🪪 Licences and flight school

What it is

Licences are the paperwork that separates a citizen from a suspect. Most things you can do in the city are open to anyone, but the police, the wardens and the courts care whether you were allowed to do them. Driving without a licence is a stop and a fine. Carrying a pistol without a Purchase and Firearms Licence is a charge. Fishing past your grace catches, or shooting a deer without a tag, is a fine from a warden and, if you keep doing it, a poaching record.

The licences panel, /licenses, shows everything you hold in one place: driving classes, firearms permits and flight ratings, with their status and expiry. Fishing, hunting and trucking keep their own records inside their handbooks (/fishing, /hunting, /trucking).

The second half of this page is the flight school, which is the largest licensing ladder on the server: eight aviation ratings, each with a written paper, a flight test, or both, flown in the live world in a school aircraft with an examiner watching what the aircraft actually does.

The licences at a glance

Department of Motor Vehicles214.45, -595.06

Written tests and practical driving tests for cars, taxis and trucks

Firearms Licensing Office-1285.00, -566.61

PF licence and CCW applications, exams and background checks

Flight School desk-1154.91, -2715.07

Landside at Los Santos International. The manual, enrolment, papers and flight test bookings

DMV and firearms written tests are marked on the server, and the answers are shuffled every time you sit one. A DMV written test is 15 questions with 12 needed to pass. Every firearms permit needs its exam; there is no way to apply without passing it. The PF exam is 20 questions with 18 to pass, and the CCW exam 12 questions with 11 to pass. A failed DMV written or practical test can be retaken after a cooldown; a failed firearms exam after 24 hours, fee not refunded. A criminal record fails the firearms background check outright, and a conviction after you hold a firearms licence revokes it; expunging the record lets you apply again. Driving and flight licences can carry an expiry date, and an expired one counts as not held.

How to start at the flight school

The school is on the landside of LSIA. Walk up to the desk and press E, or type /flightschool while standing there. Three things happen in order and only once:

1. Buy the flight manual, $450, cash or card. It lands in your inventory as an item you can read anywhere with /flightmanual or by using it. Sixteen topics: the school, airspace, the airfield directory, the circuit, altitude, speeds, landings, radio, emergencies, right of way, weight and balance, flight plans and clearances, instrument flying, helicopters, twins and water operations. Every question on every paper is answered in it.

2. Enrol. The manual must be in your bag at that moment. Enrolment is recorded once and never checked again; sell the book afterwards if you like.

3. Sit the Student Pilot Permit paper. Twenty questions, sixteen to pass, $750.

Flight ManualMisc0.4 kg

The San Andreas Flight Academy ground school manual. Airspace, airfields, the circuit, speeds, landings, radio and emergencies. Everything the papers ask you.

From there you work through the ladder at your own pace. Every fee is per attempt.

The whole ladder costs $40,000. On the English server, the Commercial Pilot Licence flight test, which lands at LSIA, is refused and refunded while the Los Santos evacuation order is in force (until 2 October 2026 unless extended); the other flight tests start and finish at Sandy Shores. See Los Santos evacuation. A failed paper has a cooldown of two to six hours depending on the rating; a failed flight test six to twenty four hours. What each rating permits is roleplay: SPP is solo daylight flying near the field, PPL adds passengers, Night adds the night window, IR lets you accept an instrument clearance, ME adds twins, CPL lets you fly for payment, Rotor is helicopters, Sea is water landings. Holding any rating at all also sets your character's flying skill to maximum; without one it is poor, and the aircraft will show it.

Step by step: a flight test

1. Book it at the desk

   Open the Ratings tab, expand the rating and press "Book the flight test". The gate checks the paper if there is one, the night window for the Night rating, a cleared flight plan for the CPL, that you are not on a cooldown, and that one of the twelve school callsigns (SAFA 01 to SAFA 12) is free. The fee is charged now.

2. You are moved to Sandy Shores

   The screen fades and you are placed at Sandy Shores Airstrip in a white and blue school trainer with your callsign on the plate. Aeroplanes start on Runway 07, helicopters on the helipad. You are told: "You are SAFA 03 at Sandy Shores Airstrip. Broadcast on 122.80 and keep a good lookout: this is the live world." Landing fees apply as on any flight.

3. Follow the HUD, item by item

   The test HUD shows the current item ("Item 3 of 7: Hold 2,135 feet, give or take 150, for 30 seconds"), a target with its band, your altitude, airspeed, vertical speed and heading, your gear, three warning dots and the time left. You have twenty minutes. Each leg's target is drawn as a blue marker in the world with a map blip and a GPS route; landing legs are green.

