Vladimir wrote:
There is a lot of useless information in some subjects (or even some whole subjects) but that’s unless you “go in that direction”.
The problem is – “that direction” is designing aircraft (do I need an evacuation slide? What material are crankcases made of?), equipping it (how many fire extinguishers?“), flying the single particular type that they used for the exams (questions about a particular FMS), designing rudimentary electronic circuits (Ohms law etc.), or launching satellites into orbit (”what is the inclination of the GPS satellite orbit?").
if “that direction” is “flying commercial aircraft safely”, they are not that helpful.
I have done both US and EASA exams (although not FAA ATPL, only PPL, CPL and IR) and that really drives home how pointless and broken the EASA theoretical knowledge machine is.
There is a difference. It’s one thing to teach something that’s only relevant to pilots of jets, it’s another thing to teach something that’s only relevant to people designing and certifying aircraft (as you’re training pilots). Such things are usually there because someone feels you need some understanding of them as a foundation.
Actually, I consider discrete mathematics quite useful. Or optimization. It’s applied mathematics after all. It obviously depends on what one is doing. But even user interfaces, for example, can throw a curve ball. Like when you want to give a user a graphical representation of something and you need to figure out a way to arrange it so it’s actually useful. That can flex some muscles.
We all agree that there is a lot of irrelevant stuff in there but it’s the ratio of good/bad stuff that we have a hard time putting a number on. Whatever the number is, it is too low.
What is really sad is the missed opportunity. It could be filled with relevant, applicable aviation knowledge…
Congrats, Kerwin!
I’m feeling the pain myself right now. ATPL theory and full-time job is quite a challenge for me. I study 15-20 hours per week. Lucklily the GF is a pilot as well and is very supportive!
And I think a lot of the stuff I’m learning might not be usable in the cockpit, but it’s still very interesting nevertheless.
Please bear in mind that having taken the ATPL Exams, the clock is ticking and unless you meet all of the other requirements, CPL + IR within a 3 year window their validity remains only for an FI or the HPA rating.
The quality of exams is largely do to the poorly devised system for the generation and validation of exams by the JAA. Different countries were responsible for different subjects and proposed questions were accepted from a wide range of sources. The questions were then circulated to all member States for validation. Nil returns were treated as an agreement that the question submitted was acceptable. Most countries failed to respond to virtually all questions, because they had nobody with the knowledge or time to perform this task and by default most questions were entered into the CQB. They UK CAA attempted to validate and reject a multitude of questions but it fell on stony ground with the European Exams Committee. I was at that meeting and I recall the chairman saying: "A beam; a plank; a spar; what is the difference. Clearly he was une grande planche!
The planned EASA questions were eve worse, fortunately they ran out of money!
Alex wrote:
And I think a lot of the stuff I’m learning might not be usable in the cockpit
My friend who has around 28000 hours and both an EASA and FAA ATPL says that he has never found anything useful in the exams that was actually of any use in any of the flying that he has ever done….maybe an exaggeration, but you can see where he is coming from.
