I did the planning exercise about a year ago now and I have dredged up an email that I sent to another guy waiting interview. Here it is:
"The planning exercise was a bugger, I didn't have any time to research it at all as the interview was last minute. They give you a route that you are rostered to fly A - B - A - C with flight times a schedule and basic perfomance figures that allow you to work out fuel. Of course on departure you have a tech fault that doesn't effect timings but does increase fuel burn putting you first destination just out of reach. On the first landing you have to get the fault fixed which increases your turnaround time to two hours from one hour. Your job is to replan the day with the goal of sticking as close to the original schedule as possible. The kicker comes when you see the notam sheet for all of the available airports. Things like restricted fuel supplies, no maintenance, runways shut at certain times and of course crew FDP's. You are required to write out 3 different options before selecting the one scenario you want to proceed with after which you have to fill out a detailed flight log with fuel uplifts and burns and adjustments to the schedule. Time is the major issue, I though that I had it cracked and had come up with a scenario that would only lose a couple of hours on the original schedule, then as I was filling in the flight log with about 10 minutes to go realised that my crew would be about 20 minutes short on Duty Time. Well I swore quite a bit and plumped for a scenario that basically was the worst possible solution leading to over a nine hour delay!!! Doh!! All I can say is keep an eye on that time and keep reading those notams because every time you think you have cracked it there will be some detail in there that will screw it up for you."
I ended up passing the interview process so can't have messed it up to badly, advise is just to read the notams and then read them again and draw everything out with timings and fuel burns, good luck.
A.H.
