Taking the Chinese Airline Transport Pilot Knowledge Test

Every pilot who wants to fly a Chinese registered aircraft needs to have a pilot license issued by the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC). Until last year I was flying with my CAAC Commercial Pilot License (CPL), but our company required me to get an Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL) in order for me to upgrade to a captain.

To get the license I had to take a computer based knowledge exam followed by a practical exam at a later date. In this post I will  share my experiences studying for the knowledge exam and taking it. I hope other pilots thinking about relocating to China find this post helpful, and I hope other readers find it informative about pilot life.

But first, why would pilots from other countries want to come to China?

Time for an Upgrade

Last summer I had enough jet experience so my company agreed to upgrade me to fly as a pilot in command (PIC) or a captain. It took me about five years with the company to build enough experience for the upgrade, but before I could fly as a captain I would have to obtain an Airline Pilot License. Having the license is a requirement for the captains in most corporate aviation companies, although many of the airline regulations don’t apply to pilots flying private airplanes.

To get the license I first needed to meet certain flight time requirements. In general I just needed to have minimum of 1500 hours total flight time including certain amounts of cross country, instrument, and night flight time. I had met these requirements years earlier but I had never applied for the license because I didn’t have need for it until now.

Meeting the experience requirements alone wasn’t enough. I still had to take a knowledge or a written exam administered by the CAAC followed by a practical exam at a later date.

Studying for the Written Exam

I started studying for the exam at the end of June and I finally took it at the end of August. Those were some of the most miserable couple of months in my life. The exam itself has 100 multiple choice questions and you only need 70% correct to pass. Sounds easy? Well it wasn’t. To study for the exam I had access to an online question bank of 2700 questions that I had to study. 70% of the exam questions would come from the question bank of 2700 and 30% would be new questions or questions outside the question bank. It still didn’t sound too bad until I started studying the questions.

The question bank was in a Chinese website that didn’t have English translation, which made it difficult to navigate. There were questions in about ten different categories. As I started studying the questions I realized most of them had nothing to do with what I had been teaching in my previous jobs as a flight instructor. And most questions had nothing to do with rulers that we follow in corporate aviation.

Question Categories

I never translated the names of the question categories but in general they were similar categories that can be found in study guides for the FAA ATP knowledge exam in the USA. So the categories where something like this:

·         Aviation Law and Regulations

·         Aerodynamics and Airplanes

·         Airspace and Airports

·         Air Traffic Control

·         IFR Navigation Equipment, Holding, and Approaches

·         IFR Flights

·         Aircraft Operating/Performance Data (Airbus 320 and Boeing 737)

·         Aviation Weather

·         Weather Reports and Forecasts

·         Wind Shear

·         Aeromedical Factors

The Questions

The first category had nearly 400 questions in it. The questions were mostly about regulations regarding to airlines; such as how many flight attendants or fire extinguishers are required for certain size of aircraft or how many dispatchers and airline needs in their office. Then there were questions about different ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) documents; there are 19 ICAO annexes and there were questions asking “what is covered in ICAO Annex 1?” Or Annex 2” etc. I had to basically memorize table of contents for ICAO documents. For example Annex 1 is about “Personnel Licensing”, Annex 2 covers “Rules of Air”, etc. Also I had to remember dates and locations for different ICAO conventions. These types of questions are simple enough to memorize, but serve no practical purpose for pilots.

Other questions asked about pilot duty times, flight times, duration of licenses, required reporting times after accidents etc. I noticed that some things simply didn’t make sense. Such as this question: “Flight time is?” Correct answer: “the time in the cockpit of aircraft, flight simulators or flight training equipment”. That is obviously not correct or pilots who need to build flight experience would just go to sit in aircraft cockpit to log some flight time without ever even getting in the air.

Not exactly the ICAO definition of flight time… 

Good to know we don’t need a “certain” number of dispatchers… “Enough” is enough! 

Strange Wording of Questions

Also some questions were quite tricky such as this one: “What does it mean if the roll command bar moved to the left of the zero reference of the scale on flight director?” Three choises: a) the pilot should roll to the right. b) the pilot should roll to the left. C) the pilot should turn to the left.

