FAA Releases First Full Three-Year Part 147 Passage Rate Report
The FAA has published its long-awaited Minimum Passage Rate Report, the first update since April 2025. The report covers August 1, 2023, through July 31, 2026—the first complete three-year reporting period since the FAA began collecting the relevant oral and practical testing data.
Under § 147.25, each certificated aviation maintenance technician school must maintain at least a 70 percent passage rate for students who take an FAA mechanic test within 60 days of graduation.
ATEC has consistently emphasized that neither AMTS nor the FAA should rely on this narrow metric as a stand-alone measure of program quality. The broader—and more important—outcomes standard in § 147.17 requires schools to provide quality training and ensure students have the knowledge and skills necessary to test for a mechanic certificate and associated ratings.
The central question is not simply whether a school meets an aggregate threshold, but whether it effectively prepares students to test and succeed. Answering that question requires a broader, more useful dataset. ATEC will continue calling on the FAA to provide results that are broken down by ACS codes and include tests regardless of how long before or after graduation they are taken.
An aggregate passage rate can serve as one compliance indicator, but it cannot provide a complete assessment of training quality or the feedback loop required by part 147’s outcomes-based framework.
ATEC encourages schools to document suspected discrepancies or data-quality concerns, submit questions to the FAA at 9-AWA-AFS-300-Maintenance@FAA.gov, and share relevant feedback with ATEC.
ATEC will continue monitoring FAA implementation of §§ 147.17 and 147.25 while advocating for transparent, actionable testing data that supports continuous program improvement.