FEAST test: the maths module

The battery covers English, mental arithmetic, decision making, logical reasoning, working memory, visual perception, spatial orientation, multitasking and perceptual speed. Each module is timed strictly, generally between five and fifteen minutes.

The arithmetic module is calculator-free. Its role is not to test mathematical education but to check that basic numerical work happens fast enough to survive alongside everything else a controller does simultaneously.

Controller arithmetic is dominated by division, multiplication, percentages, averages and ratio work — figures that support separation, timing and sequencing decisions. Speed and distance conversions recur constantly, because a groundspeed and a distance is a time problem you must solve before it matters.

That is a narrower band than airline batteries cover, and it is why the ATC preset in the trainer drops the aviation word problems and concentrates on multiplication, exact division, addition, subtraction, running chains, percentages, averages and ratios.

Running chains deserve special attention. FEAST rewards the ability to keep a value updated as new numbers arrive, which is precisely what a spoken running chain trains: “two hundred and sixteen, minus one hundred and seven, minus thirty-four, plus ninety”. Most candidates can do each step and still lose the total.

Practise those spoken, without writing anything, until the running value stops slipping. Then shorten the clock. Everything else in the maths module is easier than that.