During flight we normally talk about ‘turning’ left or right while the aircraft actually ‘rolls’ once we initiate the turn. Here the correct answer is b) the pilot should roll to the left instead of c) the pilot should turn to the left.

I noticed that in many other questions there were two similarly worded answers (like the a and b) and the third one was worded differently (c in this case). I always seemed to be that the correct answer was one of the similarly worded answers. It was helpful because I could easily eliminate the odd one from the group.

Spelling Mistakes and Translation Issues

Other issues with the questions included the spelling mistakes. The questions probably make more sense if you can read Chinese but the English translations sometimes didn’t make sense. There were some questions that I didn’t really understand what was being asked because the translation was so poor. Again just had to memorize the answer. Also after clicking an answer the website showed an explanation, but it was only in Chinese. The website was secured so I couldn’t even copy the text and translate it. I could only take screenshots and ask someone else to translate for me if needed.

Screenshot of an instrument departure chart that was in Chinese. 

What helped was that many of the questions in the exam are exact same questions that are in the FAA ATP knowledge test. And luckily I happened to have Gleim’s ATP Knowledge Test book in my possession. So from there I could find explanations to some questions that needed some explaining (some charts, formulas, and weather symbols for example).

In the aircraft performance category there were many questions where I had to look at different charts and find certain speeds, altitudes, distances, weights, fuel burn, and other things. It wasn’t too difficult to figure out how to use the charts although they were a bit different than what we use in the aircraft I fly. The problem was that some of the charts were in Chinese.

I didn’t worry about it too much because there were only two or three Chinese charts in the question bank. The problem was that during the actual exam they gave me a whole booklet full of charts and many of them were Chinese. During the exam I actually had to ask one of the supervisors to translate some charts for me.

Not exactly sure how this question ended up in a pilot exam?!? 🙂

Study, Study, Study!

My first round of study was very frustrating. It took me about two weeks to study all the questions for the first time, and initially I thought I would be ready for the exam in that time. Obviously I had underestimated the task.

Difficulty to find the Time to Study

It took me that long not only because there were so many questions, but at the time I had many back to back business trips around China. I had one seven day period when I had a flight each day. All this travelling didn’t leave me much time for study during the first couple of weeks.

Easier after the First Round of Study

Second time around was much faster although this is when I decided to start writing down the questions and answers that I were not sure of. I thought this would help me remember them better, and I think it helped. On my first round I only got about 65% correct, which was very disappointing. Second round I got maybe 75%. After that I started getting acceptable results of around 90% on the third round. The website also lets you take practice exams that randomly selects 100 questions from the bank. In the end I started getting 90 – 100% from each practice exam. My goal was of course to get 100% correct.

When Can I Take the Exam?

I thought I would be able to take the exam at the end of July after one month of study. Unfortunately I could only take the exam in few locations in China; Chengdu, Guangzhou, or Haikou. All those cities are couple hour flight away from Hangzhou which would mean I would have to take two days off duty.

That time we only had two pilots covering our aircraft so I was not able to take two days off until at the end of August. This delayed my exam by an extra month. It was good to get more time to study but it was also very frustrating to delay it.

Every day I kept studying several hours a day. In the evening lying in bed I would review my notes until I was ready to sleep. I was even going through the questions in my sleep. Miserable. I probably could have taken a break and just to do a quick review just before the exam, but I was determined to get this done with first try. I had heard many pilots failing the exam on the first time (or even several times). If I had failed I would have to wait 30 days before I could retake the exam. That would mean studying again for another 30 days and potentially delaying my upgrade.

Taking the Exam

Finally day before my scheduled exam I flew to Chengdu. It was a couple hour flight form Hangzhou. I checked into a hotel near the airport and someone picked me up the next morning. The CAAC testing center wasn’t far. There were maybe ten other pilots taking the test at the same time. Coincidentally I met an other Finnish pilot there taking the exam. He happened to know my brother who is also a pilot.. 🙂 Small world!

There were maybe 20 cubicles in the room, so it was not full. We were given couple of binders full of charts that were reference to some questions. We were also given E6B flight computers (slider type, not electornic) and ruler/plotter that I never ended up using during the test. Pencils and scrap paper was also provided. Everything had to be returned after the test. The test was computer based and we had access to a basic calculator on the screen.

