The FAA A&P oral and practical, and what actually happens

There are three orals and three practicals, one of each per section. Every one is graded on its own at 70%, and the oral and practical portions are kept strictly separate. Projects can no longer be combined during testing the way they were under the old standards.

A Designated Mechanic Examiner gives it, and you contact and schedule with them directly. An FAA inspector may give it in some cases. Before the test the examiner runs a pretest interview, and an evaluator tests no more than one applicant at a time. Nothing is done as a group.

The examiner does not pick the questions. They generate a test planning sheet from the FAA’s online Mechanic Test Generator, which picks both the oral questions and the practical projects. And the ACS states that an applicant is not permitted to know, before testing begins, which selections from each subject area are included. There is nothing to be tipped off about.

This is the fact this whole site is built around, and it comes from the FAA itself, not from guesswork.

Every question you get wrong on a written test is printed on your Airman Knowledge Test Report as an ACS code. You keep that report, you hand it to the examiner, and the examiner reads it at the pretest interview to see where you were weak. Each code adds one extra oral question, one per code, not one per missed question.

No reference material is allowed during the oral. (It is allowed for the practical questions, but the examiner supplies it. You do not bring your own.)

A 70% and a 95% are the same pass on paper, but they are not the same day with the examiner. That is what the knowledge tests page means when it says to aim past the pass mark.

The FAA fixes the project count: 9 General, 11 Airframe, 11 Powerplant, which is 31 for a full A&P. Each one stands alone and is graded pass or fail, and during each one the examiner must ask you 2 practical questions from the test generator. Miss either question, or fail the hands on work, and the whole project fails.

The 70% applies to the section, not to each project, so in General you must pass 7 of the 9. In Airframe and Powerplant it is 8 of 11.

Projects come from the Skill elements of the ACS. The examiner provides the tools, equipment and reference material: 14 CFR, airworthiness directives, advisory circulars, and manufacturers’ manuals. You may not bring your own reference material. Nonprogrammable calculators are allowed, and personal tools are up to the examiner.

Safety is graded on its own. ACS Appendix 2 states that any disregard for safety is not tolerated and will result in a failure. That covers protective equipment, cleanliness, tool handling, current publications, and attitude. Where doing a project would really put safety at risk, you will be asked to simulate that part.

Project wording uses six defined task verbs, and the examiner may go over them with you before or while assigning elements. They are narrower than the way the shop uses them. If you fail a project for doing more or less than the verb asked for, you failed on reading, not on skill.

You will meet these on your test report and again in every study source worth using, so they are worth ten seconds. AM.II.E.S3 reads:

The letter before the number is the element type, and it tells you where that element is tested. That is the part worth remembering:

These replaced the old Level 1 / Level 2 / Level 3 teaching levels, which were deleted along with the Part 147 appendices that carried them in 2022. If a study source grades a topic “Level 2”, it is older than the current system.

⚠ The two numbers everyone wants here are the two the FAA does not publish. It sets no time limit (its own wording is that there is no specific time limit to answer a question or finish a project), and it publishes no examiner fee schedule. What follows comes from examiners’ own published pages, read on 19 August 2026, and it is a different kind of fact from everything else on this page.

Duration. Working examiners quote roughly 8 to 10 hours for a full A&P, with one setting aside a full day for a complete test and a half day for a partial or a retake. In practice, plan for one to two days.

Fee. Published schedules ranged from about $500 to $700 a section, or roughly $1200 to $1600 for a full A&P. The sources count differently, some per section and some per rating, which is part of why there is no honest single number. The Companion Guide’s only rule is that designees may charge a reasonable fee and that it should be discussed and agreed before the scheduled test. The one fee on the whole route that anybody does publish, PSI’s for the writtens, sits beside this range on what an FAA A&P costs.

Bring: Two identically prepared FAA Forms 8610-2, with original signatures; Your passing Airman Knowledge Test Report for every rating sought; Current government issued photo ID carrying a signature. The FAA warns that failing to bring them may result in the test being delayed or terminated.

Pass, and you leave with a certificate. The examiner issues FAA Form 8060-4, a temporary airman certificate, valid for 120 days or until the Airmen Certification Branch issues the permanent one, whichever comes first. It carries the full privileges of the rating from that moment.

This page covers one part of the route to your FAA A&P. The other pages cover the rest.

The reference pages under the guide each answer one question, for when what you want is the number rather than the explanation.

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.