Multi-Engine Rating: What It Takes, How Long It Takes, and Why to Get It Early

A multi-engine rating lets you fly as pilot in command of an airplane with more than one engine. If you plan to fly for a living, you will need one. Charter, corporate, cargo, and airline jobs all run on twins or bigger, and most of them expect multi-engine time on your resume before they call you back.

The multi-engine rating is also one of the shortest steps on the path to a flying career. It doesn’t require a new certificate or a written test, and with the right prerequisites you can finish it in about a week. This guide covers what it takes, how long it takes, what it costs, and why the timing matters more than most students expect.

Multi-Engine Rating at a Glance

• What it is: a class rating (airplane multi-engine land) added to a pilot certificate you already hold.
• Prerequisite: a private pilot certificate or higher, plus a current medical certificate.
• Written test: none, if you already hold an airplane rating at your certificate level.
• Minimum hours: Part 61 sets no minimum flight time for the add-on. You train to the standard.
• Time to complete: about a week on an accelerated schedule at Choice, or longer at your own pace.
• Checkride: an oral exam and a flight with an examiner, focused on engine-out operations.

What Is a Multi-Engine Rating?

The FAA groups airplanes by category and class. “Airplane” is the category. “Single-engine land” and “multi-engine land” are classes. A multi-engine rating adds the multi-engine land class to a pilot certificate you already hold.

That makes it a rating rather than a certificate. It is also different from a type rating, which you need for specific large or jet aircraft. Your private or commercial certificate stays the same. You just add a line to it.

One detail catches people off guard. The rating attaches at the level of the certificate you hold when you take the checkride. Add it as a private pilot, then earn your commercial certificate in a single-engine airplane, and your multi-engine privileges stay at the private level. To fly a twin commercially, you would need another multi-engine checkride at commercial standards.

There is one more limitation worth knowing. If you train and test in a twin with centerline thrust, where both engines sit on the fuselage centerline, your rating is limited to centerline-thrust airplanes. The Cessna 310 is a conventional twin with an engine on each wing, so training in it carries no such limitation.

Multi-Engine Rating Requirements

The rules for adding a class rating are in 14 CFR 61.63. To add a multi-engine rating under Part 61, you need the following.

Requirement	What it means
Pilot certificate	At Choice, a private pilot certificate with a single-engine rating, or higher.
Medical certificate	A current FAA medical certificate.
Proof of citizenship	Required before training begins.
Training	Instruction from an authorized instructor in the areas of operation the multi-engine checkride covers.
Endorsement	A logbook endorsement from your instructor stating you are competent and proficient.
Practical test	The checkride with an examiner, including an oral portion and a flight.

You do not need to pass another knowledge test. If you already hold an airplane rating at your certificate level, the FAA doesn’t require a new written exam for the add-on. The checkride oral covers multi-engine knowledge instead, so you still need to know it well.

Part 61 also doesn’t set a minimum number of flight hours for the add-on. You train until you meet the standard and your instructor signs you off. That is why previous multi-engine time matters. If you have some, tell your school up front, because it can shorten the course.

What You Learn in Multi-Engine Training

Flying a twin with both engines running isn’t much harder than flying a complex single. The training is about what happens when one engine quits.

When an engine fails on a twin, the good engine keeps pulling on one side. That asymmetric thrust tries to yaw and roll the airplane toward the dead engine. At low speed and high power, close to the ground, it can overpower the rudder. Most of multi-engine training is learning to recognize that situation, control it, and make the right decision quickly.

The FAA Airplane Flying Handbook covers the theory in detail. In the airplane, you’ll spend real time on a few core ideas.

• VMC (minimum control speed). The slowest speed at which you can keep directional control with the critical engine inoperative. It is the red line on the airspeed indicator.
• Blue line (VYSE). The best single-engine rate-of-climb speed. If an engine fails and you need to climb, this is the speed you fly.
• The critical engine. On twins whose propellers turn the same direction, losing one engine is worse than losing the other because of how the remaining propeller’s thrust is distributed. You’ll learn which one is critical and why.
• Identify, verify, feather. The sequence for confirming which engine failed before you shut anything down. Pulling the wrong mixture is a classic and avoidable mistake.
• Single-engine performance. A light twin on one engine can climb poorly, or not at all, especially at high density altitude. Knowing those numbers before takeoff is part of the decision.

Choice’s multi-engine curriculum breaks this into three parts. Multi-engine aerodynamics covers the critical engine, VMC, performance limits, and weight and balance. Emergency procedures cover recognizing and verifying a failure and flying the single-engine approach and landing. Advanced operations cover multi-engine instrument procedures and systems management.

Why a Simulator Helps

You can’t safely rehearse engine failures over and over in the airplane, close to the ground. A simulator can. Choice uses a Redbird simulator configured for multi-engine work, so students practice failures at any phase of flight, pause to talk through what happened, and repeat until the response is automatic.

Then they take that into the airplane, a Cessna 310 maintained by Choice’s own shop. By the time an instructor pulls a throttle in flight, the student has already handled that failure many times.

What Happens on the Multi-Engine Rating Checkride

The checkride follows the FAA Airman Certification Standards for your certificate level. It starts with an oral exam on systems, performance, aerodynamics, and engine-out procedures. Expect questions about the factors that change VMC, how to read single-engine performance charts, and what you would do with an engine failure at different points in a flight.

The flight portion covers normal maneuvers plus the multi-engine tasks. Typical items include:

• An engine failure during the takeoff roll, before reaching VMC, where the correct response is to abort.
• An engine failure just after liftoff, where you control the airplane, identify the failed engine, and climb at blue line.
• A VMC demonstration at a safe altitude, recovering at the first sign of lost directional control or a stall warning.
• Maneuvering with one engine inoperative, which usually includes shutting down, feathering, and restarting an engine at a safe altitude.
• An approach and landing with one engine inoperative (simulated).

