Hi all, after completing the final CASA ATPL exam I want to share some advice to do with the seven infamous exams. This post is heavily inspired by the user xCartzy who created a post very similar to this one back in March of 2019 that I found to be of massive help to myself and to many others, some of you may already be familiar with the post (originally I was going to post a link to that thread as well as other links that were helpful for a few of the exams... Unfortunately PPRuNe does not allow me to make a post that has links yet so I'll have to improvise here). Here, I’ll attempt to make a slightly more up to date version of the original post and I’ll try to expand on certain areas where I can. So first and foremost a big thank you to xCartzy for their helpful advice! I do feel that they covered most of it quite well but I’ll try and add to what they’ve already written so apologies if there’s an overlap of information here. This is to help those who may be struggling with the ATPL grind to those who simply wish to learn a little more about the ins and outs of each subject before embarking on the seven exams.
I was able to self-study all seven exams although it did take a fair amount of time (about a year and a half), I may have over-studied many of the subjects due to my cautious approach to them and you would likely be able to sit and pass each exam somewhat sooner. As for the material I used, I am more or less in the same boat as xCartzy in that we both used a mixture of FTA (Flight Training Adelaide) notes and AFT (Advanced Flight Theory) notes. I think xCartzy neatly sums up the quality of these notes in their post: “there is a lot of material in there (FTA) that whilst is good to know, doesn't apply to the exam that you're studying. Nathan's notes are pretty good, but on some concepts he's only given a one sentence description of how that object / concept works, when really he should be describing it in as much detail as possible and also giving examples. Also in Nathan's notes there are a few areas that don't apply to your exam”.
Anote for CASA: The purpose of this document is to aid those who are currently sitting or about to embark on the ATPL exams. I have made every effort here to not disclose any confidential information in relation to the exams and so will not include any answers or actual questions found in the real CASA ATPL exams. At the end of each subject I will state some of the topics I happened to encounter in the real exam; these are purely to give the reader an idea of what might be encountered in the real exam and these topics listed are taken directly from the publicly available CASA document of Part 61 MOS Schedule 3, Appendix 1. If I have inadvertently disclosed confidential information/details, please let me know.
Though this may be painfully obvious to most, the single biggest piece of advice to passing all seven exams is to do as many practice exams as possible; continue practicing until you’re confident in both the subject and your ability to pass the exam, then sit it. For most, repetition is the most effective way to learn the content, as the age old adage goes: practice makes perfect. Often achieving at least 80% on practice exams (90% for air law) is sufficient to pass the real thing as that allows for a 10% buffer in case you don’t perform your best on the day. To echo one of my instructors advice “No one performs their best during an exam or flight test!”.
Each subject here is listed chronologically in the order that I sat them.
- Air Law - AFT Notes and Exams / Pilot Practice Exams
There is very little theory to learn in the traditional sense as it is almost entirely the process of repeating practice exams in order to familiarize yourself with the contents of all the documents. There are a lot of useless documents that can be trimmed down, particularly rotary wing documents that appear here and there. Spend plenty of time getting comfortable with the ‘legal-ese’ type of wording that is used in these documents, often sections are written in negatives (i.e. an operator cannot do this, this and this...) so always read both the question and your documents very carefully. Also note that you may believe that you found the answer to the question in a certain paragraph of a section but always read the entire section as there are often contradictory statements or paragraphs that may change your answer entirely that are written just a little deeper into the section. PPE was a fine enough source for this exam but personally I wouldn’t recommend them for any of the other ATPL exams, I believe they’re more suited for all licenses up to and including CPL and IREX but not the ATPL.
Flight and duty time questions take some getting used to; again, plenty of practice exams will get you comfortable with how the FDP questions work and you’ll get the hang of it relatively quickly. There were questions on various topics including: Maintenance, Categories of operation, Visual approach procedures, Instrument approach procedures, IAL procedures, FDP, Recency, Instrument requirements, Engine start distances, etc.
