Program structure

The map every other artifact in this program hangs off. Every lesson, its phase, its topic, the ACS tasks it claims, its ground hours, and its dual hours. If a lesson is not on this list it is not in the program, and if a lesson's hours are not in this table the totals do not reconcile.

You already hold a commercial pilot certificate and an instrument rating. This program does not re-teach either. It teaches you to instruct, and every technical subject and maneuver lesson ends with you teaching rather than reciting.

Forty-two lessons. That is parameter P1, and it is derived work. The lesson set comes from FAA-S-ACS-25 and CFI_User_Stories.md, and the phase breakdown PDF in this folder was used only as an hours sanity check, per Decision 5. It arrived at forty-two lessons too, which is a coincidence worth naming so nobody mistakes agreement for adoption: the two sets differ substantially in what is in each phase and in where flying starts.

Phase 2 is where this program differs most from a generic one. The reference breakdown runs eighteen consecutive ground lessons before the candidate touches an airplane, with flying starting at its lesson 26. Decision 6 rejects that. A rusty pilot who does eighteen consecutive ground lessons gets rustier, not sharper, and a P3 second-career candidate is the one who pays for it. Here, flying begins at lesson 10 and ground and flight alternate from there.

Ground only. This is the whole of ACS Area of Operation I, and the whole of Epic 3.

Lesson 3 carries the extra half hour because you write a lesson plan in it rather than read about writing one. It is the lesson the rest of the program depends on most.

Milestone after lesson 7: the fundamentals of instructing knowledge test. See the knowledge test sequence below.

ACS Areas II and III, plus the right-seat introduction and the early maneuver work Decision 6 moves up. Seventeen lessons.

Lesson 10 is the hinge of the whole program. It is the right-seat introduction, it is where flying begins, and its completion standard is right-seat solo-equivalent competence at private standards. Per Decision 9 there is no proficiency gate: falling short of that standard does not block lesson 11. It triggers the remediation visibility rule instead. See policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

Milestone after lesson 24: the flight instructor airplane knowledge test.

ACS Areas IV, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, and XIV. Fourteen lessons. Every one of them except lesson 31 flies.

Every lesson in this phase runs the same four-part cycle required by US-5.2: brief, demonstrate, talk through, critique and debrief. The preflight ground lesson on the maneuver is a graded element, not a warm-up, because AI.IV.A is the ACS task that tests exactly that.

Lesson 31 is a ground lesson and it is required. Per US-6.1 and Decision 7 it exists whether or not North Aero ever owns an aircraft approved for intentional spins. It is deliberately separate from lessons 32 and 33 so that neither the stall series nor the spin material is compressed by the other, which is what US-6.3 requires.

External spin flight training sits between lesson 31 and the phase 3 to phase 4 boundary. It is not a North Aero lesson, carries no North Aero hours, and appears in no total in this document. See the spin scheduling trigger below.

Emergencies appear in more than one phase, per US-5.6. Lesson 38 is where emergency operations are taught as their own subject, but emergency scenarios are built into lessons 12, 30, 32, 34, and 35 as well. A candidate who first meets an engine failure at lesson 38 has been taught the North Aero way badly.

Four lessons.

These reconcile exactly with the sum of the lesson rows above. They are program hours, not a prediction of what any individual candidate will fly. Remediation is additional and is tracked separately, per US-5.7.

Sanity check against the reference breakdown

Decision 5 requires this check and nothing more. The phase breakdown PDF is not an adopted answer and its figures are not a target.

Dual matches closely and needs no explanation. Ground runs 17% high, and it runs high for two reasons that are both deliberate.

First, the reference's ground lessons end in recall and these end in teaching. US-4.1 makes every technical subject lesson's completion standard a taught presentation. Watching a candidate teach a subject, then critiquing it, takes longer than confirming they know it. Most of the variance is here, spread thinly across phase 2.

Second, the mock oral is scheduled at full practical test scope, which US-8.2 requires. The reference allots 2.0 and 1.0 hours to its two mock lessons. A flight instructor oral at real scope does not finish in an hour, and scheduling it as though it does produces a mock that is easier than the test it is preparing you for, which defeats the purpose.

