Passed both CFI written exams but low FIA score

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FezYL

Filing Flight Plan
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Sep 4, 2022
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Fez
Hey guys,

I know people have asked this a lot for PPL and commercial. But for CFI writtens, I got a 90 on my FOI and 78 on my FIA. Did pretty well on practice tests and felt confident but I guess I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I’m heading out of my current state to an accelerated CFI course end of May. Looking for an overall consensus from the aviation community- considering how the CFI checkride can be the toughest and longest, is it worth delaying going to get my CFI and to retake the FIA?

I fully understand that the score means nothing after the checkride and is primary there so the DPE can go over deficient areas. I also understand it will be a bit longer and harder oral.

What do you you all think?
 
I’d say, review your deficiencies, become extra familiar with them, and shoot your shot. You don’t know what you don’t know. I took mine with an 86% pass on written, but we covered nothing on my written exam.
 
ac1989 said:
I’d say, review your deficiencies, become extra familiar with them, and shoot your shot. You don’t know what you don’t know. I took mine with an 86% pass on written, but we covered nothing on my written exam.
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Copy that’s what I was leaning towards considering the worse outcomes that could happen. I don’t know much about the DPEs but I do know they are a little particular about going through missed questions on writtens
 
Spend a bunch of time studying and take another exam, or spend a bunch of time studying and take the check ride. You need to know it either way. Personally, I'd rather take an oral exam than a written test. The written question are awful. At least with a human on the other side, I can explain my knowledge rather than spew a memorized answer.

Based on my experiences and discussions with DPE's, I think people make too much out of what a DPE will do differently based on your written score. Your performance in person with him is going to make much more difference IMO. If you're weak, he'll probe you more, no matter what your test scores were. Your milage may vary.
 
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ac1989 said:
I took mine with an 86% pass on written, but we covered nothing on my written exam.
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If that’s indeed the way it happened, the examiner should be reported for a non compliant checkride.

More than likely, though, the failed question elements were already part of his plan of action.
 
Maybe that’s something that is indeed wrong with system then. None of my DPE’s covered any of my missed questions for any of my written exams PPL-CFI, and if they did it was too subtle and i didn’t catch it
 
Salty said:
Spend a bunch of time studying and take another exam, or spend a bunch of time studying and take the check ride. You need to know it either way. Personally, I'd rather know take an oral exam than a written test. The written question are awful. At least with a human on the other side, I can explain my knowledge rather than spew a memorized answer.

Based on my experiences and discussions with DPE's, I think people make too much out of what a DPE will do differently based on your written score. Your performance in person with him is going to make much more difference IMO. If you're weak, he'll probe you more, no matter what your test scores were. Your milage may vary.
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Copy. Yeah that’s my plan. However I think what I’ll do is schedule an exam out there at the PSI center (they only do scheduling 2 weeks out so I’ll have to wait another week). Depending on how I feel when I’ll out there I’ll take it or just cancel within the refund time.
 
They will not be able to go over the exact question. The codes you get (showing deficiency) are knowledge areas, not specific questions. This is to keep the test bank out of the public domain. So all they get is that you missed one or more questions in <this> area.

In this case, look at the flight instructor ACS HERE and you should be able to match up the area w/ the Area / Task on your test report. For example FI.I.A.K3 which when you goto Area I, you get an index which would say "FI.I.A.K3 Teaching the adult learner." so you know what section to refresh on.

Again, the DPE would not know what specific question you missed, so they would need to just make sure you understood how to teach the adult learner and they would have covered the material.

This would explain how the DPE could have covered the material yet you may have thought they didnt.
 
ac1989 said:
Maybe that’s something that is indeed wrong with system then. None of my DPE’s covered any of my missed questions for any of my written exams PPL-CFI, and if they did it was too subtle and i didn’t catch it
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What would you expect it to look like when they cover those?
 
I guess i’m thinking it to be more straight-forward than it actually would be. That maybe they’d make it known that we would go over those items. I’d feel like they would at least view them and look them over when they took my exam during the documents part. But it seemed as if they didn’t really even look or examine it judging by the time spent looking at the document.
 
FezYL said:
Hey guys,

I know people have asked this a lot for PPL and commercial. But for CFI writtens, I got a 90 on my FOI and 78 on my FIA. Did pretty well on practice tests and felt confident but I guess I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I’m heading out of my current state to an accelerated CFI course end of May. Looking for an overall consensus from the aviation community- considering how the CFI checkride can be the toughest and longest, is it worth delaying going to get my CFI and to retake the FIA?

I fully understand that the score means nothing after the checkride and is primary there so the DPE can go over deficient areas. I also understand it will be a bit longer and harder oral.

What do you you all think?
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Most accelerated schools have cup cake examiners. Study up and drive on.
 
If you want to spend some money, go take the AGI or IGI exam. Turn it and your FOI in for a ground instructor cert. you’ll likely never use this cert again, but then you don’t have to pack the FOI results into your Cfi Oral…

Either way the oral will cover some FOI topics.
 
ac1989 said:
Maybe that’s something that is indeed wrong with system then. None of my DPE’s covered any of my missed questions for any of my written exams PPL-CFI, and if they did it was too subtle and i didn’t catch it
Click to expand...
It’s almost guaranteed that they did, because they’re required to. As you alluded to, they don’t have to ask the question as it’s worded on the written. He probably asked it more as part of a scenario and made it part of the bigger picture.
 
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