This post is part of the story series Road to the Right Seat.
We've all had a crazy childhood dream and mine was becoming an airline pilot. Many young people who aspire a flying career are unaware of the content of flight training and the preparations which are needed. On November 23rd, 2015 I started my ATPL(A) training. Time to realize my childhood dream. I'd like to take you along on an adventure and I'll happily answer all your questions on the way. Let's do this!
View all stories in this series
March 3, 2016 – On Monday morning the School Finals began: 6 exams in 3 days time. We were able to prepare rather well during our week of study and the results looked good! Yesterday studying was our main priority, but today sleeping is our new number one.
Our whole theoretical training is based on the EASA exams and that’s something the instructors like talking about. The results of the official exams are put into our personal training records. We’ll have to bring these to our interviews so it’s important to study well. You can still become a pilot with a few retakes, but every airline has a different point of view and might be more strict than others.
In order to get the best results out of our exams, we first have to pass the School Finals. Based on these results the school will give us a ‘Go’ or ‘No go’ for the official exams.
Like I said before, retaking an exam is not a big issue, but it’s not what we strive for. Luckily the school offers a lot of help for those having trouble with one or more courses. To make sure these students can go to their retake with confidence the school organizes extra lessons with the instructor of the course you failed. It’s a great opportunity to focus on the real problems you may have.
The downside of these School Finals is that we’re not allowed to take a look at our exams after passing them. Quite strange if you ask me, but there’s nothing we can do about it. So when you fail an exam there is no way for you to see what questions you failed and what you should work on. Meeting up with an instructor without knowing this, isn’t very useful.
This is where all our exams take place.
Time management
If there’s something I learned in the last couple of days, it’s that time is critical and you have to plan well. Luckily there aren’t too many things to put on your planning during the exam period: sleep, eat and study.
Also during the exams, good time management is needed. Every exam has it’s own time limit going from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Normally you should be able to finish your exam well within the time limit so you can still properly review it.
Off to EASA
The EASA exams will start in the third week of March which means that we have about a week and a half to review all our books. On top of that, we make great use of AviationExam, an online database with thousands of questions for us to practice.
I’m more than certain that everyone is still as motivated as before and that we’re able to go to EASA with confidence. You’ll read more about the outcome of the exams very soon.
That’s all folks! If you have any further questions about the School Finals, feel free to comments them below!
This post is part of the story series Road to the Right Seat.
We've all had a crazy childhood dream and mine was becoming an airline pilot. Many young people who aspire a flying career are unaware of the content of flight training and the preparations which are needed. On November 23rd, 2015 I started my ATPL(A) training. Time to realize my childhood dream. I'd like to take you along on an adventure and I'll happily answer all your questions on the way. Let's do this!
View all stories in this series
