Your Pilot Training Checklist

No. The computer number registration on the DGCA Pariksha portal needs no medical certificate and no flying school. It is the one step that can be completed before anything else, which is why it is first on this checklist — waiting for a medical before registering costs students an examination session every year.

5: Air Navigation, Aviation Meteorology, Air Regulations, Technical General, Technical Specific. A candidate who secures a minimum of 70% marks in the theoretical knowledge examination of a particular subject is declared PASS. The 70% applies to each subject on its own. There is no aggregate, and a strong paper does not carry a weak one.

Theoretical knowledge papers must be completed within two and a half years immediately preceding the date of application. For the issue of a CPL or an ATPL, that period is five years. Clearing papers years before you finish your flying hours is not free. Count backwards from the licence application, not forwards from the first paper.

Book the Class 1 initial before committing money to a flying school. The student pilot licence only needs a Class 2, but the licence you are training towards needs a Class 1 — and finding a disqualifying condition after paying a deposit is an expensive way to learn it. A Class 2 Medical Assessment is not a prerequisite for sitting the Class 1 initial examination. The CAR states the Class 2 assessment is issued for licensing purposes, Class 2 renewals, re-initials and temporary or permanent unfit cases.

₹2,500 per paper in a regular session and ₹5,000 on demand, paid to the government. The bank may add a nominal service charge or applicable taxes on top of the fee. These are DGCA's fees and are separate from anything a school charges.

No. RTR (A) is examined separately from the written papers. Examined separately from the DGCA written papers, and required for CPL issue under Section J paragraph 1(g).

We do not publish a figure, because no authority does and the honest answer is that it depends on examination sessions, weather, aircraft availability at your flying school and how quickly your logbook is validated. A checklist that gives you month-by-month deadlines has invented them, and missing an invented deadline makes students think they are behind when they are not.

Six things: Be registered on the eGCA portal with your own eGCA ID; Hold a valid Class 1 medical certificate and the medical assessment sheet; Hold a valid FRTOL or FRTOL(R) with the RTR certificate; Have the e-logbook updated and e-validated by your flying training organisation for flying hours and skill tests; Have cleared the English Language Proficiency examination at Level 4 or above; Have passed the written examinations conducted by the Central Examination Organisation.

The regulatory items are not optional — they are conditions in the Aircraft Rules or on the portals, and each one here carries the source it comes from. The document-hygiene items are ours, and they exist because getting a scan or a name spelling wrong is the most common avoidable delay in the whole process.