MockDPE AI FAA checkride examiner — Launch Spotlight cover

MockDPE: An AI Examiner That Grades Your Checkride Prep Like the Real One Will

A checkride oral exam is several hours across a table from a Designated Pilot Examiner who can charge anywhere from $600 to $2,500, and a failure stays on the FAA record for good. The usual way to practice, a mock oral with a CFII, costs real money too, takes weeks to schedule, and gets you one round of feedback. Everyday AI tools don't understand aviation content well enough to fill the gap, and flashcards and videos aren't immersive enough to replicate the actual exam.

MockDPE was built by a pilot who felt that gap directly.

MockDPE AI checkride examiner

What MockDPE does

MockDPE is a voice-based AI Designated Pilot Examiner built specifically for the FAA Instrument Rating checkride oral. You pick your aircraft, customize the route of flight, and can upload a study guide or gouge, then MockDPE pulls in live aviation weather and generates a realistic scenario across more than 16,000 US airports. It questions and probes exactly like a real DPE would, and grades you task-by-task against the official Instrument Rating Airman Certification Standards.

What's broken about the alternative

A traditional mock oral means booking a CFII weeks out, paying a per-session rate, and walking away with one person's read on where you stand. It doesn't scale to the repeated practice a checkride actually demands, and generic AI tools don't have the aviation grounding to run a convincing oral exam in the first place.

MockDPE replaces that with unlimited, on-demand sessions graded consistently every time, at a flat monthly rate instead of a per-session bill.

How it works

Full checkride, practice, or diagnostic modes: run a complete mock oral, drill a single ACS Area of Operation, take a quick diagnostic, or work through a guided lesson with an AI instructor.

Real airports, real aircraft, real weather: scenarios are built from a database of thousands of US airports, approach plates, navaids, and aircraft performance data, pulled together with live weather.

Multiple DPE personas: choose examiners with different levels of strictness to match how you want to practice.

Per-task ACS scoring: every exchange is scored and logged against the specific ACS task being tested, with FAR/AIM-grounded citations and a personalized study plan.

96.3% grading consistency: measured internally across hundreds of training iterations and validated by independent CFIIs.

"Work smarter, not harder, to ace your checkride!" — Founder

Who this is for

Instrument rating applicants, CFIIs, and current instrument pilots prepping for an IPC who want real practice before the checkride counts for real. MockDPE is freemium: a full free checkride session gets you a few hours of focused practice, and unlimited sessions run on a flat monthly subscription. The team is intentionally starting with instrument rating prep alone before expanding to other FAA certificates and ratings.