IR.I.A.K1
Instrument rating privileges and limitations
The chapter continues for members.
Instrument Pilot · Airplane
Airplane
IFR currency, weather, charts, holds, and every approach you will fly on the checkride — all 69 chapters written, with practice questions and DPE oral prep throughout.
This is the opening of a real chapter, rendered from the same file members read.
The chapter continues for members.
In oral prep you answer this out loud, in your own words, and the grader scores it against these points.
Checkride question · IR.I.A.K1
You have your instrument rating now. What can you do that you couldn't do last month?
What the grader listens for
Ref · 14 CFR 61.3(e), 61.133, 91.157
69 chapters, the daily quiz, the task tests, and oral prep for the whole rating. Free during the preview; $25 a month at launch. Your progress keeps.
This element is about when the instrument rating is required, what it lets you do, and where its limits are. The DPE wants you to name the triggers without hesitating, to know that the rating is worthless without currency, and to see how it changes the commercial certificate. The Instrument Rating ACS (FAA-S-ACS-8C, Area I Task A) also asks you to apply all of it to a scenario the examiner builds, so the goal is to know the rules well enough to use them.
The rating is required to act as PIC under IFR, in any airspace and in any weather, and to act as PIC in weather below the VFR minimums. It is also what makes Special VFR available at night. Holding it does nothing on its own; using it requires instrument currency, an IFR-equipped airplane, and a medical basis that allows the operation.
An instrument rating is a rating on your pilot certificate, not a separate certificate. It is issued by category: Instrument–Airplane, Instrument–Helicopter, or Instrument–Powered-lift. There is no class within it, so an Instrument–Airplane rating covers single-engine and multiengine airplanes, provided you also hold the class rating for the airplane you are flying. When you later earn a commercial certificate, the rating moves onto the new certificate with you. An airline transport pilot certificate carries instrument privileges built in, which is why an ATP holder has no separate instrument rating listed.
The rating has no expiration date. What expires is your recent instrument experience under , which is the subject of the next chapter. For this chapter, keep one sentence in mind: every privilege below assumes you are current.