- Human Factors - AFT Notes and Exams / FTA Notes and Exams
AFT’s notes primarily consist of Bob Tait’s CPL book with the addition of Nathan’s notes that expand on certain areas as well as provide useful information for areas that the CPL curriculum either loosely touches on or doesn’t cover at all. With that being said, Bob Tait’s notes will provide for the large majority of information that you’ll use in the actual exam. The exam itself is not too difficult (being the second easiest ATPL exam after Meteorology) with a lot of it being very similar to CPL human factors. The main area that CASA hits hard with are the Threat and Error Management questions which are almost always ambiguously worded and often boil down to an educated guess. Myself and many others struggle with these questions despite many practice exams on threats, errors, countermeasures, etc.
Thankfully you can still pass if you do well on the rest of the exam, that being said, still study the TEM theory well and know the Bob Tait book back to front. It may sound silly but I found I could easily visualize undershoots/overshoot illusions (depending on the slope of the runway/terrain) by using a ruler to visualize the runway and a pen to visualize the aircraft and working with the written question to physically visualize it in front of you, I found this helped to get a better idea of the scene and easily answer whether it was an undershoot or overshoot which I have seen some struggle with. There were questions on: Motor skills, Error management, Spatial disorientation, Hearing loss, Types of countermeasures (TEM), Types of Threats (TEM), Categories of errors (TEM), Visual and somatogravic illusions, Runway illusions, Detection of hypoxia or hyperventilation, Anatomy of the ear and eye, etc.
- Meteorology - AFT Notes and Exams / FTA Notes and Exams / Practice Exams From Various Sources
As many others have already said, this exam is almost the same as CPL meteorology making this the easiest ATPL exam of the seven. With that being said, there are around 5-10 questions in the exam on upper level meteorology including high-level jet streams and high-level synoptic chart interpretation so make sure you’re familiar with the signage and what all the numbers mean on these high-level charts as this is where the ATPL MET exam deviates from the CPL exam somewhat. Also make sure that you look very closely at the synoptic chart pictures provided for some questions as there is often a lot going on in one area (Cloud, CAT, Tropopause altitude, etc.) and CASA wants you to effectively interpret all weather phenomena there.
Iended up using various practice exams I still had from my CPL theory including Ground Effect exams; if you still have CPL meteorology practice exams I would highly recommend hanging on to them as they are useful as ATPL meteorology notes as well. Otherwise I used FTA and AFT practice exams which came in handy. Don’t stress on this exam as it’s all quite straight forward really and there’s very little CASA trickery involved other than the occasional question where the answers available are vague and can be interpreted incorrectly, make sure you read the question carefully. Also keep in mind that there are a few questions on interpreting TAF3 forecasts (i.e. Based on the provided TAF3 forecast, what weather would you expect for an arrival at 090030z). Otherwise there are also questions on: Thunderstorms, Turbulence, Mountain effects on weather, Wind shear, etc.
- Aerodynamics & Aircraft Systems - AFT Notes and Exams / FTA Notes and Exams
This subject is incredibly content heavy and took me about three months to complete (I had to delay the sitting twice due to one of Victoria’s many lockdowns that we all know and love…). To learn the content well is manageable albeit time consuming. I suggest allocating a fair amount of time to studying this one. AFT’s notes are quite good for preparing for the exam and the practice exams that come with them are very similar to the real exam with multiple questions in the real exam being near exact replicas of questions I already did in the AFT practice exams which certainly helped with time and confidence. FTA’s notes and exams are incredibly in depth and go WELL beyond what is required for the curriculum, often asking questions that would never be asked in the CASA AASA exam. This is often in part due to the fact that while AFT’s notes and exams are essentially based entirely on the CASA AASA exam, FTA’s notes and exams are based on various sources including exam papers designed for even the UK CAA International Division which means it often bears little to no relevance to the CASA exam that you’ll be sitting. The only way the FTA notes help for this exam is if a particular topic is confusing and you need to solidify your understanding of it from another source.
