EASA PPL Theory Exams: All 9 Subjects Explained
The EASA PPL(A) is examined across nine theoretical knowledge subjects, each paper passed independently at 75%. There is no averaging, no compensation between papers, and a set of deadlines that will quietly cost you every pass you have earned if you ignore them. This guide covers what each of the nine subjects actually tests, where students reliably lose marks, the rules on attempts and validity, and the order we would take them in — written by pilots who have sat these exams and taught them.
How the PPL theory exams are structured
The nine subjects are examined as independent multiple-choice papers, each standing alone at 75%. Three practical points catch students out before they book a seat.
You cannot simply turn up. FCL.025(a)(2) requires that you be recommended for the examinations by the ATO or DTO responsible for your training, once you have completed the relevant elements of the course. Your school controls when you are released to each paper — and the recommendation is itself time-limited. It is valid for 12 months, and if you have not attempted at least one paper inside that period, your DTO or ATO determines what further training you need before it can recommend you again.
The paper format is national, not European. EASA does not publish a central question count and time allowance for the PPL the way it does for the ATPL — each competent authority issues its own specification. Shorter subjects typically run to a dozen or so questions and longer ones to twenty or more, but the numbers genuinely differ between states, and so does the structure: a small number of authorities have historically combined Air Law and Operational Procedures into a single paper, some require the complete set inside one sitting, others let you take the papers one at a time across many months. Get the specification from your own authority and ignore figures quoted by a school in another country.
What EASA does centralise is the content. The ECQB-PPL — the European Central Question Bank for the PPL, SPL and BPL, with its published learning objectives — is where a number of authorities take their questions from. It is the paper length, the timing and the sitting arrangements that remain national.
The theory is a gate, not a side quest. The papers must be behind you before your skill test. Theory and flying are meant to run in parallel — the students who finish quickest are those studying the subject they are currently flying.
The numbers that govern your exams
Six figures in Part-FCL decide whether your passes survive, and FCL.025 is the article to quote if a school tells you otherwise.
| 75% | The pass mark, applied to each paper individually — FCL.025(b)(1). Nothing is averaged, and no paper compensates for another. |
| 12 months | How long your DTO or ATO recommendation to sit the examinations stays valid — FCL.025(a)(2). |
| 18 months | The window for passing all nine, counted from the end of the calendar month of your first attempt — FCL.025(b)(2). |
| 4 attempts | The maximum at any single paper — FCL.025(b)(3). |
| 6 sittings | The maximum number of sittings in which the complete set must be passed — FCL.025(b)(3). |
| 24 months | How long the completed set stays valid for the issue of the licence, counted from the day you pass the last paper — FCL.025(c)(1). |
Note where the 75% attaches: to the paper, not to the subject. In the ordinary nine-paper set the two are the same thing, but where a state examines two subjects in one paper the pass mark is calculated on that combined paper.
The 18-month clock is the one students misread. It does not start on the day you sit your first exam — it starts at the end of that calendar month. Sit your first paper on 12 May 2026 and the clock runs from 31 May 2026, giving you until 30 November 2027.
The word sitting is where exam plans go wrong, because most people assume it means one day. It does not, and EASA does define it: AMC1 FCL.025 describes a sitting as a period of time established by your competent authority within which you may take an examination or examinations, and that period should not exceed 10 consecutive days. Your authority sets the length within that cap. Several papers taken across one 10-day window can therefore count as a single sitting, while the same papers taken one weekend a month for six months spend a sitting each time. Find out how your own authority has set its window before you build a plan around it.
One further rule ties the attempts and the sittings together, and it is easy to miss: AMC1 FCL.025 allows only one attempt at any given paper within a sitting. You cannot fail Air Law on the Monday and resit it on the Thursday of the same window. Four attempts at one stubborn subject therefore consume at least four of your six sittings — which is why a second failure on the same paper is the moment to stop booking exams and go back to the book.
Breach any of these limits and you retake all nine papers. Fail one subject a fourth time, run past 18 months, or exhaust six sittings, and every pass you hold is void: you sit the complete set again after further training at an ATO or DTO, the extent of which the school determines (FCL.025(b)(3) and (b)(4)). At PPL level this rarely happens dramatically. It happens to the student who sat two papers in the spring, lost the summer to weather cancellations and an unserviceable aeroplane, came back in the autumn and found the clock had eaten both passes. Three dates on a calendar prevent all of it.
How long your passes last
Successful completion of the theoretical knowledge examinations is valid for 24 months for the issue of the licence, counted from the day you complete them (FCL.025(c)(1)). Inside that window you must finish your flight training and pass the skill test. Miss it and all nine passes expire.
