Pilot Aptitude Tests

Pilot aptitude tests are the timed, mostly computer-based tests that airlines, cadet schemes and some flight academies use to estimate how a candidate will cope with flight training and with the workload of a flight deck. They measure abilities rather than knowledge: mental arithmetic and reasoning, spatial orientation, memory, the sharing of attention between tasks, and the coordination of hands and feet. Many batteries also include a personality questionnaire, and many selections follow the tests with a group exercise watched by assessors.

The tests weigh most heavily on cadets, who are selected before they have a logbook to show, but experienced pilots meet them too. easyJet's published process for pilots follows the online application with verbal, numerical and spatial reasoning tests and a personality questionnaire; the Lufthansa Group's European Flight Academy requires a qualifying certificate from the DLR test before a cadet applies; and Ryanair's online assessment sets experienced first officers four tasks and captains one. How the tests fit among interviews, simulator checks and background checks is described in airline pilot recruitment and selection.

Why airlines test aptitude

Ab initio training is long, and a cadet who fails it costs the sponsor a training place and the cadet the time. Aptitude tests try to pick out, before training starts, the people most likely to finish it and to become safe crew members. They concentrate on how quickly and accurately a candidate takes in and processes information, and leave what can be learned from books to the technical tests and interviews.

Human performance texts list among the qualities of a competent pilot a high sense of responsibility, ability in both academic work and flight handling, motivation, good communication, flexibility, reliability, a balanced personality, team spirit, calmness under stress and an eye for detail. Aptitude tests measure the abilities; questionnaires, interviews and group exercises look for the rest. Part of the battery also answers a rule: under CAT.GEN.MPA.175 an EASA airline must ensure that its pilots have completed a psychological assessment before line flying. easyJet states that its personality questionnaire is needed to comply with EASA regulations, and Ryanair cites CAT.GEN.MPA.175 for its online work-related behavioural assessment.

Cognitive tests: numerical, verbal and logical reasoning

Numerical reasoning tests ask for quick, accurate arithmetic without a calculator and for figures read from tables and graphs. Cadet batteries often go further: Emirates' national cadet programme opens with maths and physics assessments and later sets a mental maths test, and easyJet's cadet route includes computer-based maths and technical tests. The arithmetic resembles what pilots do in flight, so practising it in that form serves twice:

• Descent rate on a 3° path: about five times the groundspeed, so 120 kt needs about 600 ft/min.
• Descent planning: losing 6,000 ft in 20 NM at 150 kt takes 8 minutes, so 750 ft/min.
• Track error by the 1 in 60 rule: 4 NM off track after 30 NM is (4 ÷ 30) × 60 = 8°.

Verbal reasoning tests check reading: whether the candidate draws only the conclusions a text supports. Many batteries also test English directly. Air France has built an enhanced English test into PSY0, the online pre-selection of its cadet scheme, and Emirates gives its cadets an aviation English test.

Logical or abstract reasoning tests present series of shapes, letters or numbers governed by a hidden rule and ask for the next item or the odd one out. Emirates includes abstract reasoning in its first, remote stage, flydubai tests logical thinking, and the DLR test adds technical comprehension.

The items are timed, so pace matters, but human performance texts are clear that a correct response is worth more than a fast one.

Spatial orientation and instrument comprehension

Spatial orientation is the ability to keep track of position and direction in three dimensions and to turn objects or maps round in the mind. Typical items show rotated or mirrored figures or maps to be read from another direction, or ask where one object lies relative to another. Pilots use the same skill to picture the aircraft's position from instruments. Reading an ADF needle is a typical case: on a magnetic heading of 300° with an NDB at a relative bearing of 136°, the bearing to the station is 300 + 136 = 436, less 360, so the QDM is 076°.

Sight is the primary source of spatial orientation, and in cloud, where the balance organs mislead, the rule is to believe the instruments (see spatial disorientation). Instrument comprehension tests check how quickly a candidate can do that. A typical item shows an attitude indicator and a heading indicator and asks for the aircraft's attitude and heading, or for the matching picture of an aircraft. On the attitude indicator the aircraft symbol is fixed to the case while the horizon stays parallel to the real one, so their relative position gives pitch and bank. With the symbol's nose above the horizon line and its left wing below it, the aircraft is nose up and banked left; if the heading indicator reads 270°, the picture is a climbing left turn through west, towards the south. Cathay Pacific's online tests include an instrument orientation task, and the Advanced COMPASS session Virgin Australia uses includes instrument interpretation.

Memory, attention and multitasking

Working memory is small. It holds about 7 ± 2 unrelated items, loses them within 10 to 20 seconds unless they are rehearsed, and is highly sensitive to interruption. Grouping items into chunks raises the effective capacity, which is why 012357176204 is easier to hold as 0123 5717 6204; association and mnemonics help in the same way. Memory tests exploit these limits with strings of digits, call signs or instructions to be recalled after a delay or after another task has intervened.

