COMPASS pilot aptitude test

When arithmetic runs underneath a tracking task, your score depends on capacity you cannot easily train. When it is its own module, the score depends on arithmetic — and arithmetic is the most trainable thing in the whole assessment.

That makes COMPASS the battery where focused numerical preparation pays the clearest dividend. The modules reported alongside it — coordination, spatial orientation, memory and multitasking — respond far less to practice.

Calculator-free arithmetic at speed: multiplication, exact division, percentages, fractions of a quantity, and the aviation staples of speed, distance and time and fuel burn. The content is ordinary. The tempo is not.

Because it is a screening tool used by both airlines and training organisations, the difficulty is calibrated to sort a broad applicant pool rather than to defeat specialists. Getting comfortably above the band is realistic with six weeks of daily work.

First make recall free: times tables to 20 × 20, squares to 25, cubes to 12. Then percentages as 10% blocks with halving and doubling. Then exact division and fractions of a quantity. Then chained operations, which are where most avoidable errors happen.

Finally add spoken delivery. Even for a screen-based module, hearing the question removes the option of re-reading and produces a harder, more honest practice.