No — GroundSchool does not include an expensive "passing guarantee." We would rather give you excellent FAA test preparation at a reasonable price.

We understand why passing guarantees sound attractive. Aviation training is expensive, FAA knowledge tests can be stressful, and nobody wants to pay for test preparation only to wonder whether it will work.

But a passing guarantee does not make a student better prepared. Ultimately, you still have to learn the material and pass the test.

Some aviation training companies bundle their test preparation into much more expensive "courses" or "pilot kits" and then use a passing guarantee as one of the principal selling points. Those packages can cost many times what GroundSchool costs and may include combinations of:

• Printed copies of FAA publications that are available directly from the FAA at no charge and are often more useful electronically because they can be searched.
• Pilot supplies such as bags, plotters, or other accessories that you may or may not actually need and can purchase separately if you do.
• Hours of video instruction, which some students enjoy but which can be an inherently slow way to review a large amount of factual test material.
• FAA knowledge-test questions and practice tests of the same general type that dedicated test-prep software such as GroundSchool is specifically designed to deliver efficiently.
• A heavily advertised "Passing Guarantee" used to help justify the much higher package price.

Our philosophy at Dauntless is different: provide outstanding FAA written-test preparation, make it exceptionally efficient to use, and charge a reasonable price for it.

We are pilots, instructors, aviation professionals, engineers, and software developers. Our specialty is building highly effective aviation learning software and maintaining an enormous body of detailed FAA test-prep content. We do not believe you should have to buy a large bundle of unrelated material simply to obtain excellent knowledge-test preparation.

The overwhelming majority of pilots and mechanics who use GroundSchool successfully pass their FAA knowledge tests. At the same time, no legitimate study product can do the studying for you. With tens of thousands of people using our test-prep products over the years, there have naturally also been users who did not pass.

In our experience, successful preparation comes down overwhelmingly to something much more useful than a guarantee: putting in sufficient study time, understanding the material, and demonstrating consistently strong performance before taking the real test.

That is why we would rather keep the price of GroundSchool reasonable than increase the price for everyone in order to fund a marketing guarantee that most properly prepared customers will never need.

There is another important detail worth examining whenever you compare passing guarantees. Read the terms carefully. A prominently advertised guarantee may apply only to a company's premium course rather than to all of its books, software, or test-prep products. It may also require you to complete a prescribed course, achieve particular practice-test scores, or satisfy other conditions before the guarantee applies.

And that gets to the heart of the matter: the most useful "guarantee" is demonstrating to yourself that you are ready before you take the real FAA test.

GroundSchool lets you take an unlimited number of simulated FAA knowledge tests. Study the material, learn from our detailed explanations, take full simulated tests, identify your weak areas, study them again, and continue until your scores demonstrate that you are genuinely prepared.

As a practical guideline, we have historically found that students who use GroundSchool's Simulated Test mode with all applicable chapters enabled and can consistently score at least 90% — preferably 95% or better — across multiple consecutive simulated tests are generally very well prepared for the real examination.

Five strong simulated-test scores in a row is a useful benchmark; ten is even better. But the number itself is not magic. What matters is that the scores reflect real understanding rather than simple memorization.

This is particularly important because the FAA can change wording, alter numerical values, rearrange answer choices, introduce unfamiliar variations, and include previously unseen questions. Someone who has merely memorized answers can be caught out by a small change. Someone who understands why the answer is correct is much better prepared.

That is why GroundSchool places so much emphasis on its detailed explanations. Use them. Learn the underlying concepts. Understand your mistakes. Then use repeated simulated tests to confirm that you are ready.

We think that is a far better value than paying substantially more for a guarantee.

Spend less on marketing promises. Spend your time actually preparing. GroundSchool gives you the questions, explanations, study tools, progress tracking, and unlimited simulated tests you need to walk into your FAA knowledge test well prepared.