There is no 10-year PPL theory validity. You will see it claimed on forums; it is wrong. For a PPL the figure is 24 months to licence issue. What people are conflating is the licence with the passes behind it: a Part-FCL licence has no expiry date — it is the ratings and the medical that require revalidation — so the theory is assumed to be permanent too. It is not. A seven-year rule does exist, but at a different level and on a different clock: ATPL theoretical knowledge remains valid for the issue of an ATPL for seven years counted from the last validity date of an instrument rating entered in the licence, not seven years from the exam. It has no bearing on your PPL.
The rules cluster: Air Law, Operational Procedures, Communications
These three test the framework you operate inside — memory-heavy rather than conceptually hard, which makes them the easiest to underestimate.
Air Law
The PPL Air Law exam is the largest of the three: the Standardised European Rules of the Air (SERA), airspace classification and what VFR may do in each class, VMC minima, right-of-way rules, altimeter setting procedures, cruising levels, aerodrome markings and the licensing framework.
Where students lose marks: the VMC minima table in SERA.5001. Two things trip almost everyone. First, the visibility requirement steps up from 5 km to 8 km at and above 10 000 ft AMSL, and questions are written to sit either side of that boundary. Second, the low-level concession in Class F and G applies at or below 3000 ft AMSL or 1000 ft above terrain, whichever is the higher, where the distance-from-cloud requirement becomes clear of cloud with the surface in sight — the flight visibility minimum still applies, and it is 5 km. SERA.5001 then lets the competent authority permit flight visibility reduced to not less than 1 500 m for flights at 140 kt IAS or less, where there is an adequate opportunity to see other traffic and obstacles in time to avoid a collision. Know all three figures: candidates read "3000 ft" and stop.
The give-way rules of SERA.3210 are the other reliable trap, because the categories form a hierarchy: power-driven heavier-than-air aircraft — aeroplanes, helicopters and gyroplanes alike, not aeroplanes alone — give way to airships, sailplanes and balloons; airships give way to sailplanes and balloons; sailplanes give way to balloons; and power-driven aircraft give way to any aircraft seen to be towing another aircraft or an object. That towing rung is the one most often dropped, and at an aerodrome with glider tugs it is a stock exam item. Learn the direction of the hierarchy, not the pairings.
Keep the geometry cases distinct as well — head-on, both alter heading right; converging, the aircraft with the other on its right gives way; overtaking, the overtaker alters heading right. One point of precedence decides a surprising number of questions: for converging traffic the category hierarchy overrides the geometry, so the on-the-right rule settles it only between aircraft of the same category. A balloon converging from your left still has the right of way over your aeroplane.
Cruising levels use the semicircular rule based on magnetic track, with VFR levels offset 500 ft above the corresponding IFR levels — the magnetic-not-true detail is worth a mark on its own. Then work through 30 exam-style PPL Air Law questions.
Operational Procedures
A short paper: wake turbulence, noise abatement, contaminated surfaces, fire and emergency drills, survival, transponder operation and occurrence reporting.
Where students lose marks: wake turbulence geometry. The vortices sink and drift, and the exam wants the technique — landing behind a heavier aeroplane, stay above its approach path and touch down beyond its touchdown point; departing behind one, be airborne before its rotation point and climb above its path, upwind of the drift. The other certainty is the transponder codes: 7500 unlawful interference, 7600 radio failure, 7700 general emergency.
Communications
The smallest paper: standard phraseology, transmission of numbers and callsigns, readbacks, distress and urgency signals, VHF propagation, radio failure and visual light signals.
Where students lose marks: the light signals, because the same colour means different things in flight and on the ground — learn them as two lists. Distress versus urgency is the other classic: MAYDAY for grave and imminent danger requiring immediate assistance, PAN PAN for urgency not requiring it, both on 121.500 MHz where no appropriate frequency is available. In most states this written paper is separate from the practical radiotelephony test — passing it does not authorise you to transmit.
The machine cluster: Principles of Flight and Aircraft General Knowledge
These two are the engineering pair: Principles of Flight explains why the aeroplane flies, Aircraft General Knowledge explains what it is built from and what is happening behind the panel. Taken together, while you are learning to handle the aeroplane, each one keeps explaining the other.
Principles of Flight
Lift, drag, weight and thrust; the lift formula; angle of attack; the stall and the factors affecting it; induced and parasite drag and the total drag curve; stability, control and trim; load factor and the flight envelope.
Where students lose marks: the stall. An aeroplane stalls at a critical angle of attack, not at a speed, and can be stalled at any airspeed and in any attitude — the exam offers a steep turn or a high-speed pull-up specifically to see whether you have internalised that. Related: in a level turn the load factor rises with bank angle, and stall speed increases with the square root of load factor. At 60° of bank in level flight the load factor is 2, so the stall speed is about 1.41 times the wings-level figure.
