Best Private Pilot Online Ground School: Part Time Pilot

Yes, the course was created by Nick Smith who is a certificated ground instructor by the FAA with privileges to provide students the endorsement required to take their FAA Knowledge Exam (Written Test). The endorsement is signed of by Nick himself and all content within the ground school follows the required FAA knowledge outlined in the Airmen Certificate Standards (ACS) (Airman Certification Standards | Federal Aviation Administration, 2024).

Yes! We will give you a printable PDF certificate with Nick Smith’s instructor certificate number and sign off for you to take the Private Pilot FAA Knowledge Exam (FAA Written). This endorsement, is required for you to take the exam along with your ID. After you finish the lessons of the ground school, you will be given access to FAA Written Practice tests (Airman Testing | Federal Aviation Administration, 2025). In order to receive your endorsement, Part Time Pilot just needs to see you score an average of 81% or higher on your first attempt at a unique test before we send your endorsement. When you do these tests, we also send you a custom test report with review recommendations and we will work with your over email to answer any questions you may have. When students complete this process with us, they pass the FAA Written exam at a 99.9% success rate and an average score over 90%.

Yes! The course was created by Nick Smith who is a certificated ground instructor by the FAA with privileges to provide students the endorsement required to take their FAA Knowledge Exam (Written Test). The endorsement is signed of by Nick himself and all content within the ground school follows the required FAA knowledge outlined in the Airmen Certificate Standards (ACS) (Airman Certification Standards | Federal Aviation Administration, 2024).

Part Time Pilot has successfully endorsed and helped over 4000 students take and pass their Private Pilot exams. You can see over 400 independent reviews of verified student pilot customers here on the 3rd party review site, Trust Pilot.

The Part Time Pilot Private Pilot Online Ground School is $249.99 for lifetime access which can come in handy. 

Yes! Part Time Pilot offers refunds. We believe that a good company and a good product is not one that you feel forced to keep and pay for. We believe in our courses ability to teach you to become a great, safe pilot and pass your exams with high scores. We only want people in our course who want to be in the course. As long as you have not completed over 50% of the content in the online ground school, we will allow a full refund. 

Yes! Part Time Pilot offers a 100% money back guarantee if a student receives an endorsement from us but does NOT pass their FAA Written Exam. This has only happened twice out of over 4000 students and each of those 2 times we refunded the student and helped them to pass their test on the 2nd attempt. 

There are many options for online ground school today, and the best one is the one that helps you understand the material and supports your success in flight training. Instead of a single “best” option, different ground schools excel in different areas such as flight lesson readiness, budget-concious pilot, passing the FAA written exam, mobile and offline learning, visual & interactive content, busy professional, lifetime resource, instructor support, CFI collaboration and customer satisfaction.

To see a full breakdown of the top options by category and find the best fit for your needs, check out our complete guide here:  Ultimate Buyer’s Guide: What is the Best Online Ground School in 2026?

Yes, Part Time Pilot offers a 33% discount on all courses and course bundle deals to active military and veterans. To request a discount, please contact us here. 

The Part Time Pilot Private Pilot Online Ground School includes every lesson required to be learned by Private Pilots from the FAA. Each lesson includes a written lesson with visual aids and step by step examples, an audio lesson, a quiz, and a trained AI instructor chat. The vast majority ~80% of the lessons also include a video lesson. The Private Pilot membership also includes access to our VIP podcast which allows students to download ad free audio lessons and expert interviews straight to their device and listen anywhere at any time (even without internet). The Private Pilot membership also includes a Bonus downloads and videos section with a ton of bonus videos from our live lesson recordings and downloads for test prep, cross-country planning and more. The membership also includes digital flash cards with over 1200 FAA Written Practice Test questions. Finally, each membership includes our new interactive AI tools such as our live voice-to-voice ATC simulator. 

The amount of time it takes to finish an Online Ground School is up to you, the student. Each online ground school is required to teach you all the knowledge from the Airmen Certificate Standards from the FAA. This document details all the knowledge, skills and areas of proficiency required to achieve a pilot certificate. 

The amount of time it will take you to finish learning all the required content depends on how quickly you learn and how much time you can dedicate each day to studying. On average, is takes students about 3 months to complete online ground school with some students completing it in as quickly as 1 month and others taking 6 months to even a year.

Part Time Pilot provides each of our students with study tracking calendars they can download to keep track of their progress. There are different calendars based off of how much time a student can dedicate each day to studying (30 min, 1 hour or 2 hour) and each calendar shows the lessons the student should complete each day to stay on track.

No! However, it is highly recommended that you do it before flight training or before getting too far along in your flight lessons, but there is no requirement to do ground school before flight training. 

The only requirement is that you have your FAA Written exam passed prior to your final Checkride flight test, and in order to take the FAA Written test you need to have an endorsement from a certified instructor who performed the ground training (or an online ground school) and believes you are ready for the test. 

The below subject categories or sections as we call them are included in the Part Time Pilot Online Ground School. There are many lesson subjects within each of these subjects categories. To view the entire detailed syllabus, click here:

• Operation of Aircraft Systems
• Pilot Certifications, Qualifications & Regulations
• Aircraft Airworthiness Regulations
• Weather Theory, Charts & Information
• National Airspace System
• Fundamentals of Aerodynamics
• Human Factors & Medical
• Aircraft Weight & Balance
• Aircraft Performance
• Cross-Country Flight Planning
• Aircraft Procedures
• Airport Operations; Takeoff, Landing, Taxiing, etc.
• Pilot Control and Maneuvering 
• Emergencies
• Navigation
• Night Operations

These subjects are directly taken from the Airmen Certificate Standards (ACS) document from the FAA that details exactly the knowledge and skills required to become a private pilot (Airman Certification Standards | Federal Aviation Administration, 2024).

For online ground schools this content can be taught in the form of written lessons, video lessons or even audio lessons and should be reinforced with examples, visual aids, memory aids and quizzes. A good online ground school should teach the fundamental principles of each topic as well as provide test prep to prepare students for the FAA Written Exam.