AviationAirline pilot & cadet
Speed, distance and time, fuel burn, unit conversions and large multiplication, all without a calculator. Aviation knowledge is not tested at cadet stage — pure numeracy is.
MA-01 · Normal procedures
Airline and air traffic control selection reads the calculation out loud and gives you seconds to answer. Reading sums off a page does not prepare you for that. Every question here is spoken in English, on a countdown, and takes one integer — nothing else.
The question is never printed on screen — you only hear it. That is deliberate. The difficulty in a real assessment is holding the numbers in working memory while you calculate, not the arithmetic itself. Set the panel, then look away from the screen.
Auto is the sensible setting: you hear whatever voice your own device provides, and the
recorded pack is used only if your browser exposes none — which happens on desktop Linux, where
Chrome and Firefox depend on speech-dispatcher. When your device has a
voice, the pack is never even requested.
To install the fallback, drop one MP3 per word into an /audio/ folder
beside this page, named exactly as listed below. Sixty-three files cover every number up to a
million, because the trainer speaks by stitching individual words together. Word-problem topics
stay on the browser voice — their vocabulary is open-ended and cannot be packed.
Accuracy alone tells you little. Watch which topic dragged, and how close your average answer time sat to the limit — that margin is what collapses under assessment-day nerves.
| # | Question | Yours | Correct | Time | Topic |
|---|
Airlines and air navigation providers do not write their own maths test — they license a battery from a handful of assessment publishers. Knowing which one you are about to sit tells you more about the format than any careers page will.
| Battery | Owner | Reported at | What the maths looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aon cut-e | Aon | Ryanair, Jet2, Aer Lingus, Norwegian | The most widely deployed aviation battery in Europe. Founded 2002, acquired by Aon in 2017, now over twelve million assessments a year. Short, ferociously timed modules: numerical speed, spatial orientation, multitasking, monitoring. |
| PILAPT | Symbiotics | British Airways, easyJet | A dedicated pilot aptitude battery. Heavy on hand-eye tracking and spare capacity, with numerical work layered on top of a live control task rather than sat on its own. |
| COMPASS | Dutch origin | Lufthansa selection centre, Emirates | Computerised Pilot Aptitude Screening System. Modules cover coordination, spatial orientation, memory, multitasking and a discrete mental arithmetic test. |
| DLR | German Aerospace Center | Lufthansa route | Notoriously selective — a reported 5–10% pass rate — and in most cases sittable only once in a lifetime, which changes how much preparation is worth. |
| Talent Q | Korn Ferry | Qatar Airways | Adaptive numerical, verbal and logical suite. Questions get harder as you answer correctly, so the difficulty you experience is not the difficulty everyone experiences. |
| FEAST | Eurocontrol | 44 organisations across Europe | First European Air Traffic Controller Selection Test, used by civil and military ANSPs and certified ATC academies. FEAST-1 includes a strictly timed, calculator-free maths module. |
A numerical speed section appears somewhere in almost every European flight deck selection, and across ATC selection on the continent.
| Operator | System reported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Wizz Air | Own online battery | 20 questions, 10 seconds each, spoken |
| Ryanair | Aon cut-e | Spatial, numerical, multitasking |
| easyJet | Symbiotics / PILAPT | Free to candidates |
| British Airways | PILAPT | Tracking plus numerical capacity |
| Lufthansa Group | DLR | Selection centre, once in a lifetime |
| Emirates | COMPASS | Coordination, memory, multitasking |
| Qatar Airways | Talent Q | Adaptive difficulty |
| Aer Lingus | Aon cut-e | Verbal logic and numerical modules |
| Jet2 | Aon cut-e | — |
| Norwegian | Aon cut-e | — |
| Turkish Airlines | Own battery | — |
| Eurocontrol & ANSPs | FEAST-1 | Maths module timed 5–15 min |
| ATO / cadet schemes | cut-e, COMPASS or PILAPT | Varies by school |
| Military aircrew boards | National batteries | Country specific |
Any role where a wrong number has consequences and there is no time to reach for a calculator ends up screening for the same skill. The presets cover the aviation formats; the topic keys cover everything else.
Speed, distance and time, fuel burn, unit conversions and large multiplication, all without a calculator. Aviation knowledge is not tested at cadet stage — pure numeracy is.
FEAST-1 includes a calculator-free maths module alongside English, working memory, spatial orientation and multitasking, each timed between five and fifteen minutes.
Load sheets, fuel figures, payload and time zones. The numeracy screen mirrors the flight deck one because the arithmetic is genuinely the same arithmetic.
Lighter numerical screens covering currency, percentages and stock reconciliation, usually one part of a broader online assessment.
Numeracy tests appear in early-stage NHS selection for nursing and healthcare assistant posts, with drug-dosage calculation the classic high-stakes application.
The National Firefighter Ability “Working with Numbers” test checks the mental arithmetic needed to read gauges and calculate hose volumes under pressure.
Online aptitude stages expect confidence with ratios, percentages, averages and interpreting figures from tables and charts.
Numerical reasoning is the highest-weighted screen in banking graduate recruitment, where working with numerical data is the daily job.
Numerical reasoning is standard across graduate recruitment. The formats differ but the underlying speed with percentages, fractions and ratios does not.
