Should I Complete the Written Exam Before Flight Training?

Flight training is a big investment of time, financial resources, and mental and logistical bandwidth. Whether you are getting your private license, instrument rating, or anything else, it’s a big commitment to see it all the way through. A large portion of students who start their private pilot’s license training never end up finishing, and ground school and written test prep can sometimes be the reason why.

In this post we’re going to explore the pros and cons of doing ground school before your actual flight training. This can be applied to just about any rating, but I’ll particularly focus on your private pilot’s license. It’s a common question: Should I complete ground school and or the written test before flight training?

In my personal experience after several ratings I have found it much more beneficial to complete ground school and my written exam prior to flight training. Doing so will provide more context for the flight portion of your training and also allow you to not pause or interrupt training to work towards your written exam.

If you read through forums you’ll find people on both sides of this argument, but let me explain why I think it’s fair better in the long run to focus on your ground school and written exam before most of your flight training occurs, and how and where you can complete this ground school.

Why You Should Take Ground School First

I took my formal ground school before my private, instrument, and commercial ratings and was extremely happy that I did. I found that I was able to progress through the flight portion of the training with a lot more consistency and it allowed my primary focus to be on learning the flight maneuvers and preparing for my practical test, already having completed the written test. Here are the reasons I strongly believe it’s more beneficial to start with ground school and written test before jumping into consistent flight training.

Reason #1: Context for Flight Training

The biggest reason I found doing a formal ground school and written test prep regimen before jumping into the airplane for many hours was that it provided context for all of the flight training that was to come. Particularly on my private and instrument ratings, completing ground school first was crucial for me to be able to understand what was actually happening in the flight.

If you skip straight to flight training, sure you’ll have some briefing before each flight where your instructor can explain what’s going to happen during that training flight, but will you really understand the full picture? Things like radio communications, traffic patterns, types of airspace, simple navigation, and flight principles will probably just be overwhelming at first if you haven’t really studied them before you fly.

It’s obviously way more fun to actually fly the plane than to just read about flying a plane, but the extra context and knowledge you have will make your actually flight training so much more efficient.

Reason #2: Faster Flight Training

This goes along with #1 above… the more context you have for each flight lesson by already completing ground school, the faster you’ll probably be able to progress through flight training. You’ll be less likely to repeat lessons or spend extra time briefing and de-briefing each flight lesson. You’ll start your flight training with some momentum and get to just focus on flying.

Reason #3: Possibly More Affordable Flight Training

This goes along with #2 above… the more efficient your flight training is, the less expensive it’s likely to be. It’s hard to just go sit in a room or in an online course studying flying when you really just want to go fly, but if you can knock out your ground school and written before you start filling your schedule with real flying, you might in fact save yourself some money.

Reason #4: Momentum

Possibly one of the best benefits to doing your ground school first is that you won’t have to interrupt flight training to stop and work on your written test prep. Having sat through several different ground school weekends, there were lots of pilots in there that were scrambling to learn the remainder of the material so that they could pass their written and take their check ride.

Think of how much momentum you lose when you take a break from flying the airplane so that you can go focus on book knowledge. If you go ahead and take care of that at the beginning, your flight training can go uninterrupted and allow you to focus on just the practical test.

Note: I should mention here that if you do ground school and your written test first, the “learning” or “book knowledge” doesn’t stop there. Part of being a pilot is that you are always learning. Some instructors would even tell me that your pilot’s license is simply a license to learn. So I recognize that if you do your ground school first you aren’t actually “done” with the book knowledge portion. But in my opinion, that’s the biggest hurdle in terms of head knowledge for your license, and so by focusing on that upfront you won’t have to have your written exam hanging over your head the closer you get to your check ride.

Reason #5: Better Chance of Finishing Your License

As mentioned earlier, a huge number of student pilots quit before they actually get their license. Some of it is expense related, but a lot of it is that they get busy and one month without flying quickly turns into a year or more, and they get discouraged and don’t come back.

