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About FL Math

Who writes this, what qualifies them to, and exactly how each number is checked.

Who makes this

Ryan Johnson

[Certificate type and ratings held]

[Two or three sentences: your flying and instructing background, and what you kept seeing that made you build this.]

[Optional: how a reader can independently verify the above — e.g. the FAA Airmen Inquiry registry.]

How the numbers are verified

Every item in the trainer carries a provenance badge, and the badge is honest about how far the checking went:

✓ verified — adversarially fact-checked against primary sources (FAA, NASA, Boeing, Airbus, NIST).
◆ source — representative of a real test or interview format taken from a source, not independently verified. The arithmetic is still marked EXACT or APPROX.
⚠ standard — standard reference, not yet independently verified.

Of the 56 items currently in the bank, 47 are ✓ verified and 9 are ◆ source — the tier-2 aptitude and interview drills, where the arithmetic is exact but the question format comes from vendor and airline careers pages rather than a confirmed exam. No ⚠ standard items remain.

The 15 regulatory items (5 from Part 61, 10 from Part 91 and the AIM) were checked against the primary eCFR and AIM text directly, rather than against a secondary study guide, and each one shows its citation on the card.

What was deliberately left out

The VOR mental-math formulas that circulate widely in study material are not included. No FAA source could be found for them, so they were not codified as drills. Where a rule of thumb has no genuine mental shortcut — rate of turn, load factor, speed of sound — the card says so plainly and shows the exact formula instead of inventing a trick.

Corrections

Every card in the Question Bank has a ⚑ flag button. If a number looks wrong, flag it — regulations change, and a stale figure on a certification page is worse than no figure at all.

Content last reviewed against primary sources: August 2026. FL Math is a study aid. It is not a substitute for current FAA publications, your aircraft's AFM/POH, or your instructor.