There were 50 questions in total (so you can in theory get 15 wrong), some of which are on: Fuel systems, Pressurization/air conditioning systems, Pneumatic/hydraulic systems, Flight forces (S+L & Total drag curve), Asymmetric flight, BGT, Autopilot systems, Specific auto throttle scenarios, Fuel information, Thermal plugs in the wheel, etc. Note that all the questions are factual recall questions, there are no calculations or formulas required. Also, I did not get any electrical/hydraulic visual diagram questions, however I get the feeling that those questions do exist in the question bank, it’s just that I got lucky and didn’t get any by chance.
Occasionally a video can explain a topic or system far better than any paragraph or diagram can. Here are some YouTube videos which I found helpful with a few different concepts in this subject (as mentioned before, I originally had links here but unfortunately I can't post links yet):
- Combustor - Explained By Engineering Explained *I found this video in particular to be incredibly helpful, props to the original creator*
- Turbofan by-pass ratio. By Roddy Mc Namee
- Jet Thrust reverser By SHADOjet
- Understanding How an Aircraft's Jet Engine Starts! A look at the Start Sequence of a Turbofan Engine By JxJ AVIATION
- Understanding Turboprop Engines: Thrust Generation and Comparison with Turbofan Engines! By JxJ AVIATION
- Understanding Turbofan Engines and Functioning of Auto Thrust! By JxJ AVIATION
- What is high speed aileron reversal? By flight-club
- Flight Management Systems Explained By Doofer911
- Servo Tab | Pilot Tutorial By Pilot Effect
- The Critical Engine | Pilot Tutorial By Pilot Effect
- Performance & Loading - AFT Notes and Exams
After Systems, this subject was a bit of a breather as the content heaviness for this subject was a fraction of what systems was. That being said, the exam for this one isn’t all that easy but isn’t too difficult either. This subject took longer than what it probably should’ve taken, in part due to having to delay exams because of lockdown yet again and also due to feeling some level of burn out from systems. Performance aerodynamics makes a re-appearance for this one however it’s also a fraction of the size of the performance aerodynamics in systems so it isn’t too bad. My advice for this subject is to make sure your lines are dead accurate as the tolerance for answers are very small (for example: a) 5.1 b) 4.9 c) 5.9 d) 5.3).
Many recommend using a protractor to help with this exam and whilst I can definitely see it’s benefit, I didn’t use one myself as I couldn’t find one and couldn’t be bothered buying one either; the truth is is that you don’t need a protractor but just make sure you’re accurate. Most of the questions are multiple choice including the big 4 marker questions thankfully. There’s only a handful of type-in questions and they’re mostly just with the smaller 1-2 marker questions. There’s a lot of 1 marker questions based on CAO 20.7.1B that are more or less a breeze to get through and are easy marks, one thing to note is that there is a difference in answers depending on if the question is asking about a ‘net flight path’ or ‘gross climb gradient’. I also had one question in the exam for CAO 20.7.0 which was also straight forward.
There were 32 questions in total including two 4 markers, about one 3 marker and a few 2 markers, the rest being 1 marker; this can of course vary depending on the person but this should give you a rough idea of the general layout of the exam. I only had one or two box loading questions and there were only maybe half a dozen performance aerodynamics questions. Some of the topics covered in the exam include: Holding configuration, Loading terms and concepts, CG limits at take-off, Payload calculation, MLW calculation etc.
I recommend having a quick read through of a blog post on Aviation Theory Services' website that is at least a little helpful at preparing yourself for the exam, it’s recent/relevant and isn’t a bad source to just give yourself a general idea of where to start with the exam prep, the blog post is called 'How to pass ATPL Performance and Loading first time!'.
