The CFI ACS, Explained: A Practical Guide to FAA-S-ACS-25

One document decides what your CFI checkride looks like: FAA-S-ACS-25, the Flight Instructor for Airplane Category Airman Certification Standards. Every question in your oral and every maneuver in the air traces back to a line in it. Your examiner builds the test from it, following selection rules printed in its pages. Read it the right way and very little on checkride day should surprise you.

What is the CFI ACS?

The CFI ACS is the FAA testing standard for the initial flight instructor certificate in the airplane category. It took effect in November 2023 and replaced the Flight Instructor Practical Test Standards, which had been in place since 2012. Your examiner does not invent the test. They assemble it from the Areas of Operation and Tasks in this document.

The document is free. You can download the current PDF from the FAA Airman Certification Standards page. The FAA also publishes FAA-G-ACS-2, a companion guide that explains how the ACS system works across all certificates.

CFI ACS vs the old CFI PTS

If your study binder says PTS on the cover, it is out of date. Thousands of pilots still search for the CFI PTS every month, and plenty of flight school handouts still reference FAA-S-8081-6D from June 2012. Examiners have tested exclusively under the ACS since late 2023. Three changes matter for how you study:

• Risk management is part of every Task. The PTS listed knowledge and skill. The ACS adds specific risk management elements you must be able to teach, not just recite.
• Every element has a code, like FI.I.A.K1. Your ground school, your gaps, and your examiner debrief can all point at the exact same line.
• The appendices shrank. Most of the old guidance material moved into the FAA-G-ACS-2 companion guide, so the standard itself reads tighter.

How the document is organized

The ACS is a hierarchy: Areas of Operation at the top, Tasks inside each Area, coded elements inside each Task. The codes look cryptic until someone shows you how to read one. Take FI.I.A.K1a:

• FI is the certificate: Flight Instructor.
• I is the Area of Operation, in Roman numerals. Area I is Fundamentals of Instructing.
• A is the Task within that Area. Task A covers how human behavior and communication affect learning.
• K1a is the element: Knowledge element 1, sub-item a, which is definitions of human behavior. Risk management elements use R. Skill elements use S.

Once you can decode any line, you can trace every oral question back to a specific element. You can also audit yourself against the complete list before your examiner does it for you.

The 14 Areas of Operation

FAA-S-ACS-25 has fourteen Areas of Operation. This is the map of your checkride:

1. Fundamentals of Instructing. Human behavior, the learning process, lesson plans, evaluation, and effective teaching. The FOI, tested out loud.
2. Technical Subject Areas. The big oral: human factors, principles of flight, systems, performance, airspace, navigation, regulations, endorsements, night operations, high altitude operations.
3. Preflight Preparation. Pilot qualifications, airworthiness, weather.
4. Preflight Lesson on a Maneuver to be Performed in Flight. You teach a maneuver on the ground before flying it.
5. Preflight Procedures. Preflight assessment, flight deck management, engine start, taxi, before takeoff checks.
6. Airport and Seaplane Base Operations. Communications, light signals, traffic patterns.
7. Takeoffs, Landings, and Go-Arounds. Normal, crosswind, short field, soft field, slips, go-arounds.
8. Fundamentals of Flight. Straight and level, climbs, descents, turns, taught from the right seat.
9. Performance and Ground Reference Maneuvers. Chandelles, lazy eights, eights on pylons, steep spirals.
10. Slow Flight, Stalls, and Spins. Including spin awareness and recovery instruction.
11. Basic Instrument Maneuvers. Teaching flight by reference to instruments.
12. Emergency Operations. Engine failures, emergency descents, equipment malfunctions.
13. Multiengine Operations. For multiengine applicants.
14. Postflight Procedures. After landing, parking, securing.

What the examiner must test

The selection notes are the closest thing to seeing your test in advance, and most applicants skim right past them. The document tells your evaluator exactly how to build the test:

• In Fundamentals of Instructing, an initial applicant must be tested on Task E, effective teaching in a professional environment, and Task F, teaching that includes risk management and accident prevention, plus at least one more FOI Task.
• In Technical Subject Areas, the evaluator must select Task C, runway incursion avoidance, and Task K, endorsements and logbook entries, plus at least one other. Multiengine applicants also get Task P, one engine inoperative performance.
• In Takeoffs, Landings, and Go-Arounds, at least two takeoff Tasks and two landing Tasks.
• In most other Areas, at least one Task each.

Notice what that means. Endorsements and runway incursion avoidance appear on every initial CFI oral. Not sometimes. Every time. If you cannot fill out the common AC 61-65 endorsements cold, the document just told you where you will get caught.

How to study with the ACS

The ACS is the examiner playbook, which makes it your best study checklist. A workflow that holds up:

1. Print the Areas of Operation list and treat it as your master index.
2. Build lesson plans mapped to specific Tasks, so every plan traces to elements the examiner can actually select.
3. Drill the guaranteed items first: FOI Tasks E and F, runway incursion avoidance, endorsements.
4. Self audit element by element. For each K, R, and S line, ask whether you could teach it out loud right now. Reciting is not teaching.
5. Finish with full length mock orals, so ACS style questioning stops feeling like an ambush.

That last step is the reason ClearCut CFI exists. The full course follows this exact structure: lesson plans mapped to the Areas of Operation, video lectures, cockpit recordings of real instruction, and full length mock orals with real students. Finish the course, fail your oral anyway, and you get your money back. Pricing and the guarantee are here.

CFI ACS questions people actually ask

What is the current version of the CFI ACS?

FAA-S-ACS-25, effective November 2023. It superseded the Flight Instructor PTS, FAA-S-8081-6D. Check the FAA site for the latest copy before your checkride.

How many Areas of Operation are there?

Fourteen, from Fundamentals of Instructing through Postflight Procedures. Multiengine Operations applies only to multiengine applicants.

Does this ACS cover the CFII or MEI?

It covers the flight instructor certificate for the airplane category, including single engine and multiengine Tasks. The instrument instructor rating is tested under its own separate FAA standard.

Is the FOI part of the checkride?

Yes. Fundamentals of Instructing is Area of Operation I, and initial applicants must be tested on Tasks E and F plus at least one more. The FOI knowledge test is separate. The FOI oral questioning happens here.

Where can I download the CFI ACS free?

From the FAA, at faa.gov, on the Airman Certification Standards page. Publishers sell print copies, but the official PDF costs nothing.

Ready to turn a 90 page PDF into a checkride you have already rehearsed? Start with the full ClearCut CFI course, or grab the FOI or Endorsements mini course if you only need one piece.