One last benefit of getting your ground school and written exam out of the way first is that you’ll be 1/3 of the way done towards becoming a pilot! That might be enough to help keep you committed to the remainder of flight training and actually getting your rating. When the odds of finishing are stacked against you, anything you can do to increase the chances of you finishing will only come to benefit you.

The Counter Argument

I have found that the counter argument to the above is actually quite similar to my argument, just used a different way. I would argue that doing ground school first will give you context for the flight training, while others will argue the opposite and say that flying first will give you context for your ground school.

They aren’t necessarily wrong, but I just think that there are so many other benefits (outlined above) to doing your ground school first that set you up for success the rest of your flight training. And since your end goal is to become a proficient pilot, it seems like the better scenario to me is having ground school provide context for your flying so that the flying portion is easier and safer, not the other way around.

Ways to Complete Ground School and Written Test Prep

There isn’t a right or wrong way to complete ground school, but there are some methods that in my experience are more useful than others. Ultimately the goal is to get an instructor to provide an endorsement in your logbook indicating that you have received the requisite ground training and they find that you are prepared to take the written knowledge test.

Intensive Weekend Course

This is my personal favorite for ground school. For both my private and instrument ratings I attended a 3-day intensive ground school course at American Flyers (I trained at American Flyers for over 100 flight hours and countless more on the ground… if you want my candid thoughts on their program, I wrote it in this post).

The format was 8am-5pm Friday and Saturday, and 8am-3pm on Sunday. The class size was usually about 10-12 people so it was fairly intimate and you had plenty of time to ask all of the questions you wanted. They had a specific curriculum book that they would spend 20+ hours walking through page by page.

It was an exhausting weekend for sure, but at the end of it you’d have an endorsement to take your written exam.

American Flyers isn’t the only one who offers this, and a simple google search for weekend ground school will turn up others. The point is to get into an immersive environment, and then after rest and recovery taking the written exam when you’re comfortable (they don’t recommend you take the written on that Sunday but sometime that next week or two).

The price was pretty reasonable for the content and hours you were getting. At the time of this writing American Flyers’ ground school weekend is $495. My class had people that would fly in from across the country just to do the ground school and then return home.

Autonomous Online Course

This is my second favorite option if you learn more effectively on your own and at your own pace. Using an online course such as King Schools, Gleim, or Sporty’s, can be very effective. I used King Schools curriculum for my commercial rating and loved it. Their video courses with associated quizzes were a great way to study on my own time on my laptop, iPad, or phone (they have a decent app).

Personally I would not recommend this as a primary method if you’re working on your private license, as I think there are a lot of questions you’ll have that are probably best answered in person by an instructor. However, it’s definitely doable to use these self-study courses and supplement your studying with YouTube videos and other explanation articles across the web.

After completing King Schools curriculum and passing three practice exams they send you a certificate with a logbook endorsement and then you can schedule your written exam. It’s handy if you have limited time on the weekends or traveling to a formal ground school isn’t a good option for you.

Ground As You Go

Some students (by choice, or by necessity) will just conduct ground school as they progress through flight training. Typically this happens in more rural settings where you might only have one instructor that is going to be taking you through the entirety of your training.

If this is your situation, I would highly recommend you supplement this ground instruction with an online course (such as King Schools) or invest the time and money to attend an in-person ground school weekend. It will greatly speed up your training as compared to just doing ground lessons before each flight with your instructor until you are prepared to take the written.

Regardless of Your Method, Take Practice Tests

No matter how or when you choose to conduct your ground instruction, know that there are free practice exams available to you online that you can take as many times as you’d like prior to the actual exam. There’s no reason not to leverage this resource and it will make you a lot more comfortable and confident going into the actual test.

While the FAA stopped releasing their test banks a while ago, free practice exams such as the ones on King Schools website (you don’t need to be a customer to have access to these) will help you be very prepared and they are based on real questions from prior exams released by the FAA.