- Navigation - AFT Notes and Exams / FTA Notes and Exams
This exam was pretty full on but overall manageable if you smash out practice exams over and over again, you might even see a question or two that you recognise. I had two 3 markers and out of the total 27 questions I had maybe 3-4 questions requiring me to bring out the Low Altitude Enroute Charts.
However, one thing I found interesting was that while almost all of Nathan’s mapping questions were in Queensland, New South Wales or (sometimes) South Australia; every single one of my mapping questions in the actual exam were in Western Australia, that is not to say that all your mapping questions will also be in WA, but it’s worth considering. Don’t stress about your maps being up to date as my maps were maybe a couple years out and worked just fine for me; however, when you get to flight planning I do recommend that your maps are up to date or at most one or two editions out of date.
The only problem is that I use Jeppesen’s so in both the practice exams and the actual exam, mapping questions will begin with something like ‘Refer to L7’ which must be the Airservices equivalent as they never once lined up with my Jeppesen charts. In fact, that statement at the start was better at telling me what chart it isn’t… In the exam it was helpful that they added what territory each location was in which helped me find these places, despite all of these locations being in WA. I went on to migrate from Jeppesen maps and use the Airservices ERC HIGH maps for the next exam, flight planning, which was a small learning curve but I’m glad I did that as it made studying easier.
The one marker questions were surprisingly pretty straight forward with the exception of a couple curveball one markers which caught me off guard. I found time was a bit more critical in this exam compared to the other ATPL subjects so far, while there was still a buffer of time when I finished the questions, I only had time to quickly skim over my answers rather than the more thorough check I’d usually do when I finished answering all the questions in previous exams, so make sure you keep yourself moving with this exam and I’d recommend starting with the three markers first, then two markers then one markers; you’ll find the the three and two markers will take up nearly three quarters of the exam time.
I also want to echo xCartzy’s advice to “Make sure you understand how all the instruments work!” And also when and where to apply magnetic variation / deviation on mapping questions. Also to clear up the confusion on xCartzy’s post about the correct true altitude formula, I used the following formula and it never gave me a single problem in practice exams and when I applied it in the actual exam it worked perfectly (note that if you use area QNH you are simply using MSL as the ‘Altimeter height above QNH source’):
True Altitude = Indicated Altitude + (0.004 x ISA Deviation x Altimeter Height Above QNH Source)
True Height = True Altitude - Airfield Elevation
Also, when a question asks for you to calculate Radar / Radio Altitude of an aircraft, it’s just another way of CASA asking you to calculate true height which is simply a matter of recalling both these formulas and applying them in the order written above for some easy marks in the exam.
There’s were quite a number of calculation questions in this one and not as many theory questions as I thought there’d be. But overall the calculation questions weren’t anything too difficult. Some of the questions cover topics such as: Magnetic compass errors, ILS errors, Radar principles, SSR principles, Recalculate Climb, Airspeed/Mach number calculation, Determining an ETA, ETP calculation, Actual W/V calculation, GNSS principles, Gyroscopic precession, True height calculation, Radar principles etc.
- Flight Planning - AFT Notes and Exams / FTA Notes and Exams / Rob Avery Compressed Course Notes and Exams
The big one, this took me about 6 months to self-study and somehow ended up walking out with 94%. I highly recommend reading the official CASA rounding regulations from Pages 25 to 34 in the CASA ATPL Exam Information Booklet. Reading this document is very important to rounding things correctly the way CASA wants you to, this is something I've noticed theory providers can do differently sometimes; of course all that matters is that you do it CASA’s way. Keep in mind that this document does not cover all of the rounding and interpolations required but it does cover the most important ones, the remainder of these rules can be gathered from whichever theory provider you choose to study with or feel free to shoot me a message and I’ll try and answer the best I can.
