FAA-Approved Simulators vs. an Unlocked Build: What You Log, What You Give Up

That freedom is what approval costs, and the mechanism is simple: approval attaches to one frozen hardware and software configuration. New avionics or a panel change need FAA re-evaluation, and the submission has to come from the manufacturer who holds the authorization.

That trade is worth it for a flight school billing sim time, and for an instrument-rated pilot who wants currency without an airplane. For most people building a simulator at home it is not — and here is the whole argument in one screen.

If the second card is what you are after, you can stop here. The rest is for people weighing the first one seriously.

Start with the part people overlook: IFR currency

Most of the attention goes to the training credit. The more useful benefit for a rated pilot is the other one.

One correction worth making, because it circulates widely: an ATD cannot be used for an instrument proficiency check. 61.57(d) names aircraft, full flight simulators and flight training devices only. Currency, yes. An IPC, no.

What you can actually log

The FAA approves two levels of device under 14 CFR 61.4(c). A Basic Aviation Training Device supports private pilot and instrument training; an Advanced one adds commercial, ATP and flight instructor tasks and an independent instructor station.

	BATD	AATD
Instrument rating credit	10 hours max	20 hours max
Combined cap across all devices	20 hours total	20 hours total
Instructor required for that credit	Yes	Yes
IFR currency (6 approaches, holding, tracking)	Yes, no cap	Yes, no cap
Instructor required for currency	No	No
Instrument proficiency check	No	No
Practical test / checkride	No	No
Type-specific training or a type rating	No	No

The 20-hour combined cap is the one people miss: fly 18 hours in an AATD and 9 in a BATD and only 2 of the BATD hours still count. And the 50-hour credit toward a commercial certificate does not apply here — 14 CFR 61.129(i) gives it for a full flight simulator or flight training device, not an ATD. Whatever a given device credits is written on its own Letter of Authorization, so that document, not a brochure, is the thing to read.

What you give up

Approval is not a rating the FAA gives a product line. It is a Letter of Authorization issued to the manufacturer for one specific configuration, and the device has to stay in that configuration to keep it. Three of the costs are worth putting a number on.

The rest of what you give up is structural.

None of this is the FAA being unreasonable. A frozen configuration is the entire mechanism by which a logged hour means something. It is just the opposite of what most people want at home.

What an Unlocked panel does instead

Unlocked is what we call the rest of our hardware: nothing frozen, nothing gated, nothing expiring. Here is what you get in exchange for the logbook credit.

The eight profiles on the TNxi 8X, switchable per flight:

G1000 NXi — PFD G1000 NXi — MFD G3X Touch — PFD G3X Touch — MFD G600 TXi TDS GTN 750Xi Steam Gauges — Piston Single Steam Gauges — Complex / HP

And it runs MSFS 2020, MSFS 2024 and X-Plane — you choose per session. No approved device runs MSFS at all; the approved fleet is built on X-Plane, Prepar3D and proprietary engines, because a platform that updates itself continuously is a poor fit for a configuration that must stay frozen.

For proficiency rather than credit, this is the better machine. What you log is what 14 CFR 61.51 always allowed on any home simulator: nothing toward a certificate, and everything toward not being rusty.

Side by side

	FAA-approved BATD / AATD	Unlocked
Up-front cost	~$20,000 entry, $100,000+ advanced	Complete sim from $9,920, panels from $1,840
Loggable toward a rating	10 h (BATD) or 20 h (AATD), instrument	None
IFR currency	Yes, no hour cap	No
Simulator platform	X-Plane, Prepar3D or proprietary	MSFS 2020 / 2024, X-Plane
Aircraft	The list in the QAG	Anything the sim loads
Add-on aircraft and scenery	Outside the approval	Yes
Change the avionics	FAA re-evaluation, via the manufacturer	Load a different profile — 8 of them
Change the hardware	May terminate the LOA	Ordinary custom work
Who maintains it	The LOA holder, on their schedule	You, or us if you want the help
Ongoing cost	Usually a database subscription tied to the LOA	None
Approval lifetime	5 years, then renewal	Not applicable

Who should buy which

A flight school or a corporate flight department should buy approval. The device bills hours against a syllabus, or recurrent training is a compliance obligation and someone has to point at a document. In both cases the frozen configuration is a feature: every student in an identical cockpit, this year's training identical to last year's.

An instrument-rated pilot who wants currency at home is the one genuinely close call. The currency benefit is real and never expires. Weigh it against the price, the locked configuration and any annual subscription — and against the alternative of flying someone else's approved device a few times a year.

Everyone else should buy capability. You are otherwise paying a large premium, and accepting a locked machine, for 10 or 20 hours of credit — once. If you want hours in a logbook, buy or rent approval. If you want to be sharper in the aircraft, buy capability. They are different purchases and we would rather you made the right one.

What we are building

We are working on an FAA-approved device, because the flight schools and flight departments asking for one are asking for something real. Everything above applies to ours too: it will be more expensive than our Unlocked hardware, it will most likely carry an annual subscription, and it will be locked to its approved configuration. That is not a choice we get to make differently.

BATD — in development. Expected around $20,000 plus a likely annual subscription. The subscription is not us finding a recurring revenue line; it is the navigation database cycle the Letter of Authorization depends on, the same mechanism every approved device runs on.

AATD — pricing to be determined. An AATD has to meet the BATD criteria first, then the additional advanced criteria including an independent instructor station. Full-motion advanced devices on the market run well into six figures, which gives a sense of the scale.

We do not have a date. Neither device is available to order, we are not taking deposits, and we would rather say so than name a quarter we cannot defend. If you are a school or a flight department and this is on your horizon, tell us what you need it to do — the configuration gets frozen at approval, so the time to influence what goes in it is now, not after.

Everything else we sell stays exactly as it is: Unlocked, modifiable, and yours to change.

See the TNxi 8X avionics suite Talk to us about a school or flight department

Still working out which level of simulator you need? Levels of flight simulators walks through the tiers, and Compare puts our builds next to the other hardware people shortlist.

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Sources

• AC 61-136B, FAA Approval of Aviation Training Devices and Their Use for Training and Experience — BATD and AATD definitions, the revised-QAG requirement for modifications, the minor-change carve-out, the five-year LOA, and the approved-aircraft scope
• FAA Approved Aviation Training Devices, as of 15 July 2026 — the current approved list; no entry names Microsoft Flight Simulator
• 14 CFR 61.65 — instrument rating credit: 10 hours BATD, 20 hours AATD, 20-hour combined cap
• 14 CFR 61.57 — IFR currency in an ATD under (c); IPC under (d) limited to aircraft, FFS and FTD
• 14 CFR 61.129 — the 50-hour commercial credit, which applies to FFS and FTD rather than ATDs

Prices quoted are market approximations, not quotes from any particular vendor. This page describes the regulations as they stood on the as-of date above; regulations and device approvals change, and your own Letter of Authorization and the current CFR are the authority, not a manufacturer's summary, ours included.