The other reliable stumble is the drag curve: below minimum drag speed, flying faster reduces total drag — behaviour that feels wrong until you separate the induced and parasite components and see them cross. Draw it from memory until it is automatic. Our complete PPL Principles of Flight guide covers all three — the critical angle of attack, load factor and the drag curve.
Aircraft General Knowledge
Airframe and structures; the piston engine and its four-stroke cycle; mixture, detonation and pre-ignition; magnetos; carburettor and fuel-injection systems; fuel, oil and cooling; propellers; the electrical and vacuum systems; gyroscopic instruments; the pitot-static system; undercarriage, tyres and brakes.
Where students lose marks: instrument failures. Learn the pitot-static blockages as three cases rather than two, because the exam reliably offers the one you left out as a distractor. With the ram inlet blocked but the drain hole clear — the usual insect nest or ice — the trapped dynamic pressure bleeds away and the airspeed indicator falls towards zero. With the pitot fully blocked, inlet and drain together, and the static clear, the ASI behaves like an altimeter: the indication increases in a climb and decreases in a descent. With the static blocked and the pitot clear, the altimeter freezes and the ASI under-reads in a climb, over-reads in a descent. Reason each case from which pressure is trapped and which is still venting, rather than memorising the outcomes.
Detonation and pre-ignition are the other pair that get merged into one vague answer; they have different causes, and the exam tests the distinction. Carburettor icing appears here for the mechanism and the carb heat system, and again in Meteorology for the conditions — both want you to know it is a serious risk at warm ambient temperatures with high humidity and low power, which contradicts most students' intuition. See why carburettor icing happens and how to beat it.
The environment cluster: Meteorology and Human Performance
This pair covers what you do not control: the atmosphere the aeroplane flies through, and the pilot flying it. Both look like general knowledge and both are examined on precise, defined detail, which is exactly why students under-prepare them.
Meteorology
Usually the biggest study load of the nine: the atmosphere and the ISA; pressure, density and altimetry; wind; stability and cloud formation; icing; thunderstorms; visibility and fog; air masses and fronts; and the decoding of METARs, TAFs and forecast charts.
Where students lose marks: altimetry and report decoding, in that order. Hold the ISA figures — 15°C and 1013.25 hPa at sea level, temperature falling at roughly 2°C per 1000 ft in the troposphere — and hold the direction of the errors. Flying from high pressure to low pressure, or from warm air into cold air, on an unchanged subscale setting, the altimeter over-reads: you are lower than the instrument says. "High to low, look out below" covers both cases, and both are examined. The cold-temperature error later becomes a real safety issue on instrument approaches — see why your altimeter over-reads in the cold.
On decoding, students lose more marks to TAF change groups than to any point of theory. BECMG, TEMPO and the PROB groups have precise meanings about duration and probability, and questions are built on that precision. Practise on real reports for aerodromes you fly to, then audit yourself against 25 exam-style PPL Meteorology questions.
Human Performance
Two halves that feel like different subjects. Physiology covers respiration and circulation, hypoxia, hyperventilation, pressure effects on the ears and sinuses, vision, spatial disorientation, carbon monoxide, alcohol, medication and fatigue. Psychology covers information processing, attention and workload, situational awareness, decision-making, human error and the hazardous attitudes.
Where students lose marks: assuming it is the easy one. The psychology half uses defined technical terms and examines the definitions — slips versus lapses versus mistakes, or skill-based versus rule-based versus knowledge-based behaviour — exactly what a multiple-choice paper tests well and common sense answers badly.
In physiology, hypoxia and hyperventilation are the perennial trap: the symptoms overlap almost completely, which is precisely why the exam asks, and the immediate actions differ. Illusions are the other rich seam, and the paper wants the two families kept apart — the leans and the somatogravic illusion are vestibular, generated by the inner ear; the black-hole approach is visual. Spatial disorientation and visual illusions covers all three, and all three appear at PPL level.
The planning cluster: Navigation and Flight Performance & Planning
The final pair is the applied one, where everything already learned turns into a route, a fuel figure and a correctly loaded aeroplane. Sit them while you are flying cross-countries and half the work is done for you.
Navigation
The PPL Navigation exam covers the form of the Earth; great circles and rhumb lines; charts and projections; magnetism, variation and deviation; the compass and its errors; dead reckoning and the navigation computer; map reading; time; and radio navigation and GNSS basics.
Where students lose marks: sign conventions, every time. Variation west, magnetic best — the magnetic value is numerically greater than the true value when variation is westerly, with deviation applied on top to get compass heading. Much of the loss here comes from applying a correction of the right magnitude in the wrong direction, and the distractors are built to reward exactly that error.
