Built by a flight instructor for the next generation of pilots

Why MockDPE exists

The FAA oral exam is one of the highest-stakes spoken exams in aviation, whether you are sitting for an Instrument Rating or a Commercial Pilot checkride. A real Designated Pilot Examiner doesn’t ask flashcard questions. They ask you to brief an approach, decode a METAR, justify a decision, and explain what you’d do if the autopilot dropped out at the FAF, or walk through commercial-standard performance planning and emergency procedures. Existing prep tools were flashcards, $400 video courses, or PDFs from 2014. Nothing simulated the actual oral.

MockDPE puts you in front of an AI examiner that asks scenario-based questions using live weather and real airports, then evaluates your responses against the Airman Certification Standards for your rating: the FAA Instrument Rating ACS or the Commercial Pilot ACS. It’s built to be the closest honest substitute for a real oral, not a substitute for the checkride itself, but for the preparation that gets you there.

Who built it

I’m Kevin, a Certified Flight Instructor and software engineer. I built MockDPE after earning my own CFI rating and now run it as a commercial application under MockDPE.

MockDPE is built on depth per rating, not breadth of ratings. Competitors cover many ratings shallowly with generic question banks. MockDPE goes ACS-task-deep on each rating it supports: today that is the FAA Instrument Rating and Commercial Pilot oral exams, with more ratings planned. Not the written test, just the oral, with live weather, real airports, and cited FAR/AIM grounding at the ACS task level.

How content stays accurate

Every study guide on this site cites the current FAA primary sources inline: the FAA Instrument ACS (FAA-S-ACS-8C), the Commercial Pilot ACS (FAA-S-ACS-7B), 14 CFR Part 91, the Aeronautical Information Manual, the Instrument Flying Handbook (FAA-H-8083-15), the Airplane Flying Handbook (FAA-H-8083-3C), and relevant Advisory Circulars, so you can verify any claim against the primary document. Articles are AI-drafted against those sources; AI can make mistakes, so the inline citations are there for you to check.

The full editorial process is documented at /about/editorial-team. If you ever spot an inaccuracy, email corrections@mockdpe.org , I read every report and confirmed errors are corrected promptly.

That covers this site’s study guides. To see how the live AI examiner grounds its own questions and grading in real regulations, session by session, see How MockDPE Grounds Answers.

Get in touch

Email support@mockdpe.org for anything else: pricing questions, partnership inquiries, CFII access requests, bug reports, feature requests. I read every message.