The common adage “practice makes perfect” applies to this exam more than any other one, do as many practice exams as you can get your hands on ideally from different theory providers too as this will give different structures and approaches to the exam. I noticed that the way casa wrote the questions in the real exam were slightly different to what I was used to as it was a little different to how Nathan or Rob wrote their questions but it shouldn't be enough to throw you. This exam is easily the most time critical of the seven exams and took me several practice exams to fall into enough of a rhythm that I could finish with a comfortable amount of time left.
In the real exam I finished with about 5 minutes remaining but I did slow down my pace towards the end and took it more carefully as I became more comfortable with the time I had remaining. I strongly suggest starting with the 5 markers and making your way down in the marks to finish on the 1 markers, this will make your life so much easier and less stressful in the exam. Also keep in mind that you should be working at a pace of 3.6 marks per minute, most 1 and 2 markers will be much quicker to complete than this pace, this gives you more time for the 3, 4 and 5 markers that tend to sit around or even above the 3.6 mark per minute rate.
It’s worth noting that this exam isn’t particularly difficult once you get the hang of it and the flow of doing questions, that simply comes with practice. The time frame is the difficult part so build yourself upon speed and accuracy and you’ll be okay. I’ve heard a saying floating around for this exam and I think it’s painfully true and it goes something like ‘Flight planning is an easy 5 hour exam that needs to be done in 3 hours’.
Highlighting is a massive tool to help you as well, whether that be in your ERC HIGH’s or B727 POH. Obviously you can't write in any documents but you sure can get creative with a 6 pack of highlighters. For example, on the ERC HIGH maps highlight routes that are common in practice exams (Important routes to highlight include: Q33/Q158, J251/H84, Y69, Q210/Q53, Y465, H345, Q923/H119, Y59, H91, J64, A464, B598, Y36/T63/J72, Y31/Y13/T27, etc.) on altitude capability tables you don't have to memorize which flight levels are west and which are east, you can use the colours of navigation lights to help remember and mark the flight levels (west (left) flight levels = red, east (right) flight levels = green).
Other highlighting tips include: Highlight the ISA temperature figures on the left of the TAT table (pg 3-106), for the OEI cruise tables (pg 5-10 to pg 5-13) highlight the flight levels red and blue so you know the hemispherical directions of each level but don’t highlight all the flight levels as in this abnormal configuration you’ll realistically never go below FL180 or above FL280, do this for the gear down tables as well (pg 5-28 to pg 5-31) but only highlight the flight levels from FL100 to FL200, for the yaw damper cruise tables (pg 5-24 to pg 5-25) only highlight FL290 blue and FL280 red as these are the only two possible FL’s in this configuration (it’s also worth noting that at FL290 your mach number will always be M0.726 and at FL280 it will always be M0.736), finally for the depressurised cruise tables (pg 5-18 to pg 5-19) I’d recommend only highlighting the entire FL130 row on both pages as this is the only flight level you’ll cruise at in a depressurised scenario (also note that you’ll only ever cruise at M0.59 when depressurised).
For any depressurised scenario you’ll inevitably have to calculate a descent from FL130 to wherever you’re landing, the data for this descent can be assumed to be unaffected by landing weight so always just use the following figures: TAS = 231 kts, Time = 13 minutes, Zone Fuel = 520 kg, Air Nautical Miles = 50 nm; this will save you some time and is guaranteed to be correct. Also, I can’t be 100% sure of this but as far as I’m aware you’ll never be tested on or have to use the ‘Emergency Operations’ section (pg 6-1 to 6-3).
The exam is made up of 50 marks and the one I sat had 17 questions and consisted of: three 5 markers, two 4 markers, six 3 markers, three 2 markers and three 1 markers. The high number of three markers seems to be a common theme for those that have sat this exam. The questions I got included topics such as: Determining LW, PNR position calculation, CP position calculation, payload determination, sector FBO, ect.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for reading, I hope it has given you at least one useful bit of advice! I wish you the very best with these exams, with practice and dedication you’ll make your way through these exams and come out the other end with a frozen ATPL and another victory over CASA…