of 70 percent? Well, humans tend to go one of two directions when taking exams under the pressure of a “real” scenario. Either you excel (in which case, you will naturally score higher) or you get nervous and biff a few more questions than you might when asked the same ones while sitting on your couch in your pajamas. So, when the online program requires you to do better than you need to during its practice exams, it is ensuring you know enough that you can stress out and miss a couple more than your “normal” and still pass the FAA test. 

That’s also why AV8 Prep offers a “guarantee” that you will pass the FAA test if you successfully pass the final exam with a score of 90 percent, and take the knowledge test within 72 hours of that “pass.” They have effectively stacked the deck in everyone’s favor—and you come out the winner, because you are nearly assured of passing the exam on your first try.

Overall Training Philosophy and CFIs

Just knowing you want to integrate your flight training with online study—with its ability to travel with you wherever you have time to learn—can also help you identify a great instructor. They’ll get it. And you know why? Because the learner who comes to each lesson prepared will be ready to absorb more of the material and apply it in the ground lesson, simulator, or aircraft.

The Syllabus Question

A syllabus forms the detailed map for your learning journey, and it should include:

• at-home (online ground school supported by printed references or ebooks),


• in-person or remote ground instruction,
 structured sim time, 


• and in-the-aircraft flight training.


A flight school that follows a structured “Part 141” program—one which has gone through an additional FAA approval process beyond the certification of its instructors—must follow a syllabus that the FAA has approved the school to use within its specific facilities. But any school—including “Part 61” or less formal ones—or independent instructor should use a syllabus and provide it to you for review during your selection process.

The AV8 Prep online study course follows a progressive syllabus of its own—a study path that you will follow to complete the sections in sequence. This has been carefully crafted by the expert instructors behind the development of its course material.

Though you may pick and choose which sections you do when—especially when you want to return to review a section—the AV8 Prep Private Pilot program follows a “building block” method of teaching material, where one lesson builds on the prior one. So it pays to stay with the course’s desired pathway, if you can.

How To Handle Those Parts You Don’t Understand Right Away

How an online course handles your mistakes also shows how rigorously it has been developed—because every learner experiences learning plateaus and mental roadblocks along the way to understanding new material. Within the video segments, the instructors go over common mistakes as well as misconceptions. Explanations of incorrect answers following the review questions also help you understand where you went wrong.

The online course can also serve as a way to supplement your training once you’ve started flying, because you can return to any section of the instructional videos when you have questions and find an alternate explanation. 

The Takeaway?

The investment you make in online ground school pays off, then, over and over during your flight training journey. By starting your training now, with AV8 Prep’s Private Pilot Course, you can make the first step towards your dream of flying.