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ATPL Theory Exam Switzerland OFAC/FOCA

I understand others can’t afford using the entire 18 months, but I also don’t understand why taking on so many exams in a single sitting.
Is there some kind of weird rumor about “the least sittings the better”? If there is, it’s probably rubbish in my view. I believe all first time

There’s only one motivation to sit all of them at once: to save time. It’s not always easy to judge where you stand on some subjects – AviationExam scores are not always representative! The tendency is to over-prepare most subjects. You can save tons of time if you sit all the exams once you are getting 85%+ averages in AvEx in all of them and than just re-take those that you fail. But that’s just my personal opinion, YMMV.

At the end of the day, the ATPL scores/fails will not be deciding factor whether you’re getting hired or not, as long as your average is 80%+ and you didn’t fail multiple times – at least that’s what I heard here in my neck of the woods. The personal interview and your training performance records will decide whether you’re hired…

Well done all for passing your ATPLs!

In my case, I did the exams in 5 sittings throughout 17 months. I did push quite dangerously to the limit of sittings and months as I was doing other things in-between as well, but I am very happy with my approach as I passed all subjects first time.

I understand others can’t afford using the entire 18 months, but I also don’t understand why taking on so many exams in a single sitting.
Is there some kind of weird rumor about “the least sittings the better”? If there is, it’s probably rubbish in my view. I believe all first time passes is much more important than the number of sittings or the amount of time it took altogether, but I may be wrong as who knows what the HR manager of Ryanair/FlyBe/Jet2 will wake up randomly thinking the day of the selection…

EDDW, Germany

Always liked flying and would love to try a big jet. Can’t afford one, so planning to have fun in someone else’s jet and get paid for it. If that doesn’t work out, there’s nothing wrong with improved qualifications. Maybe instructor some day.

LPFR, Poland

@loco
Would you share your motivation in sitting all those exams and extra licence / qualification ?

Thanks Peter. Would be fun to get the TBM under AOC and do single pilot taxi ops, but it’s not the plan. Starting MEP and MCC courses this weekend. Next SEIR to MEIR and CPL. Very excited. Even if it doesn’t end with a job, I hope to improve as a pilot. Just a little afraid of the Tecnam MEP trainer

LPFR, Poland

Congratulations Loco!

So you are going to set up an airline operating TBM930s

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Just completed ATPL exams. I guess everything has been said about them, but anyway, some observations.
I am 40 and it took me 7 months (Apr-Nov) from first until last exam. I didn’t study in Jul and Aug, so net time was 5 months.
Min score 88, max score 100, most exams around 93.

I took the exams in Sweden because:
- due to low exam price, the Polish CAA is flooded with students from all over Europe. It’s difficult to book an exam. Sweden is 5x the price, but you take the exam when and where you like in complete privacy and peace. Only the invigilator is there. Well, to be honest, sometimes I heard invigilator’s wife cooking dinner
- session time is 14 days instead of 10
- extra 10 minutes for every exam (matters only on flight planning and performance exams)
Downside is no printing.

My learning method was to go through all the questions once and then again through the ones answered incorrectly. After that take a few simulated exams. If score is consistently over 90, this is what you’ll get in the exam. Current best question bank is atplquestions.com They have almost no explanations, but the QB seems to be a copy of what the Swedish CAA uses. I’d say 90% questions are same word for word.

It is not difficult. It just takes a lot of time.

Good luck everyone!

LPFR, Poland

nickflyer wrote:

I’ve now passed all the ATPL exams in Switzerland. This was my experience:

Congrats Nick!!! Can I maybe ask you in which day in August you were in Bern? Maybe we sited on the same day

And agree in everything what you said about performance. I passed 2nd time with 78% but I found it by faar the most complicate/tricky subject of all the 6 that I did until now.

And btw with which school are you enrolled?

Good luck to everyone!

Portugal

nickflyer wrote:

I’ve now passed all the ATPL exams in Switzerland.

Congratulations!!

I took performance today with 92% on first attempt, but my approach is to take it slowly. Max two exams per day. You’re done and I’ll be busy till end of the year :-)
I have both Aviation Exam and ATPLQuestions subscription. I used exclusively ATPLQ for last few exams with good results (90-100%). I use AE only for their detailed explanations.

Last Edited by loco at 18 Sep 14:50
LPFR, Poland

I’ve now passed all the ATPL exams in Switzerland. This was my experience:

I tried to do all 14 exams in a single sitting, which sounds worse than it is – actually I’m convinced this approach saved me a lot of time. I’ve passed 13 of them but failed Performance with 73%, same as Miguel.

Second session I passed Performance as well. I’ve prepared with Aviation Exam only (besides reading the Oxford books and watching lots of Youtube videos), so it is definitely doable, but if I’d have to do it another time, I’d use a second question database for Performance only. All the other subjects I felt very well prepared with AE. I’ve seen around 11k of the 15k available questions in AE, by the way.

A few hints for Performance – applicable for Switzerland…

  1. You can’t use the CAPS for the exam. This is a major bummer as you need to learn all the factors by heart.
  2. If the question includes the words “commercial” or “required” you need to use the factors.
  3. Always double-check if you’ve read all the small print in the charts – they usually contain some correction factor without which you will get the wrong answer.
  4. If you need to go “backwards” in a chart, i.e. the result is given and you need to figure out some initial factor (for example the T/O distance is given and you need to figure out the T/O mass), than all the correction factors of the chart need to be inverted => addition becomes subtraction, multiplication becomes division etc.
  5. And the most important: be super precise when you draw the lines, interpolate correctly and double-check all your results!

Hope this helps some poor fellow who needs to do the Performance exam in the future. In my opinion it was by far the most difficult exam of all 14.

Good luck to all of you!

Last Edited by nickflyer at 18 Sep 13:42
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