FAA A&P Airframe (AMA) Practice Test
Free FAA Aviation Mechanic Airframe written-exam practice in English, Chinese, and Spanish — sheet metal and composite structures, flight controls and rigging, landing gear, hydraulics, electrical, instruments and avionics, fuel, fire protection, and rotorcraft, with an explanation for every answer.
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Practice questions based on the Aviation Mechanic Airman Certification Standards (FAA-S-ACS-1), 14 CFR parts 43, 65, and 91, and the FAA Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook—Airframe (FAA-H-8083-31). This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Federal Aviation Administration. This bank covers the AIRFRAME written test only; the General and Powerplant written tests and the oral and practical tests are separate. Torque values, cable tensions, inflation pressures, servicing quantities, wear limits, and repair criteria always come from the manufacturer's current maintenance data, the structural repair manual, and the applicable airworthiness directives — never from a practice test. Confirm current eligibility and testing requirements with the FAA before you test.
About the FAA Aviation Mechanic Airframe written test
The Airframe test is where the A&P certificate stops being general knowledge and starts being an aircraft. The General written asks who may sign a logbook entry and how a battery is charged; the Airframe written asks what condemns a control cable, why a repair must restore the original strength without adding weight where it does not belong, what a blown discharge indicator disc on a fire bottle tells you before you open a panel, and what a blocked static port does to three instruments at once. It is a wide test — the Airman Certification Standards list fifteen airframe subjects, running from sheet metal and welding through wood and fabric and composites, flight controls and rigging, inspection and airworthiness, landing gear, hydraulics and pneumatics, environmental and oxygen and ice protection, fuel, fire protection, electrical, instruments and avionics, and rotorcraft. Every one of them is on the page here, because leaving a subject out is exactly how a candidate walks into the test centre surprised. What this bank deliberately does not do is ask you to memorise a number that belongs to an aeroplane. Torque values, cable tensions, tire pressures, servicing quantities and wear limits come from the maintenance manual in front of you and change with the model, the revision and the airworthiness directive; a practice test that keys them teaches a habit that gets aircraft hurt. So the questions key the mechanism, the airworthiness consequence, and the inspect-repair-or-replace decision, and where an item genuinely needs a figure, the question hands it to you and asks what you do with it. Values written into 14 CFR — the inspections required by part 91, what a maintenance record entry must contain under part 43 — are keyed as written, because a regulation carries its own citation and cannot move quietly.
How to study for the Airframe written test
Start by treating the fifteen ACS subjects as a checklist rather than a reading order. Most candidates already work on some part of an aircraft and arrive strong in three or four subjects and genuinely blank in others — a sheet metal technician who has never opened a lavatory service panel, an avionics installer who has never scarfed a composite repair. The test does not care which half you know. Work through the pools on this page once in any order, note the two or three where your score falls off a cliff, and give those the study time; re-reading the subject you already do for a living feels productive and moves nothing.
Read every question as a maintenance decision, because that is how the test is written. Very few items ask you to name a part; most describe a condition — a strut that will not hold extension, a brake that drags, a cabin that will not hold pressure, a compass that reads correctly on north and wrongly on east — and ask what it means or what you do about it. When you get one wrong, do not memorise the letter. Say out loud why the correct answer is the airworthy course of action and what would have had to be different for one of the distractors to be right. That habit is also what carries you through the oral test, where the examiner asks the same question without four options attached.
Keep the regulations close, because the inspection subject is the one place where exact wording earns points. The airframe inspection pool leans on 14 CFR part 91 (which inspections are required and what makes a 100-hour inspection necessary), part 43 (what a maintenance record entry must contain and what a list of discrepancies obliges), and the airworthiness directive system. These are worth reading in the original rather than in a summary — they are short, they are free on the eCFR site, and unlike a manufacturer's figure they are stable enough to be worth knowing by heart. The same goes for the handful of codified intervals such as the static system and altimeter check and the ELT battery rule.
Do not skip rotorcraft because you do not intend to work on helicopters. Rotorcraft fundamentals is a published Airframe subject, so it is fair game on the test, and it is the subject fixed-wing candidates most often discover too late. You are not being asked to fly one: what the test wants is why a rotor needs flapping or lead-lag hinges, what a freewheeling unit makes possible, what a chip detector light obliges you to do, and how a vertical vibration differs in cause from a lateral one. A few hours on that vocabulary is cheaper than a retest.
