Last year again saw an increase in the number of CFI certificates issued. As a continuing primary pathway to gain experience as a pilot to become an ATP, we continue to see large numbers of CFI certificates issued. We can see from the following chart that the CFI certificated again went up in 2025.

The table to the right here shows a few interesting data points: the number of active CFI certificates, how many new CFI certificates were issued in each year, and the average age of CFIs who held certificates in each year.

Heavy CFI certificate issuance numbers in the past few years is driving the average age of CFIs down even as the overall number of CFI certificates held continues to climb.

It is worth noting that holding a CFI certificate does not imply that the CFI is actively providing training. We know that MANY CFIs get their certificate, provide training for a period of time, and then transition into professional pilot jobs. These professional pilots eventually retire and “keep their CFI certificate from expiring,” so they don’t lose it.

So we have to look at some more data points to help contextualize the real makeup of our CFI population.

Let’s start with the data point of how many total CFI certificates are held, as we can see in the following chart (145, 538 at the end of 2025):

Then we might look at the average age of CFI certificate holders in the entire population, which we see as having been slightly under 44 back in 1999. By 2018, we saw a high point of that average age peaking at over 48 years old. But since then, the average has been decreasing, down to under 45 again as of 2025.

Why does this matter, you might be thinking?

My question is, what is it telling us?

Moving the averages in a data set this big, it means that there is a large input in the bottom portions of the data set, in this case, the numbers of younger CFIs. This matches up with the increasing number of younger CFIs being issued in the last few years.

But there still exists a large data set of older CFIs in the total number. We can see from the chart below that there are larger percentages of our CFI population that are over the ages of 65 or even 70.

Now, no offense mean by this, but many of them will die in the next decade or so. It’s just math. The average age of death for a male person in the United States as of 2025 was 76.5 years old. So, just math, at least some pretty significant numbers of those CFIs who still hold certificates will likely be coming out of our total CFI population pool in the next decade.

The point here is that if anyone is looking at our CFI total population as the number of certificates held and thinking they are all actively instructing, or will continue to do so, is looking at the data without contextualizing it.

I posted back in January about the number of CFIs who actually signed off any students for a practical test in 2025 (CFI Signoff Frequency in 2025), and we saw that only 23,649 CFIs signed someone off for a practical test.

We can see from the chart to the right here that it is a much smaller percentage of the CFI population that has signed off even 1 applicant for a practical test in any given year.

Pass Rates on CFI Initial Practical Tests

More information in an upcoming post will be presented on overall pass rates on certification events, but 2025 again saw the pass rate for initial CFI practical tests decrease. This trend has been going on since 2021 when it was at its peak at over 77%, with 2025 now dropping down to 73.7 percent. You can see the trend in the chart below. Check back in the upcoming days for more content on this and other certification points relative to pass rates in 2025 compared to recent years and the trends we are seeing.