Lesson 40 was raised from 3.0 to 4.0 ground hours on 2026-08-14, on Erick's decision. Ticket 41 raised the question rather than answering it, because an initial flight instructor oral is one of the longest in general aviation and routinely exceeds three hours, and because moving a lesson's hours moves the phase subtotal, the program totals, this sanity check, and the pacing scenarios. That is not a change an artifact should make to itself. It is now decided and all five are updated. standards/MOCK-PRACTICAL.md keeps the rule that the mock ends when the plan of action is complete rather than when the block does, so 4.0 is a better floor rather than a new ceiling.

Neither reason is a cost estimate and neither is pricing. Per Decision 15 and cross-cutting requirement 8, no phase package price, program total, or prepay structure appears in this document or anywhere else in this project.

All 69 ASEL-applicable tasks in FAA-S-ACS-25 are claimed by at least one lesson above. The authoritative record of which lesson claims which task is program/COVERAGE-MATRIX.md, and a lesson claims a task by naming it in both places in the same change.

The sixteen tasks not claimed are the sixteen marked n/a ASEL in the matrix: the seaplane and multiengine tasks, and Area XIII in full.

P1. Lesson count and phase boundaries

Forty-two lessons. Phase 1 is lessons 1 to 7, phase 2 is 8 to 24, phase 3 is 25 to 38, phase 4 is 39 to 42. Flying begins at lesson 10. Derived from the ACS and the stories, sanity checked above.

P5. Spin training scheduling trigger

The candidate is told to begin arranging their spin training at the phase 1 to phase 2 boundary, that is, on completion of lesson 7. Not later, and not when phase 3 comes into view.

North Aero does not provide spin flight training and does not select or book a provider. The candidate arranges and pays for their own, and the checkride-gating item is the completed 61.183(i) endorsement rather than any booking. North Aero assists, checks at four points, and verifies and captures the endorsement. Full allocation of responsibility in policy/EXTERNAL-SPIN-MODULE.md. This superseded the "arranged for me inside the program" premise in US-6.2, and the story was amended to match on 2026-08-14 by Decision 42. CFI_User_Stories.md is at v0.5 and the two now agree.

Planning figure: up to eight weeks, stated explicitly here because it is an assumption and not a fact, and because North Aero no longer engages a provider it can no longer verify it. The real lead time for the provider a given candidate actually uses is captured on their file at the lesson 7 checkpoint. If it is materially longer than eight weeks, the candidate starts sooner or lesson 31 moves earlier within phase 3, rather than the checkride moving later.

The flight itself occurs between lesson 31 and the phase 3 to phase 4 boundary. Lesson 31 must come first: US-6.1 requires the ground lesson before you ever spin an airplane, so that the flight confirms understanding rather than creating it.

Where this can still go wrong, named rather than hidden. On the accelerated pacing scenario, four sessions a week, lessons 8 through 31 take roughly six weeks. That is shorter than the eight week lead time assumption, so a fast P1 candidate can reach lesson 31 before the spin slot is available. The mitigation is not to book later, it is to move lesson 31 earlier within phase 3 for that candidate, which the phase 3 ordering permits because lesson 31 has no flight prerequisite.

This is risk R7, and under the current model it sits on the candidate's side of the line. North Aero cannot slip on a vendor it does not engage. What North Aero can do wrong is tell the candidate too late, which is why the trigger is lesson 7 and why there are four checkpoints rather than one.

P6. Knowledge test placement

Two knowledge tests are required, and both are prerequisites for the practical test.

Exemption to check before scheduling the first test. Under 61.183(e), verified against live eCFR on 2026-08-13, an applicant does not need to pass the fundamentals of instructing knowledge test if they hold a flight instructor or ground instructor certificate issued under part 61, hold a State, county, city, or municipal teacher's certificate authorizing teaching at 7th grade or higher, or are employed as a teacher at an accredited college or university. A P3 second-career candidate who taught school is the case this exemption exists for, and it is worth asking about at enrollment rather than discovering after they have paid a test fee.

