A Certified Flight Instructor Instrument rating lets you give instrument instruction and sign off instrument students. It is the natural step after your initial CFI, and it widens the kind of instructing you can be paid for while you build hours.
You add it after your initial CFI certificate, and dispatch can lay the two out back to back so you are not waiting between them.
What the CFII Adds to Your Logbook and Your Week
With a CFII you can teach approaches, holds, partial panel work and IFR cross country planning, and you can endorse instrument students for their checkrides. That is a different and steadier stream of students than primary training alone, particularly in a place where weather gives instrument work real urgency.
It also changes the conversation in a job interview. A CFI who can also teach instrument is more useful to a school on day one.
What Is Involved in Earning It
Ground training
You learn how to teach instrument procedures, which takes a different skill set from flying them.
Flight training
You fly with an instructor, in the airplane and in the Redbird FMX.
Knowledge test and practical test
You pass a knowledge test, then a practical test with an examiner. The rating is added to your existing flight instructor certificate.
Who You Will Be Teaching
Instrument students need 40 hours of actual or simulated instrument time for the rating. Many of them come straight from their private certificate.
Their checkride starts with an oral exam on weather, regulations, flight planning and instrument procedures. Then they fly approaches, holds and navigation tasks by reference to instruments. Those are the things you will be teaching.
Train Where the Simulator Lives
Our Redbird FMX gives you somewhere to teach approaches, holds and partial panel without burning airplane hours or waiting on the weather. Learning to instruct in the simulator as well as the airplane makes you more valuable to a school and less expensive for your students.
Call (208) 996-8645 and ask what a CFII timeline looks like on your schedule.
Where the CFII Fits
After your initial CFI
The CFII is added to an existing flight instructor certificate, so the CFI comes first. We can schedule them back to back.
CFI trainingInside Zero to Hero
The full Zero to Hero path includes the CFI and the CFII. It runs about $78,000, starting from no experience.
Zero to HeroInstructing at Bravo 6
Many of our graduates build hours by instructing here, and we hire instructors.
Meet the instructors
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a CFII?
A Certified Flight Instructor Instrument rating. It lets you give instrument instruction and sign off instrument students, which an initial CFI certificate alone does not.
Do I need my CFI first?
Yes. The CFII is added to an existing flight instructor certificate, so the initial CFI comes first. We can schedule them back to back.
What is involved in earning it?
Ground training on teaching instrument procedures, flight training with an instructor, a knowledge test, and a practical test with an examiner.
Can I use the simulator for CFII training?
Yes. Our Redbird FMX is well suited to instrument work, and learning to teach in it is part of what makes a CFII employable.
Why add a CFII instead of just instructing primary students?
Instrument students give you a second stream of work, the instruction tends to be steadier through the year, and the hours you log are the kind employers and insurers pay attention to.