Finally, study in the language you think in. The test itself is in English and the maintenance data you will use on the job is in English, so you have to end up comfortable with the English terminology — but understanding why a phosphate-ester fluid demands a different seal compound, or what dissymmetry of lift actually does, lands faster in a first language and then transfers. Every question, option and explanation here is available in English, Chinese and Spanish for exactly that reason. A workable pattern is to read the explanation in your own language until the mechanism is clear, then re-read the same question in English until the vocabulary stops being the obstacle.
FAQ
What subjects are on the FAA Airframe (AMA) written test?
The Aviation Mechanic Airman Certification Standards (FAA-S-ACS-1) divide the Airframe section into fifteen subjects: metallic structures (which includes welding), non-metallic structures (wood, fabric covering, composites, thermoplastics and windows), flight controls, airframe inspection, landing gear systems, hydraulic and pneumatic systems, environmental systems, aircraft instrument systems, communication and navigation systems, aircraft fuel systems, aircraft electrical systems, ice and rain control systems, airframe fire protection systems, rotorcraft fundamentals, and water and waste systems. The eleven pools on this page cover all fifteen — a few closely related subjects are studied together, such as ice and rain protection alongside environmental and oxygen systems, and fuel alongside fire protection.
How many questions is the Airframe test, and what do I need to pass?
The Airframe knowledge test is a 100-question multiple-choice exam with a two-hour time limit, and the passing score is 70 percent — the same standard as the Powerplant test, while the General test is 60 questions. Each of the three tests is taken and passed separately at an FAA-approved testing centre. Because testing details are the FAA's own administrative machinery rather than airframe knowledge, none of the questions in this bank ask about them, and you should confirm the current format, fees and scheduling directly with the FAA or the testing provider before you book.
Is this the same as the A&P General test?
No — they are two different exams, and this site has a separate bank for each. The mechanic certificate is built on three written tests: General (AMG), Airframe (AMA) and Powerplant (AMP). General covers the foundation every mechanic shares — regulations and recordkeeping, basic electricity, weight and balance, mathematics and physics, materials and hardware, corrosion, ground handling and human factors. Airframe covers the aircraft itself. The two overlap only where a general skill has an airframe application: corrosion appears in General as chemistry and identification, and here as something you find on structure during an airframe inspection; electricity appears in General as theory, and here as the installed generation, distribution and lighting systems on the aeroplane. If you are studying for General, use the A&P Mechanic (General) practice test instead.
Do I have to attend an A&P school to sit the Airframe test?
Not necessarily. Under 14 CFR part 65 there are three usual routes to being authorised to test: graduating from an FAA-certificated part 147 Aviation Maintenance Technician School, documenting practical experience under supervision (the rule sets a longer period for both ratings than for a single rating), or qualifying through military maintenance experience. Whichever route you take, eligibility is confirmed before you test rather than after, so verify your own documentation with an FAA Flight Standards office or your school well before you plan a test date. This bank teaches the knowledge; it does not establish eligibility, and it is not affiliated with the FAA.
Does passing the written test finish the Airframe rating?
No. The written test is one of three gates. After the knowledge tests you still face the oral and practical tests, where an authorised Designated Mechanic Examiner asks you to explain and then actually do the work — install and remove rivets, fabricate and inspect a control cable, check a control surface for balance and freeplay, perform part of a 100-hour inspection and make the record entry. Passing written results are only valid for a limited window before they expire, so plan the oral and practical rather than letting the clock run; confirm the current validity period with the FAA. This bank prepares you for the knowledge test and can rehearse the reasoning behind an oral answer, but hands-on skill has to be built in a hangar, not on a website.
Why does this bank avoid torque values and other maintenance-manual numbers?
Because a mechanic who answers those from memory is working the wrong way round. A torque value, a cable tension, an inflation pressure, a wear limit and a servicing quantity belong to a specific aircraft, in a specific revision of a specific manual, possibly modified by an airworthiness directive — and the correct professional answer is always to open the current data and read it. A practice test that rewards recall of such a number trains the habit the certificate exists to prevent, and it goes stale the moment the manufacturer issues a revision. So questions here test what does not move: why a system works the way it does, what a symptom or an indication means, what a defect does to airworthiness, and what the mechanic is obliged to do next. Where a computation genuinely needs a figure, the question supplies it in the stem and asks you to apply it, which is exactly how the job works.