After the first three or four questions I got that sinking feeling and though I was in trouble.. I had never seen those questions before and I had no idea about the answers. I felt I was going to fail and this was going to be such a humiliation after all this study.

Luckily after few more questions I started seeing more familiar questions. But all the questions seemed to be worded slightly differently compared to the question bank that I had studied. Each question gave me an option to choose and settle on an answer or leave as uncertain and click next. The questions I answered would show up as a green square in a grid of 100 squares on the side of the screen; the uncertain ones were yellow.

The exam had a three hour time limit but it only took me about an hour to go through all the questions. After that I counted the questions I was uncertain off. I had a marked about 25 of them as uncertain. It was a good feeling because at this point I was thinking I would pass even if I got them all wrong. But still I couldn’t believe that after so much studying there were still so many questions I was not sure off. I spent another hour going through the questions for the second time.

This time I spend more time working on questions that required calculations. Also I had couple of questions that asked me to refer to charts that were in Chinese. I had to ask a supervisor to translate them. Even after translating them I was still confused about what was being asked. I just ended up guessing the answers.

Done and Done!

When I finally submitted all the answers I was quite sure that I would pass but still a bit nervous.

I ended up getting 87% correct. I was happy that I passed but the grade was disappointing because after all the studying I expected I would do better. After leaving the testing room I got a printed test report from an office next door. The people in the office congratulated me and one guy even said “Wow! That’s a very good score!” I was like “Really?” ..not sure what kind of grades they are used to seeing, but that made me feel a bit better.

Advice for Pilots Taking the Test

Here is my advice for pilots preparing to take the exam:

• Don’t rely on your past aviation knowledge; you need to study and memorize the question bank
• Memorize the answers even if they are obviously incorrect
• Read the questions and answers carefully; many questions are similar but worded slightly differently and the correct answer might be different.
• Read all the answers even if you instantly think you see the correct answer. Eliminate the wrong answers first before settling to the “correct” one.
• Look for key words in a question and you might see the same word in one of the answers. For example there was a question about turbofan engines and only one of the answers had the word “fan” in it, which was the correct one.
• Usually there is one answer that is very obviously incorrect leaving you with a better chance to pick the correct one.
• Sometimes there are two similarly worded answers while one is different. The correct answer is usually one of the similarly worded answers.
• In the end if you still don’t know the answer I would choose the longest answer.
• Don’t worry about remembering everything on your first time of studying the questions.
• Write down the questions and answers that you get wrong or are unsure off. Write them down each time you go through the questions if possible and they will stick to your memory better.
• Learn how to use the performance charts and the weather chart if you haven’t used them in an long time
• Answers involving numbers I found it was often the middle value. You should learn how to make the necessary calculations but when in doubt I would choose the middle value.
• Take snapshots (print screen button in Windows) of the charts you need help with and print them out for easier study.
• Get an FAA ATP question book for English explanations for many questions and answers.

Conclusion

Prior to taking the exam I heard many stories of pilots failing it. For first officers like me failing the exam would only mean delaying my upgrade. For newly hired captains it might mean loosing the job offer all together. I also heard stories of some pilots failing the exam several times taking it month after another.

This is why I put all my energy to study and prepare for it the best I could. I probably studied way more than necessary but it was definitely worth it. I have heard other pilots have spent much less time studying for it and still passed. When I studied for the exam I had a question bank of 2700 question. Apparently the question bank has been steadily growing in the recent years, so pilots taking the exam earlier got it easier. If you take the exam in the future you might see even more questions, but I hope they improve the exam by removing irrelevant or incorrect questions and answers.

I am currently studying for the FAA ATP knowledge exam which I will take later this year. The question bank I study for it has only about 1360 questions, which is about have the CAAC questions. I noticed many of the question are the same that I studied for the CAAC exam and this time I have all the explanations and charts in English.

I think that if you have taken the FAA ATP knowledge exam recently it should help you with the CAAC exam, and vice versa.

Any pilots thinking about coming to China, please don’t let this exam discourage you. Just make your best to find time to study for the exam and get it done. Working in China will be worth it!

Thanks for reading and good luck for taking the exam!

~FunkyPilot Vesa