If you hold an instrument rating, the checkride also includes engine-out instrument work, including an instrument approach on one engine. If those tasks aren’t completed, the FAA limits your multi-engine privileges to VFR only. Instrument-rated pilots should plan to complete them.

How to Prepare for Multi-Engine Training

A week goes quickly. The pilots who finish on schedule usually show up ready. A few things make the biggest difference.

• Get current in a single. Fly a few hours before you arrive, including steep turns, slow flight, and stalls. Rusty basics slow everything down.
• Read the multi-engine chapter first. The FAA Airplane Flying Handbook has a full chapter on transitioning to multi-engine airplanes. Reading it before day one makes ground school a review instead of a first look.
• Learn the V-speeds early. Once you have the training airplane’s pilot operating handbook, memorize VMC, blue line, and the engine-failure checklist. You’ll use them on every flight.
• Chair-fly the flows. Sit down and talk through an engine failure after takeoff out loud, touching each control in order. It sounds simple, and it works.
• Bring your paperwork. Your pilot certificate, medical certificate, photo ID, proof of citizenship, and logbook. Missing documents can delay the checkride.

If you’re instrument rated, practice a few approaches in a single before you arrive. Flying an approach on one engine is much easier when the approach itself is already second nature.

How Long Does a Multi-Engine Rating Take?

At Choice, a multi-engine rating takes about a week on the accelerated schedule. Ground school starts on day one, simulator work runs alongside it, and then you fly the 310 until you’re at checkride standard.

The one-week format works for pilots who can clear their calendar and focus. If you can’t, the same course runs at a normal pace around your schedule. The content and the standard stay the same either way.

What changes the timeline:

• Recent flying. Pilots who are current and sharp in single-engine airplanes move faster.
• Instrument skills. Single-engine instrument approaches are some of the most demanding work in the course.
• Previous multi-engine time. Logged pilot-in-command time in twins can reduce how much training you need.
• Weather and examiner availability. These are outside anyone’s control, and they affect every school.

How Much Does a Multi-Engine Rating Cost?

Choice prices multi-engine training as a package that covers the aircraft, simulator time, ground instruction, the examiner’s fee, and the airplane rental for the checkride. The variable is how much flight time you need, which is why previous multi-engine experience can lower the total.

Questions to Ask Any Flight School

When you compare multi-engine programs, get answers to these before you book:

• Does the quote include the examiner fee and the airplane rental for the checkride?
• Does it assume the minimum possible flight time, or a realistic average?
• How much of the training happens in a simulator, and what does the simulator cost per hour?
• Who maintains the training airplane, and what happens to your schedule if it’s down for maintenance?
• Can you finish at your own pace if the accelerated week doesn’t fit?

A written quote that lists everything is the only fair way to compare. Choice will send its numbers in writing.

When to Get Your Multi-Engine Rating

If you’re on a professional track, you will need a multi-engine rating eventually. Waiting until a job requires it puts you behind applicants who already have it and have been building multi-engine time.

Getting it early in your training has practical advantages:

• Your skills are sharp. Students who just finished instrument and commercial training are current, precise, and used to training. That makes the course go faster.
• It opens the instructor path. With the rating, you can go on to earn the multi-engine instructor rating (MEI) as part of Choice’s CFI program. Instructing in twins is one of the most direct ways to build multi-engine time.
• It counts toward the airlines. The ATP certificate requires 50 hours of flight time in multi-engine airplanes, under 14 CFR 61.159. Every hour you log in a twin counts.
• It makes you a better pilot. Handling an engine failure at low speed and low altitude demands precision and fast decisions. Most pilots come out of it flying their singles better too.

The one caution is the certificate-level rule above. If you’re headed for a commercial certificate, plan when you add multi-engine so you don’t end up taking two multi-engine checkrides. Talk it through with your instructor before you schedule.

Multi-Engine Training at Mountain Elevation

Choice trains out of Cody, Wyoming, where field elevation and summer heat put real pressure on aircraft performance. That matters more in a twin than almost anywhere else.

Single-engine climb performance drops as density altitude rises. On some days, a light twin may not be able to climb at all on one engine. Pilots who train here learn to run those numbers before every flight and to brief exactly what they’ll do if an engine fails on takeoff.

Density altitude also changes VMC. With a normally aspirated engine, the operating engine makes less power at altitude, so VMC goes down while the stall speed stays the same. That is why the VMC demonstration is flown with care and a clear recovery plan. Learning these effects in mountain conditions builds habits that carry over to every airplane you fly afterward.

After the Rating: Building Multi-Engine Time

A multi-engine rating opens the door, but employers look at how much time you’ve logged in twins. Most pilots build it in a few ways:

• Instructing. Multi-engine instructors log time on every lesson they teach in the airplane.
• Charter and cargo. Many entry-level professional jobs fly light twins, once you meet the operator’s minimums.
• Structured programs. A career program that runs from zero time to professional pilot puts the multi-engine rating where it does the most good.

Plan for this when you choose where to train. A school that also runs charter and maintenance gives you a clearer view of how multi-engine flying works as a job.

Multi-Engine Rating FAQ

Start Your Multi-Engine Rating at Choice

Choice’s multi-engine program runs as a one-week intensive or at your own pace, in a Cessna 310 with a Redbird simulator configured for engine-out training. Tell us your total time, any multi-engine time you already have, and when you can be here. We’ll come back with a plan and a number.

Call 307-587-9262 or contact us to get started. Thinking about the full path from zero hours? Read more about accelerated pilot training.