4. Stay inside the envelope

   Above 210 kts for more than five seconds is a fail; a shorter overspeed costs a warning. Below 55 kts while airborne for more than four seconds is a stall fail. Leaving an altitude band costs a warning each time. Three warnings and the test ends. Leaving the 6 km area around Sandy Shores ends it too.

5. Land it gently

   Touch down within 80 m of the runway threshold (8 m of the pad centre for helicopters) at under 900 feet per minute. 900 or more is a hard landing and a fail; 1,600 or more is a severe landing. Once you are down and slow, the leg completes.

6. Read the result

   A pass issues the rating at once if the paper is done: "Private Pilot Licence issued. Well flown." A fail names the reason and the cooldown. If the test was ruined by something outside your control (someone destroyed the trainer while you were out of it, staff moved you, the server restarted) it is voided and the fee refunded. Ending it yourself with /abortflight counts as a fail with no refund.

The PPL route

The Private Pilot test is seven items and it is the template for the rest. Take off on the runway heading (067) and climb to 635 ft. Climb to 2,135 ft for the handling exercises. Hold 2,135 ft within 150 for 30 seconds. Turn through 180 degrees holding 2,135 within 200. Descend to circuit height, 1,135 ft, and fly upwind then crosswind through the marked waypoints. Hold the downwind leg at 1,135 ft on track 247 for 20 seconds. Turn base, then final, cross the final gate below 700 ft and descending, and land under 900 feet per minute.

The Night test flies a full circuit and then a go-around: at 400 ft the examiner says "Go around. Full power, stop the descent, climb straight ahead." and you have 45 seconds to be climbing through 800 ft. The Instrument test flies a positioning leg at 3,000 ft and then an approach through four gates at set distances, altitudes and lateral tolerances, missing at most two. The Multi-Engine and Commercial tests use the Velum, and the Commercial test departs Sandy Shores with a cleared flight plan and lands on LSIA Runway 21. The Rotorcraft test includes a hover between 8 and 20 ft with limited drift. The Seaplane test lands on water in the Dodo, gear up. The manual describes each in full.

ATC and clearances, from the pilot's seat

Once you are flying for real, Los Santos International is a controlled field and the school test for the CPL requires a cleared plan, so learn the clearance flow now.

• Sit in an aircraft and the runway status blips appear on your map: each runway and helipad shows as clear, clearance requested, departing traffic or landing traffic. A strip in the cockpit HUD shows the same.

• /flightplan (or /fpl) opens the Flight Deck. File a plan: origin, destination, VFR or IFR, cruise altitude, souls on board and remarks. One open plan at a time.

• Request clearance. "Let ATC decide" works out whether you are asking to take off (near your origin and low) or to land (anywhere else). A surface is picked for you and the runway shows "Clearance requested".

• The tower answers. If an on duty officer has the tower position open they approve or deny by hand. Otherwise the automated tower decides at once by fixed rules: two aircraft never hold the same runway, an aircraft on final outranks one waiting to depart, and Fort Zancudo never clears a landing. You see "AUTO TOWER" on the frequency when it is the machine.

• /atc <message> transmits on the shared frequency, tagged with your tail number. Every aircraft crew and every on duty officer hears it. Keep it to real radio calls: "SAFA 03, downwind 07, Sandy."

• Traffic tags. Other aircraft within 4 km show a floating tag with their callsign, altitude and distance while you are flying.

A granted takeoff clearance is released when you climb 300 ft above the field; a landing clearance when you touch down. Cancelling the plan releases it too. Flying into a control zone without clearance is an incursion and, on a flight test, a fail.

Tuition plans

Any course except the Student Pilot Permit can be financed if your credit score is 600 or better. A course is one rating's paper plus flight test, or the full ladder. You pay a down payment (20 percent, or more with a weaker score) and then weekly instalments from your bank over eight weeks, or sixteen for the full ladder. Interest starts at 12 percent a year and rises with a lower score. For the $5,000 PPL course at a good score that is $1,000 down and about $509 a week.

While the plan is running or paid off, the theory and practical fees for every rating in that course are waived, retakes included. That is the real reason to take one: a plan on the PPL course means a failed flight test costs you nothing but the cooldown. One plan at a time. A plan that defaults suspends your ratings and blocks every booking until it is cleared. The Tuition tab at the desk and the Flight licences tab in /licenses show the balance, the weekly payment and the next due date.

Tips

Related commands

Worked example

See also

• Coral Island for flying to the island and its airspace rules.

• Weapons for what the firearms licence lets you buy, and where.

• Trucking for the Class B and Class A licences in use.

• Hunting and Fishing for their licences and tags.

• Custody and the law for what happens when you are stopped without one.