Validity: 24 calendar months. Under 61.39(a)(1)(i), verified live on 2026-08-13, the knowledge test must be passed within the 24-calendar-month period preceding the month in which the applicant completes the practical test. Taking the fundamentals test after lesson 7 leaves the whole of phases 2, 3, and 4 inside that window on every pacing scenario in program/PACING.md, including the slowest.

Per cross-cutting requirement 4, validity is re-verified against the live regulation on the day any artifact stating it is issued. The date above is the date this document was issued.

P7. Recorded phase 3 maneuver lessons

Four, and they are named here rather than left to whoever remembers to turn a camera on, which is what US-12.2 requires.

Four of thirteen flying lessons in phase 3 is a floor, not a cap. Recording more is fine.

The written assessment is the record and the footage is not, per Decision 37. Footage is deleted on the 30 day Promotion Window. Any judgment that has to survive, including anything feeding the lesson 40 or 41 mock or the practical test recommendation, is written down at review time. See policy/RECORDING-AND-RETENTION.md.

A camera changes nothing about the intervention threshold in US-5.4, and each of these four lesson plans says so explicitly.

Lessons 40 and 41 are conducted by a second instructor from the Delivery Pool who is not the candidate's Supervising Instructor. This is a requirement, not a preference. Decision 4 removed the staffing escape clause US-8.2 used to carry.

Scheduling consequence, which is why it is named in this document. The second instructor is booked at the phase 3 to phase 4 boundary, at least two weeks before lesson 40. They are not available on demand, and a mock oral at full practical test scope is a three hour commitment for them as well as for the candidate.

Output is a written deficiency list with assigned remediation, not a pass or fail sentiment. Lesson 42 exists to close that list.

This program cannot be delivered end to end today. The Delivery Pool holds one person, and lessons 40 and 41 require a second. That is objective O2 and risk R1, and it is raised on the board rather than absorbed here. The standard for who may join the pool is standards/DELIVERY-CAPABILITY.md.

Per Decision 12, CFII is out for v1, nothing is built for it, and the public page stays silent.

The seam is this: phases are defined by what is being taught, not by a fixed lesson number range, and the coverage matrix is keyed on ACS task code with the certificate as a property of the table. A CFII axis arrives later as an additional phase between phases 3 and 4, plus a second coverage table keyed on the flight instructor instrument ACS. No lesson in this document is renumbered, no phase boundary here moves, and no row in the coverage matrix changes.

What is deliberately not done: no lesson here is pre-annotated "also CFII", and no gap is left in the numbering to hold CFII lessons. Both would be building for CFII.

• Pricing of any kind. No phase package price, no program total, no prepay structure (Decision 15, cross-cutting requirement 8). Hourly rates come from /RATES.md, which does not exist yet and is raised on the board. Candidate-facing cost figures are produced by the enrollment project as a range.
• The materials list, which is program/MATERIALS.md.
• Pacing guidance, which is program/PACING.md.
• Per-candidate progress. Tracker Status lives in the candidate's own copy of the coverage matrix, per Decision 30.

• ✓Every lesson listed with number, phase, topic, ACS areas, ground hours, and dual hours
• ✓Totals reconcile exactly with the sum of the lessons
• ✓Derived from the ACS and the stories, sanity checked against 37.95 ground and 27.0 dual
• ✓Phase boundaries and purposes stated
• ✓Flying begins at lesson 10 (Decision 6)
• ✓Knowledge test placement named (P6)
• ✓Spin scheduling trigger named, relative to a phase boundary, with the lead time assumption stated (P5)
• ✓Minimum recorded phase 3 lessons named (P7)
• ✓Second instructor's role named so scheduling accounts for it
• ✓CFII seam present, nothing built for CFII (Decision 12)
• ✓No phase package price, program total, or prepay structure anywhere (Decision 15)
• ✓FAA references verified current on the date issued, 2026-08-13