Compass errors are the second trap, because the standard mnemonics are hemisphere-dependent: the turning and acceleration rules as normally taught apply to the northern hemisphere and reverse south of the equator. If a question specifies a southern-hemisphere location, it is doing so deliberately. Magnetic compass errors: UNOS, ANDS, variation and deviation covers both.
Be fluent with the navigation computer before you sit this paper — wind triangle, drift, groundspeed, fuel and unit conversions all have to be quick, and a student still learning which side of the whiz-wheel to use will run out of clock. One caution: the 1-in-60 rule, roughly 1° of track error putting you 1 nm off after 60 nm, is an approximation for small angles — a rule of thumb, not a regulation.
Flight Performance and Planning
Mass and balance: loading, arms, moments and the centre of gravity envelope. Performance: take-off and landing distance, climb, and the effect of mass, altitude, temperature, wind, slope and surface. Planning: route selection, fuel planning and the ATS flight plan.
Where students lose marks: arithmetic under pressure, and the shifting centre of gravity. A loading problem correct at take-off may finish outside the envelope, because burning fuel moves the CG — the paper will ask about the landing condition specifically. Set the calculation out in a table rather than holding four moments in your head.
On performance, understand why each factor degrades your numbers: density altitude rises with heat, altitude and humidity, and a wet grass runway with an upslope and a tailwind stacks four penalties multiplicatively. Note carefully that the safety factors applied to raw flight-manual distances are recommended factors from authorities and flight manuals — not a single EASA-wide regulatory number at PPL level. Use the factors your authority teaches, and know why each exists.
A realistic order to take them in
There is no prescribed sequence, but the subjects have real dependencies, and the ones you need earliest are not the ones most students start with. This order tracks the flying course.
- Air Law and Communications. First. Everything you do at and around an aerodrome depends on them, and many schools and several authorities require Air Law before first solo — confirm your own requirement early.
- Human Performance. Short, self-contained, no prerequisites, and an early confidence win while your flying is still in the circuit.
- Aircraft General Knowledge and Principles of Flight. Take these while doing general handling and stalling, so the theory explains what the aeroplane is doing to you that week — by far the cheapest way to learn it.
- Operational Procedures. Short, and sits naturally alongside AGK.
- Meteorology. The heaviest paper, and a prerequisite for cross-country planning. Start reading real METARs and TAFs months before you sit it.
- Navigation. Depends on Meteorology for wind and on your chart work. Take it while flying navigation exercises.
- Flight Performance and Planning. Last. It draws on Meteorology, Navigation and AGK together, and makes far more sense once you have planned real routes.
You have the order — now practise in it, subject by subject, the way the papers actually ask the questions.
Start with 30 Air Law questionsDo not sit a paper "just to see what it's like". That single casual attempt starts your 18-month clock and spends one of your six sittings before you have studied a thing. Begin the exams when you have decided to work through the set, not on a whim during a weather cancellation. One to two papers a month alongside your flying finishes them comfortably inside the window.
If you intend to continue to professional licences, none of this is wasted groundwork — the same subjects return with far more depth at Instrument Rating theory and CPL theory level.
Why students fail, and how not to
Most PPL theory failures are not knowledge failures. They fall into a handful of avoidable categories.
Underestimating the margin. 75% on a short paper is tighter than it sounds. On a 12-question paper, three wrong answers is a pass by exactly one mark and a fourth is a fail; on a 16-question paper the line falls at four. Two careless errors therefore leave you one genuine gap away from a resit. Work out the permitted number for your authority's paper and let it calibrate what "nearly ready" means.
Learning the question bank instead of the subject. Question banks are diagnostic tools: used properly they show which learning objectives you have not met, and you go back to the book. Used improperly they teach you to recognise answers by shape, and the moment the wording changes the recognition is worthless. If you can answer a bank question but cannot say why the other three options are wrong, you have not learned it.
Not reading the whole question. Distractors are not random. They are the reciprocal heading, the other hemisphere, the opposite sign, the value that would be right had you used true instead of magnetic. Every trap listed above exists as a printed option somewhere in the bank, and reading the question twice defuses most of them. The same care applies to units: convert deliberately and write the unit beside every intermediate figure.
Leave nothing blank. FCL.025(b)(1) sets the 75% pass mark and states that no penalty marking is applied, so a wrong answer costs you exactly what a blank one does — nothing extra. An unanswered question is a guaranteed zero and a considered guess is free. Eliminate the options you can rule out and choose between the rest.
Losing track of the administration. Know which sitting you are on, your 18-month expiry date, and the date your passes expire for licence issue — write all three inside your logbook cover. Students who lose a full set almost never lose it on knowledge.
Take the nine papers in the right order
v1prep's PPL question banks follow the EASA learning objectives subject by subject, with worked explanations for every answer — so you find the gaps before the examiner does.
Start the PPL question bank →