Short daily sessions beat long weekend ones. Ten to fifteen minutes a day across four to six weeks before an assessment produces a measurable change in both speed and accuracy.
Times tables to 20 × 20 must be recall, not calculation. Everything else is built on top of them, and hesitation there compounds through every multi-step question.
Find 10%, then halve, double or combine. 75% of 2350 is 10% (235) × 7 plus half of 235 — or simply 2350 minus a quarter. Fluent candidates never divide by 100 and multiply.
35 × 24 is 35 × 25 minus 35, which is 875 − 35 = 840. Under a ten-second limit, choosing the easier route matters far more than raw calculation speed.
The listening load is the real test. Keep the on-screen question switched off so you rehearse holding numbers in working memory, exactly as you must on the day.
Track average time in the debrief. If it sits within a second of the limit you are passing in practice and will fail under nerves. Build margin, not just accuracy.
Most batteries do not penalise a wrong answer beyond marking it wrong. An empty box scores the same and costs you the chance. Commit to a number and move on.
Ten questions in the exact shapes the trainer speaks, with the route a fast candidate actually takes. The winning move is almost never the method you were taught at school — it is picking the easier arithmetic before you start.
| # | Spoken question | Answer | Method that wins on the clock |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 35 × 24 | 840 | Round up and correct. 35 × 25 = 875, then take one 35 back off. Multiplying by 25 is quartering ×100, which is far cheaper than long multiplication. |
| 02 | 75% of 2350 | 1762.5 | Subtract instead of adding. 75% means “take a quarter off”. A quarter of 2350 is 587.5, so 2350 − 587.5 = 1762.5. Never compute three separate 25% blocks. |
| 03 | 121 ÷ 11 − 6 | 5 | Operations arrive in spoken order and must stay in it. 121 ÷ 11 = 11, then 11 − 6 = 5. The trap is hearing “minus six” and subtracting before you divide. |
| 04 | 8³ | 512 | Straight recall. Cubes to 12 should be memorised outright; if not, 8² = 64 then 64 × 8 = 512. Ten seconds is not enough to derive it twice. |
| 05 | √196 | 14 | Bracket it. 13² = 169 and 15² = 225, so the answer is 14. A square ending in 6 can only come from a number ending in 4 or 6, which settles it instantly. |
| 06 | ¾ of 40 | 30 | Unit fraction first, then multiply. A quarter of 40 is 10, so three quarters is 30. Dividing by 4 and multiplying by 3 in one step invites an error. |
| 07 | 2874 − 973 | 1901 | Overshoot and repay. Subtract 1000 → 1874, then add back the 27 you overshot by → 1901. Borrowing across three columns in your head is where mistakes live. |
| 08 | 20% of 250 + 45 | 95 | Build from 10%. Ten percent of 250 is 25, so 20% is 50, and 50 + 45 = 95. Every percentage question is a 10% block plus halving or doubling. |
| 09 | 420 kt for 30 min | 210 nm | A knot is one nautical mile per hour, so the unit does the work: half an hour covers half the speed. No formula, no triangle, no rearranging. |
| 10 | ISA temp at FL200 | −25 °C | Two degrees per thousand feet from +15 °C at sea level. FL200 is 20 thousand feet → 20 × 2 = 40, and 15 − 40 = −25 °C. |
Every one of these shapes is generated endlessly in the trainer — worked examples show you the route, but only the clock builds the reflex.
One page per assessment, covering what is publicly reported about the format and which arithmetic it rewards. Each opens the trainer on the matching preset.
| Section | Guide | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Airline assessments | Wizz Air pilot assessment: the maths section | What the Wizz Air pilot assessment mental arithmetic section looks like, the question types it uses, and free spoken practice on the same 20-question, 10-second format. |
| Ryanair pilot assessment: the numerical part | Ryanair pilot selection is reported to run on the Aon cut-e battery. | |
| easyJet pilot assessment: the numerical stage | What is reported about the easyJet pilot assessment numerical stage, why candidate accounts disagree on which battery it uses, and free spoken arithmetic practice. | |
| British Airways pilot assessment: PILAPT and the numbers | British Airways pilot selection is reported to use PILAPT. | |
| Lufthansa and the DLR test | The Lufthansa route screens through the DLR test, reported at a 5–10% pass rate and sittable once in a lifetime. | |
| Test publishers | Aon cut-e numerical test | How the Aon cut-e numerical modules are built, why they feel impossible to finish, and free timed mental arithmetic practice at the same tempo. |
| PILAPT test | PILAPT is a dedicated pilot aptitude battery from Symbiotics, reported at British Airways and easyJet. | |
| COMPASS pilot aptitude test | COMPASS is the Computerised Pilot Aptitude Screening System, reported at the Lufthansa selection centre and Emirates. | |
| Air traffic control | FEAST test: the maths module | The Eurocontrol FEAST-1 battery includes a strictly timed, calculator-free maths module. |
| Air traffic controller maths test | The arithmetic air traffic controller selection actually tests, why running totals matter more than hard sums, and free spoken practice at selection tempo. | |
| Wider selection | Numerical reasoning practice | Numerical reasoning is standard in graduate, NHS, police, firefighter and banking selection. |
| Mental maths test: ten seconds per question | A free mental maths test with questions read aloud and ten seconds each. |