How to get your FAA A&P mechanic certificate

The FAA issues a mechanic certificate. It is one certificate, not two, and it carries an Airframe rating, a Powerplant rating, or both. Holding both is what the industry calls an A&P, and the FAA itself writes that such mechanics “are referred to in the industry as A&Ps”. There is no FAA document titled A&P and no third rating. The FAA has said directly that it issues no specialist ratings for welders, electronics specialists or ground equipment.

You can hold one rating alone. The FAA says there is no requirement to get both. Adding the second later costs you one more written test and the experience to back it, not a second General test.

It does not expire. Under § 65.15 the A&P certificate is effective until surrendered, suspended or revoked. What lapses is your right to use it: § 65.83 wants 6 months of relevant work in the preceding 24. That is a condition on using the certificate, not an expiry date, and nothing is filed with anybody.

Two limits are worth knowing before you start, because they surprise people who assume an A&P covers everything they can reach: major repairs to, and major alterations of, propellers, and any repair to, or alteration of, instruments. Instruments are excluded entirely, not just major work on them. And approving anything for return to service after a major repair or alteration, or doing an annual inspection, needs an Inspection Authorization on top.

For scale: the FAA counted 348,426 active mechanic certificates at the end of 2025, and issued 11,103 new ones during 2025, the highest figure in its ten year series. (The FAA does not publish a split between airframe only, powerplant only and both, so nobody can honestly tell you how many of those are A&Ps.)

Most guides to the A&P describe the writtens and stop. The writtens are stage three of six. Here is the whole thing, in order. Each stage names the section of Part 65 that governs it, so you can check any line against the regulation instead of taking our word for it.

Each of these answers one part of the route properly, with its numbers and the regulation behind them. They are written to be read in this order, and each one links to the next.

And 4 pages to look things up in, when the question is a number or a word rather than a stage of the route.

There are three tests, one per section of the Airman Certification Standards. General is tested on its own even though it is not a rating you can hold. Everyone takes it once, and you never take it again when you add the second rating.

Notice the numbers are not even. Airframe and Powerplant carry 100 questions in the same 2 hours General gets for 60. That is 72 seconds a question against 120, and it is the most useful thing to know before you book.

All three draw from the 40 subject areas of FAA-S-ACS-1, which 14 CFR §§ 65.75 and 65.79 incorporate by reference. That means the standard carries the force of the rule instead of sitting beside it as guidance. It is a real change from the Practical Test Standards it replaced, and it is why any material still describing the PTS is describing a dead document.

The format and the rules around it are on the knowledge tests page. What happens after is on the oral and practical page.

Every fact on this page was read from these on 19 August 2026. They are the authority and we are the summary. If we and one of them disagree, they are right.