RTR(A) Exam 2026: What Changed Now That DGCA Runs It, Not WPC

RTR(A) is now conducted by DGCA, not the Wireless Planning and Coordination Wing. The Ministry of Civil Aviation notified the Radio Telephone Operator (Restricted) Certificate and Licence Rules, 2025 on 25 June 2025, and DGCA began running the examination from the December 2025 session onward. If you are studying from an older guide that names WPC as the examining authority, that guide predates the change.

Is RTR(A) conducted by DGCA or WPC now?

DGCA. The Wireless Planning and Coordination Wing, which ran RTR(A) for decades under the Department of Telecommunications, stopped conducting the examination once the Radio Telephone Operator (Restricted) Certificate and Licence Rules, 2025 took effect. Candidates registering today go through DGCA's own examination system, the same regulator that runs your CPL and ATPL theory papers.

This is a genuine authority change, not a rebranding. The rules, the registration route, and the body issuing your certificate have all moved from a telecommunications wing to the civil aviation regulator. A page that still describes a WPC-run practical test with a joint DGCA-WPC panel is describing the exam as it worked before the transfer, not as it works now.

What exactly changed when DGCA took over RTR(A)?

The examining authority, the legal rules it operates under, and the registration system all changed together. The syllabus intent — radiotelephony procedure, phraseology, and practical transmission skill — has not changed; how you register, who examines you, and which document governs your certificate have.

Source: Radio Telephone Operator (Restricted) Certificate and Licence Rules, 2025, notified by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

What is the legal basis for the transfer?

The Radio Telephone Operator (Restricted) Certificate and Licence Rules, 2025, notified by the Ministry of Civil Aviation on 25 June 2025, is the instrument that moved RTR(A) examination and certification authority to DGCA. The rules sit alongside DGCA's Civil Aviation Requirements for Flight Crew Licensing, the same framework that governs your CPL and ATPL papers.

This is worth knowing even if you never read the rules yourself, because it tells you where to look when something about the exam seems to have changed again: the Ministry of Civil Aviation's own published rules page, and DGCA's Pariksha portal notices, not a coaching site's summary of either.

Who needs an RTR(A) certificate?

Every CPL and PPL holder in India needs one before they can legally operate an aircraft's radio equipment and communicate with air traffic control. It is a separate certificate from your pilot licence, examined separately, and required regardless of which licence route brought you to the cockpit.

• CPL candidates preparing for an airline or charter career.
• PPL holders who intend to fly in controlled airspace or communicate with ATC.
• Candidates converting a foreign licence to an Indian one, who need an Indian RTR(A) even if they hold an equivalent foreign radiotelephony qualification.

RTR(A) is not one of the theory papers counted in the CPL subject list. It has its own registration, its own two-part structure, and its own timeline, which is exactly why treating it as an afterthought late in training causes avoidable delay.

What is the eligibility for RTR(A) under the new rules?

Multiple independent reports describe the eligibility as a minimum age of 16 and a Class 10 pass or equivalent, both lower than the age-18 and 10+2-with-Physics-and-Mathematics figures that circulate on older guides written for the WPC-era exam. We have not been able to read the 2025 rules document directly to confirm these two figures ourselves, so treat them as reported rather than confirmed, and check your own eligibility on the Pariksha portal before you plan around either version.

The one figure in that table we can state with confidence, because it follows directly from RTR(A) now sitting inside DGCA's own examination system, is the computer number. If you do not already hold one for your CPL or PPL theory papers, you need to obtain it before registering for RTR(A) as well — the same number now serves both.

Split comparison graphic showing RTR(A) eligibility before and after the DGCA takeover: age 18 and 10+2 PCM on the left under a WPC-era label, age 16 and Class 10 pass on the right under a DGCA-era label, with a caution icon noting the right-hand figures are reported but not independently verified

How is the RTR(A) exam structured now?

RTR(A) still has two parts: a written examination and a practical examination. What has moved under DGCA is the format and administration of both — the written component is now computer-based, and the practical is run as a structured, scenario-based radiotelephony evaluation rather than the older viva-style oral panel.

Passing Part 1 is a prerequisite for attempting Part 2 — you cannot sit the practical evaluation on a written paper you have not yet cleared. Beyond that sequencing point, we could not verify a specific pass mark, attempt cap, or written-paper validity window against the primary rules text, and figures circulating for those three items differ between sources. Confirm each on the Pariksha portal before you plan a study timeline around it.

What the syllabus still covers

The subject matter has not changed with the transfer. What you are examined on remains standard radiotelephony practice for aeronautical communication:

• Standard ICAO phraseology and call-sign convention.
• Message transmission formats and readback procedure.
• Distress and urgency communication, including the exact phrasing DGCA expects in an emergency call.
• Basic radio principles: transmitter-receiver operation, modulation, and the working of VHF and HF communication equipment.
• Air Traffic Control communication protocol and regulation.

If you already have study material built for the older syllabus, most of the content substance still applies. What you should re-check is the registration route and the exam format, not the underlying phraseology and procedure.

How do you register for RTR(A) now?

Registration goes through DGCA's own examination system rather than a separate WPC process. In practice this means the same computer-number infrastructure you use for CPL and ATPL theory papers now covers RTR(A) too.

