ATPL

07 May 2022

You’ve gotten to that point, you may have just finished your CPL or you may have been working in the industry for years, but you’ve got to the point where you want to sit your ATPL’s and progress your career.

One of the most commonly asked questions I get is “What order should I sit my ATPL exams in? Does it matter?”

While there is no requirement to sit them in a particular order, I will show you what I recommend based upon years of teaching ATPL’s and seeing hundreds of students' progress through them.

1. ATPL Flight Planning

You might find this surprising but I recommend sitting Flight Planning first and there’s a few good reasons behind this:

• Your exam ‘window’ begins when you pass your first subject.
• This subject is the hardest and takes the longest to study- take advantage of the fact that you’re not using up your exam window.
• You’ll be very motivated studying for your first ATPL exam. Use this motivation to push through the first and hardest exam. (don’t leave it to the end and keep putting it off until your other subjects lapse)
• From here its smooth sailing (relatively- still a lot of work to do)

2. ATPL Performance & Loading

There is a bit of overlap between the Flight Planning exam and the Performance & Loading exam.

Let’s take advantage of this by sitting performance immediately after flight planning. You’ll be familiar with quite a few questions as you would have done them in flight planning already.

I do want to point something out- a lot of people ask if this works the other way: “Does sitting performance first help with flight planning?”. The short answer is no.

In performance, you will be asked questions such as ‘one engine inoperative altitude capability’, ‘long range cruise data’, ‘holding tables’ etc. You can learn these as stand-alone questions but you are skipping MAJOR steps in the flight planning process. So, the skills don’t really relate if you go from performance to flight planning, but they DEFINITELY do if you go flight planning then performance.

I have done Performance & Loading ‘workshops’ for people that have done Flight Planning already and they only took 2 days compared to the usual course of 5 days.  

• You would have already studied some of the content.
• Going from Flight Planning to performance is FAR easier than going performance then flight planning.
• It will feel so easy compared to ATPL Flight Planning, hence it will keep the motivation up!

3. ATPL Navigation

This exam is kind of a stand-alone one. It doesn’t relate very closely to any of the others.

It’s not uncommon to hear “Sit Navigation before Flight Planning because you learn about PNR’s and CP’s”. The ONLY similarity between the Navigation PNR & CP method and the flight planning method is the NAME! The only benefit you’ll get is you’ll know what it’s called (but you should already know that from PPL and CPL!)Standalone exam

• You’ll be used to using the calculator now.
• You’ll get a chance to learn and memorise some theory whereas the first two were pretty ‘hands on’.
   

4. ATPL Aerodynamics & Aircraft Systems

You’re up to your 4^th exam and you’re just starting to wonder if you’ll learn anything about planes! Now’s the time- all theory, no calculations, no drawings… just learning everything about the aircraft you want to be flying. This is where the motivation is coming back. You’re reading about jet engines, watching videos about hot starts, all the fun stuff we want to actually learn about.

• Interesting subject to keep the motivation going (navigation can be a little dull)
• This is the last ‘hard’ one. 
• This is the only real ‘universal’ subject. There is SO MUCH content out there to learn. So, you can learn as much or as little as you like (as long as you learn what’s needed for the exam)

5. ATPL Air Law

You’ve just finished ATPL Systems and your head is ready to explode with the amount of information you’ve learnt! Let’s have a little break from memorising information and do the open-book exam. ATPL Air Law gives you a chance to find the answers in the book and reference them in the exam, no need to memorise it (In fact I discourage memorising everything for the exam).

• Have a break from memorising facts
• Enjoy the simplicity of an open book exam after the content heavy ATPL Systems exam!
• You’re more likely to need ATPL Air Law information soon if you’re applying for the airlines (you might actually remember a fair bit for the interviews).
   

6/7. ATPL Human Factors and ATPL Meteorology

These exams are both stand alone. You can either do HUF or Met now, your choice!

They are pretty similar to the CPL subjects, so for the instructors out there, maybe volunteer to teach the CPL class about HUF or Met, and get some revision in yourself 😉

• Standalone exams
• Pretty similar to the CPL exams