Originally Posted by
Pilotuser964
Hello, due to various reasons (I'm sure you can guess some), I failed my entire ATPL module. I stupidly got to my 6th and final sitting, where I failed an exam with a mark of 74%. That final fail was my 6th in total so it was not exactly a fluke.
Is a career as an airline pilot still an option for me? Or rather, is it a realistic option. Or should I save the money now and move on?
Assuming I go through the ATPL cycle again & pass every exam first time at an average score of 90+, will the horrors of the first ATPL cycle come back to bite me? or will it be forgotten about and deemed irrelevant?
I'd love to hear some opinions as I'm very conflicted about what to do at this stage...
I think it worth considering what was failed, and why? How badly?
Is it a case of getting the same explanations over and over, but never really clearing up some fundamental misunderstandings? One or two subjects?
It was mentioned earlier that the ATPLs were ‘miserable and useless’. I don’t entirely disagree, but I have revisited some basics. I would say that an enormous amount of material seems largely irrelevant, or learned in the context of passing an exam rather than truly understanding the topic, and even contradictory with the modern world. I did mine on the old UK system, just as JAR was raising it’s head.
As a former engineer, I found some things easy to grasp. But then, meteorology proved to be a black science involving chicken bones and sorcery. Having studied a lot with one recommended organisation, I then took a number of brush up sessions with Alex Whittingham (?) and that cleared up a lot of my sticking points with met.
I’ve just been through a series of CBTs as part of a new operator conversion. CBTs which are approved by someone, and the material is dreadful, and in a few cases, simply made up. (I’m still awaiting feedback on my feedback…)
Study, get through it, and move on to the next thing.
A useful skill would be being able to filter the learned material for what is worth retaining once the exams are passed.