Flight Instructor Program · program
Ticket: 06. Materials list and pacing scenarios
Story: US-2.4
Gate: Enrollment
Built on: program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md, 42 lessons, 17 of which fly
Issued: 2026-08-13
Time to certificate is a consequence of the pace you choose, not a target this program measures you against. A candidate doing one session a week around a full-time job takes roughly three times as long as a candidate doing four, and that is the correct outcome for both of them. North Aero does not track time to certificate as a success measure, deliberately, because doing so would push every candidate toward a pace that suits only one of them.
What follows is arithmetic plus an honest weather allowance. Pick the row that matches the life you actually have rather than the one you would like to have, because the cost of choosing optimistically is not a slipped date, it is the spacing problems in the second half of this page.
Forty-two lessons. Seventeen of them fly.
| Four sessions a week | Two sessions a week | One session a week | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who this fits | A time builder training full time | A candidate with a flexible job, or part-time work | A second-career candidate around full-time work |
| Lessons per week | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Arithmetic minimum | 11 weeks | 21 weeks | 42 weeks |
| Weather and cancellation allowance | +2 weeks | +3 weeks | +6 weeks |
| Knowledge test scheduling | +1 week | +1 week | +2 weeks |
| External spin module | +0 to 3 weeks | +0 weeks | +0 weeks |
| Checkride scheduling and examiner availability | +2 weeks | +3 weeks | +4 weeks |
| Realistic calendar duration | 16 to 19 weeks, about 4 to 5 months | 28 weeks, about 6 to 7 months | 54 weeks, about 12 to 13 months |
Weather. Seventeen lessons fly. Assume roughly one in four flight slots is lost to weather or maintenance over a year in this area, which is neither pessimistic nor a promise. That is four to five flight slots to re-book. At four sessions a week you absorb them quickly. At one session a week, a cancelled flight lesson costs a fortnight, because the next slot is a week out and the one after that is two.
Knowledge tests. Two tests, each needing a testing center appointment. See policy/KNOWLEDGE-TESTS.md.
The external spin module is the allowance most likely to be wrong, because no provider is selected yet. The program structure assumes up to eight weeks of lead time and initiates booking at the phase 1 to phase 2 boundary. At two or one sessions a week that lead time disappears inside the normal program calendar and costs nothing. At four sessions a week it does not, which is why that column carries up to three weeks and the others carry none. This is risk R7. Ticket 38 replaces the assumption with a fact once a provider is chosen.
Checkride scheduling depends on examiner availability, which North Aero does not control.
This is the part of the page that actually changes decisions. Most of this program tolerates gaps. These pairs do not, and a candidate on the one-session-a-week scenario should plan to double up on the weeks below rather than let them drift.
| Keep together | Why | Suggested maximum gap |
|---|---|---|
| Lesson 3 to lesson 4 | You write a lesson plan in 3 and it is critiqued in 4. A plan you wrote a month ago is somebody else's plan | 1 week |
| Lesson 10 to lesson 13 | Right-seat sight picture decays faster than anything else in this program, and lesson 10 is the first time you have ever sat there | 2 weeks |
| Lesson 13 to lesson 23 | Same reason. This is the longest right-seat gap the structure contains, and it is deliberate, but stretching it further undoes lesson 10 | 4 weeks |
| Lesson 25 to lesson 26 | Talk-while-flying builds directly on the four-part cycle you learned in 25. Separating them turns one skill into two | 1 week |
| Lesson 30 to lessons 32 and 33 | Slow flight, then the stall series. The stall work assumes the slow flight handling is current | 2 weeks |
| Lesson 32 to lesson 33 | One stall series split across two lessons. Splitting it further is how the second half gets taught as a fresh subject | 1 week |
| Lesson 31 to the external spin flight | The ground lesson exists so the flight confirms understanding rather than creating it. Six weeks later it is creating it again | 3 weeks |
| Lesson 7 to the fundamentals of instructing knowledge test | The whole of phase 1 is the test material, and it is never fresher than the week you finish | 2 weeks |
| Lesson 24 to the flight instructor airplane knowledge test | Same reason, for phase 2 | 3 weeks |
| Lessons 40 and 41 to lesson 42 to the checkride | The mock produces a deficiency list. Closing it three weeks later means re-establishing what the deficiencies were | 2 weeks |
Lessons that tolerate gaps well, so that you know where the slack is: most of phase 2's ground-only technical subject lessons, which are 11, 12, 14 through 22. Each is largely self-contained and can absorb a schedule interruption without losing much. If something has to slip, slip these.
policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md. A slower pace does not mean more lessons; it means the same lessons spread further apart. Where a slower pace does cost more is currency: a right-seat skill re-established after a six week gap takes real time to re-establish, and that time is remediation like any other.Per Decision 15 and cross-cutting requirement 8. The enrollment project produces candidate-facing cost as a range, from the lesson count and hours in program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md and the hourly rates in the school's rate source.