No, we do not offer a "subsidize lazy students" passing guarantee - and for good reason. We get you - you want your aviation experience be successful and the prospect of taking a test can be stressful. That's certainly understandable. Some of our competitors try to take advantage of your excitement and vulnerability by preying on your subconscious inclination (one that we all share) to believe that if you just pay more that somehow you'll get more. Many pilots fall for the aviation equivalent of 'if I just buy this more expensive treadmill I'll be thin in no time.' As a result, it's possible to be lured by full-page glossy ads that convince you to needlessly spend 5 to 10 times what our apps cost on 'online courses' or 'pilot kits.' In our experience such offerings consist of not much more than:

• Paper reprints of FAA documents which you're better off downloading for free from the FAA website (since then they're searchable and often more up to date).
• Low quality pilot supplies such as bags or plotters that you'd be better off buying individually if you need them at all
• DVD or online video "helps you fall asleep" content that you'll likely never watch as the rate that the information is presented is excruciatingly slow and inefficient.
• Test prep questions (that are at best similar to ours in terms of currency and correctness, and in practice often much worse and always with a less time efficient user interface / user experience compared to ours).
• .. and some sort of 'Passing Guarantee' as a marketing cherry on top gimmick to complete their hard sell.

Our philosophy at Dauntless is to provide not only the best FAA written test prep out there, but to do so at reasonable cost. We're pilots and engineers. We're good at making highly effective apps and providing great aviation content. It's just not in our DNA to sell you things that you don't need. The overwhelming majority of pilots and mechanics who have used our prep materials pass their tests on the first try. But, as many tens of thousands have used our preps over the years, of course some small percentage has failed as well. in essentially all cases of failure, no matter who or what they publicly blame, closer examination has shown that the real underlying cause has been the student not having put in adequate time or effort into learning and understanding the material.

We think it's far more fair for all involved to not artificially inflate the cost of our apps by adding in a 'lazy student subsidization fee', which is really all that those 'guarantees' amount to.

Not convinced? Take a closer look at our competitors' offerings. If you see their websites, they write terms such as "Passing Guarantee!" in big prominent letters. It may seem at first that this applies to all of their test prep products. Look more closely, however, and you'll see (at least, at this time of this writing) that this guarantee only applies to their overpriced "courses", not their regular test prep books and software. These "courses" typically amount to little more than you getting a short outline on a block of questions (far less, typically, than what we provide via our question explanations) followed by some questions to learn. After you go through several such blocks, they give you several simulated FAA written tests as a "final exam." If you pass those exams with a high score you're entitled to their guarantee. Well, guess what--you can do basically the same thing for far cheaper with our apps. You can take an unlimited number of practice tests using GroundSchool and then go take your real test when your scores are sufficiently high.

As a general rule, we've found that if you use our apps in "simulated test" mode on all chapters, and can consistently score at least 90% or higher (95%+ is better!) 5 or more times in a row (10 is better!) then you have a statistically/historically excellent chance of passing your test. Your chances of passing will be much higher if in getting those scores you actually study and learn from our detailed explanations and don't try to "just memorize", as the FAA increasingly uses anti-memorization question variations on the actual tests. Those who study hard, do well on sufficient simulated tests, and actually learn the material overwhelmingly do very well on their knowledge tests.

So, don't be taken in by expensive yet worthless "guarantees!" Say YES to our lower priced, more efficient, apps.