Attention comes in two forms. Selective attention samples the inputs for relevance, so that a pilot's own call sign stands out from the radio chatter; divided attention time-shares the central decision maker between tasks. That decision maker is single-channelled: it takes one decision at a time, and doing two things at once is possible only because practised skills run as motor programmes without conscious thought. When demand exceeds capacity, tasks are shed, often without the person noticing which.

A multitasking test measures how well a candidate manages that limited capacity. It typically combines a continuous control task with others, such as arithmetic, memory items or reacting to signals, and scores all of them. The DLR test, flydubai's online battery and the computer-based capacity test of British Airways' assessment day each include one, and Virgin Australia's session tests task management. The technique is the instrument pilot's: a steady scan that visits every task, priorities followed as instructed, and no fixation on the task that is going badly, since attention channelled onto one problem is how real aircraft come to be left unattended (see attention, vigilance and distraction).

Simple reaction time, pressing a key when a light comes on, is about 0.2 seconds, and it lengthens as the choice becomes more complex.

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Psychomotor and coordination tests

Psychomotor coordination tests measure how precisely and smoothly a candidate controls a moving display with the hands and often the feet, typically by keeping a symbol on a moving target while other demands are added. Air France's PSY1 stage combines psychotechnical and psychomotor tests, KLM Flight Academy's cadet selection has a separate sensorimotor test, Edelweiss lists apparatus tests on its assessment day, and the Lufthansa Group assessment includes psychomotor testing with psychologists present.

The tests reward the control habits of good flying: small, early corrections rather than large, late ones, and patience with the lag between input and response, since over-controlling produces oscillation in a test as in an aircraft. A skill practised often enough becomes a motor programme that runs without conscious thought and leaves capacity for other tasks.

Personality and motivation questionnaires

A personality questionnaire asks a long series of questions about how the candidate usually behaves and feels: at work, with others and under pressure. Human performance texts regard the written questionnaire as the most reliable way to assess personality, more so than interviews or first impressions, which are often wrong yet tend to persist. Personality traits are largely innate, stable and very resistant to change, which is what makes them worth measuring. The profile usually described for a good pilot is stable, slightly extrovert, reliable and self-disciplined, and stability is considered the most important trait for crew decision making. The theory behind such profiles, from Eysenck's model to the Myers-Briggs types, is covered in personality and motivation.

Questionnaires are common. Air France's PSY2 stage includes two personality inventories, Pegasus uses the MMPI personality inventory, SAS sets online personality assessments, and Wizz Air's cadet route includes an online psychological assessment. In TAP's last pilot competition the psychological assessment was eliminatory, and a fail barred a new application for 12 months.

There are no right answers to learn: the questionnaires look for consistency and honesty, and answering as an imagined ideal pilot risks exactly the inconsistency they detect. The sound approach is to answer quickly and truthfully, describing behaviour at work as it is. Motivation, why the candidate wants to fly and why with this airline, is explored further at interview (see competency-based pilot interviews).

Group exercises

In a group exercise several candidates work together on a planning or prioritisation problem with a deadline, and the assessors score each person's behaviour rather than the group's solution. It appears in the published selections of easyJet, Norwegian, SAS, Finnair, Jet2 and British Airways, in the Lufthansa Group assessment and in Air France's PSY2 stage, where candidates sign a confidentiality charter about the exercises. KLM Flight Academy's core competency test includes a cooperation exercise.

The behaviours sought are those of crew resource management: offering ideas, listening, building on others' suggestions, keeping the group aware of time and helping it reach a decision. A group usually decides better than its average member but seldom better than its ablest one. Groups tend to take riskier decisions than individuals, because responsibility is shared and bold members dominate, and persuasion should rarely be needed. The recommended habits are to argue from logic rather than personal judgement, not to change position merely to reach agreement, to avoid shortcuts such as a majority vote or a middle course, and to treat differences of opinion as helpful.

Dominating the group and staying silent both deprive the assessors of the evidence they need. Air France states that paid commercial preparation courses for its group tests have shown no added value in its selections, and KLM Flight Academy asks candidates not to take selection training at all, because it can produce unnatural or socially desirable behaviour that prevents an accurate assessment.

Preparing for the tests

Preparation is mostly familiarity and condition rather than cramming:

• Know the format. Read the invitation closely and use any practice material offered; flydubai, for example, offers practice questions before its online tests. Some online stages run in fixed windows: 72 hours for Aer Lingus's online assessments, and a pre-defined 36-hour window for Air France's proctored cadet pre-selection, which needs a webcam.
• Practise little and often. Daily mental arithmetic without a calculator, the rules of thumb above, and instrument pictures read against the clock.
• Sit the online tests personally. Aer Lingus states that candidates may be asked to retake its online assessments at the assessment centre.
• Arrive rested. Fatigue lengthens reaction time and narrows attention, and caffeine masks it without removing it.
• Be yourself in the questionnaire and the group exercise, for the reasons above.

A first attempt should be a prepared one, because a failure costs time: KLM accepts no new application within two years of a rejection, and Wizz Air sets a freezing period after an unsuccessful attempt.

Library articles are written for study and exam preparation. They do not replace your aircraft's approved documentation, your operator's procedures or the regulations themselves.