IACRA and your FTN
Before you can book an FAA knowledge test you need an FAA Tracking Number, and the only place to get one is IACRA. Here is the whole path, in order, including the mistake that sends first-timers home from the test center.
Free tools and guides — no account required to read this page.
The four steps, in order
Two of them happen before your written test, two of them before your checkride.
Register on IACRA
Go to iacra.faa.gov and create an applicant account. It takes about five minutes. Use your full legal name exactly as it appears on your photo ID — this is the detail everything else hangs on.
Write down your FTN
Registration issues your FAA Tracking Number. It is permanent: one FTN for your whole flying life, through every certificate and rating. Save it somewhere you will still have it in five years.
Use the FTN to book your written test
PSI has required an FTN to schedule an FAA knowledge test since January 2020. Your PSI account name has to match your IACRA record exactly — see the warning below.
File the 8710-1 before your checkride
When the checkride is booked, you fill in the 8710-1 application in IACRA. Your instructor signs as Recommending Instructor and the examiner signs as Certifying Officer, on their own logins.
The name-match trap
The single most common first-timer failure, and it costs a whole test slot.
Your PSI testing account, your IACRA record and the photo ID you bring have to carry the same name. Not close — the same. A middle initial in one place and not another, a maiden name on the license, a nickname typed into the PSI signup: any of those can stop you at check-in, and the test fee is not refunded for a no-go.
Fix it the day you register, while nothing is scheduled. Open IACRA, open your PSI account, and read them side by side against your license.
Practice on the FAA's own sandbox
The 8710-1 is long. You are allowed to see it first.
The FAA publishes a training copy of IACRA at iacratraining.faa.gov. It looks and behaves like the real system, and nothing you do there reaches the FAA. Walk the application once there before your checkride is on the calendar, and the real one takes twenty minutes instead of an evening.
When you are ready for the real thing, the checkride paperwork itself is covered in what your examiner checks before a checkride, and test-day logistics are in your FAA written test day.
Common questions
Paperwork sorted. Now pass the test.
Practise questions built to FAA standards, see where you stand, and walk into the test center ready.
7-day free trial. No credit card required.