1. Get a DGCA computer number first, if you do not already hold one from your CPL or PPL registration. It is issued by the Central Examination Organization and is a precondition for registering for any DGCA Flight Crew examination.
2. Watch for the application window announced on the Pariksha portal. Recent sessions have opened and closed their registration window within a matter of days, so a candidate who checks the portal only occasionally can miss it entirely.
3. Confirm your document and eligibility status against whatever the portal states for RTR(A) specifically, rather than assuming the CPL eligibility conditions apply unchanged.
4. Register and pay through the portal, checking the fee shown at the time of registration rather than a figure quoted elsewhere.
5. Sit Part 1 before attempting Part 2. The practical evaluation is not open to you until the written paper is cleared.

Because the transfer is recent, the practical detail of registration — exact document list, exact portal screens, exact session cadence — is still settling. Build in time for a first attempt at registration to surface questions you did not expect, rather than leaving it to the week the window opens.

What does the RTR(A) exam cost, and is a fee published?

We could not verify a specific fee figure for RTR(A) against a primary source we were able to read directly. Several aviation sites report a written-exam fee, a separate practical-exam fee, and a further licence-issue fee, but figures differ between sources and none of them link to the rules document or a DGCA notice stating the amount. Following this site's own rule against repeating a number that appears nowhere we can verify, we are not printing a specific figure here.

What you should do instead: check the fee displayed in the Pariksha portal at the exact point you register. That is the number that will actually be charged to you, and it is the only version of this fee worth planning a budget around. If a number you read elsewhere, including anywhere else on this site, does not match what the portal shows, the portal is correct.

How long is an RTR(A) certificate valid?

Reports describing the new rules cite a long validity period tied to the holder's age, extendable with DGCA's approval, alongside separate and shorter validity windows for a cleared written paper and for practical attempts against it. We have not been able to confirm the exact figures against the primary rules text, so we are naming the categories that appear to exist — certificate validity, written-paper validity, and a cap on practical attempts per cleared written paper — without stating numbers we cannot stand behind.

If your training timeline depends on how long a cleared RTR(A) component stays valid, get the current figure in writing from DGCA or from the Pariksha portal rather than from any published guide, including this one.

Process flow diagram showing the two-part RTR(A) exam sequence: a computer-based written test on the left feeding into a locked gate labelled "written pass required", opening into a scenario-based practical radiotelephony evaluation on the right, both stages labelled as administered by DGCA

Where does RTR(A) fit in your CPL timeline?

RTR(A) is not one of the four CPL theory papers, so clearing it does not advance your Air Navigation, Meteorology, Air Regulation, or Technical General progress, and clearing those four papers does not advance RTR(A). Plan it as a fifth, parallel track rather than something you fit in after the theory papers are done.

Two practical consequences follow from RTR(A) sitting outside the CPL paper set. First, a ground class package built around the four CPL subjects may not include RTR(A) preparation at all — confirm what is and is not covered before you assume it is bundled in. Second, because RTR(A) now shares DGCA's computer-number and Pariksha-portal infrastructure with your CPL papers, there is no procedural reason to leave it until last; a candidate who is already registered and comfortable with the portal for CPL papers can register for RTR(A) the same way, on its own schedule.

What should you verify before you register?

Given how recently the authority changed, verifying rather than assuming is the more useful habit here than in most DGCA processes.

• Check the examining authority named on whatever guide you are studying from. If it says WPC, or describes a joint DGCA-WPC panel, it predates the transfer and its procedural detail should not be trusted, even if its phraseology content is still accurate.
• Confirm your eligibility on the Pariksha portal directly, rather than from an age or education figure quoted on any blog, including this one.
• Confirm the fee shown at the moment you register. No published figure we found was traceable to a primary source we could read.
• Confirm the current validity periods for the certificate, the written pass, and practical attempts, in writing, before you sequence RTR(A) against your flying training.
• Check whether your ground class or FTO package includes RTR(A) preparation or treats it as a separate purchase.

What is still unclear about the new system?

Three things are settled: the authority is DGCA, the legal basis is the Radio Telephone Operator (Restricted) Certificate and Licence Rules, 2025, and registration runs through the same computer-number and Pariksha-portal system as your other Flight Crew examinations. Beyond that, the practical detail — exact fees, exact validity periods, exact attempt caps, and how consistently the new format runs from one session to the next — is the part a transfer this recent has not fully settled in public documentation we could verify.

That is not a criticism of the transfer itself; regulatory handovers of this kind typically take several sessions to stabilise in practice. It is a reason to treat any RTR(A) guide, including this one, as provisional on the numbers and confirmed only on the structural facts, until DGCA's own published material is complete enough to check every figure against it directly.

Clean checklist graphic titled "Before you register for RTR(A)" listing five check-marked items: confirm the examining authority in your study material, verify eligibility on the Pariksha portal, confirm the fee at registration, confirm validity periods in writing, and check whether your ground class covers RTR(A) preparation

The short version

DGCA now conducts the RTR(A) examination, not WPC, under the Radio Telephone Operator (Restricted) Certificate and Licence Rules, 2025, notified in June 2025 and in effect from the December 2025 session. Registration runs through the same computer-number and Pariksha-portal system you already use for CPL and ATPL papers. The structural facts are confirmed; the specific numbers — fees, validity periods, attempt caps, and the exact eligibility age and education requirement — vary between sources we could not verify against a primary text we could read, so confirm each one on the portal before you plan around it. If you are mapping RTR(A) against your wider theory schedule, our guide to DGCA theory subjects by licence sets out where the four CPL papers sit, and our DGCA ground classes page states plainly what our own package does and does not cover. For the fee discipline this whole exam category deserves, see our breakdown of what a DGCA paper actually costs, and for the wider CPL route, our CPL page and the RTR overview are the places to start.