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CPL... Nice to have?

Peter wrote:

With the older JAA/EASA IR exams you still got no credits towards the ATPL set but you did get the HPA credits.

With the full IR exams, you do get full credit towards the ATPL for the exams in meteorology and human factors.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne_Again wrote:

With the full IR exams, you do get full credit towards the ATPL for the exams in meteorology and human factors.

That´s not correct as far as I know. You will get that credit only towards the CPL, not the ATPL. Another reason to go CPL only, it reduces the relevant QB by about 3000 questions.

Regarding the CBIR TK: I took the exam in spring, the LBA weeded out many silly questions apparently, but not all of them. An Airbus rating would have been useful for Instrumentation. But as Peter mentioned I had no interest challenging anything, 75% were enough for me.

EDFE, EDFZ, KMYF, Germany

Peter wrote:

Challenging questions happens often but is hard to do because you are not allowed to make any notes and take them out of the exam room, so there is no legit way to collect the evidence you need to challenge them!

This is ridiculous! So there’s no way of knowing the questions are valid? Or even checking? Is the CAA not accountable to anyone? I thought a big selling point of the ATPL theory companies was that they access to the question database.

The mentality behind this strikes me as deselective (getting rid of people without time, money and motivation) rather than selective (finding the best).

On my PPL theory one of the questions was known to be ambiguous/wrong but everyone knew about it before the exam, and I believe it was later corrected or withdrawn. It was something about the time to wait to go flying after scuba diving.

I used to know an ex RAF pilot who had run out of time to convert his military licence, and was forced to do a CPL course in order not to lose his instructing job. There was an option to have him on salaried desk job and instruct for ‘free’ but the legality was judged too questionable. He said the CPL theory was frustrating, completely devolved from reality, and occasionally contradicted his experience. Some questions were out of context (instrument or jet) so agrees with Emir that it’s an ATPL minus certain sections, rather than a standalone CPL question bank. He also said that usually one option on the multiple choice was obviously wrong, so a guess is 1/3 not 1/4; but that some questions were misleading, e.g. asking for an answer in km/h for a calculation done in knots. Statistically the ATPL exam should be easier than the CPL, because the increase in knowledge required is less than the increase in number of questions, i.e. more questions on the same topics. This is all second hand and might be out of date (c.2012).

EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

Caba wrote:

That´s not correct as far as I know. You will get that credit only towards the CPL, not the ATPL. Another reason to go CPL only, it reduces the relevant QB by about 3000 questions.

You’re right. My mistake.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Capitaine wrote:

This is ridiculous! So there’s no way of knowing the questions are valid? Or even checking? Is the CAA not accountable to anyone?
As far as I know this is true all over EASA-land.

The mentality behind this strikes me as deselective (getting rid of people without time, money and motivation) rather than selective (finding the best).

Of course. From a pedagogical point of view this is madness as feedback from the examination itself is an important part of the learning process. Also you won’t know what you got wrong which is even worse. You are only told the general subject (e.g. fuel planning) of the question(s) you got wrong.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Ibra wrote:

I heard rumors that in the early batch students of the UK CBIR TK exams many have failed, then managed to re-pass after challenging CAA on questions that should not appear in the reduced CBIR exams, that de-cluttering is still going now but slowly

I failed meteorology – the subject that I consider myself pretty good in, studying it since I was glider pilot at age 16, but I didn’t learn it from QB TBH I didn’t spend a minute learning it and the result was failure. Next time I read QB twice and had almost 100%.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Yes, on similar painful exams I did, just go over the QBs until nothing is left, as you mentioned at least you will feel ready just after finishing that question pile twice

Reading fat books with 500 pages each at your own peace (irrespective of how much you are passionate about the subject) will not make you pass these kind of exams, it will just take you longer and will always end up with disappointment

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

My plan was actually to do the QB for the CPL only, without any real learning. However, I´ve recently started learning by watching brilliant youtube videos, The Pro Pilot ATPL course. Those are incredibly well made videos, and so far they´ve let me tick off the corresponding QB with very good results well in excess of 75%. I can´t recommend those videos enough, they are for free and beat any boring book big time! I haven´t run into anything yet that wasn´t covered by the videos.

EDFE, EDFZ, KMYF, Germany

I think reading books is a poor way to study for any of these European exams – PPL, IR, whatever. The books tend to be manuscripts written by some famous retired airline pilot with good CAA connections who wanted something to do something in his copious spare time. It would take years to absorb the material to enough depth to pass the exams. Unsurprisingly all the lecturers I have ever met were guys who had never flown a plane. In 2011, one of them looked at my plane parked there (at EGHH), looked at the panel and said “WOW you must have a KNS80 in there!” The QB is the only way. Even before the QBs came out, say 30 years ago, the big FTOs obtained them by assigning each exam candidate to memorise 1 question and when they left the exam room the questions were quickly written down.

The FAA material is slightly less bad – because there is so much less of it. The ATPL book is about 4cm thick, compared with a dozen 5cm thick ring binders for the EASA ATPL. Or 1 2cm book for the PPL, versus about 5 2cm books for the EASA PPL.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The books tend to be manuscripts written by some famous retired airline pilot with good CAA connections who wanted something to do something in his copious spare time…………. 1 2cm book for the PPL, versus about 5 2cm books for the EASA PPL

You don’t need to compare the size to know the difference between a practical book and a manuscript book, the later always tends to start with “after WW2…”/“Greek philosophy…” for technical/scientific topics and finish with a short reference to “global navigation system”/“world wide web” in the last two pages, that is why online forums like EuroGA definitely help

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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