The Air Traffic Controller Aptitude Test PDF Stops at the Simulator

When people look for a printable controller test, they nearly always mean practice for a single FAA exam. Its full name is the FAA air traffic skills assessment, or ATSA for short. It is the computer-based test the FAA gives people who answer its open hiring call for new controllers, the route most applicants without aviation experience take. The FAA lists those openings on USAJOBS and explains the steps on its air traffic controller hiring page.

The ATSA checks how fast you can handle the mental work of the job: arithmetic under time pressure, reading a rule exactly as written, holding several facts in your head, and picturing where one aircraft sits compared with another. It does not check what you know about flying. You need no background in weather, radio calls or regulations to sit it. Other countries run their own screens, including the UK's NATS battery and the FEAST test used by many European providers. This page follows the US ATSA, because that is what most PDFs claim to cover.

Two hours and 49 minutes, breaks included

Prep publishers that track the test put the full sitting at about two hours and 49 minutes, with up to 30 minutes of that set aside for breaks. That is a long morning for a timed screen, and staying sharp to the end is part of what you are training. A useful practice session runs at least an hour with your phone in another room, so that the seventh section on test day does not feel like the first time you have worked that long.

Over 200 items across seven sections

There is no official item count from the FAA. Prep publishers report more than 200 items in all, most of them in the personality section, which is reported at about 108 statements. Word problems are reported at about 15 items in roughly 20 minutes, and reading at about 18 items in 15 minutes. Counts shift between versions, so treat them as a guide to pace: a little over a minute per math item, under a minute per reading item.

Old FAA research reports: history, not practice

The FAA hosts old research PDFs on faa.gov, such as A Proposed New Test for Aptitude Screening of Air Traffic Controllers, a 1972 report from the FAA's aviation medicine office. Reports like it describe how the agency built and trialed older screens, such as the Directional Headings Test and, later, the Multiplex Controller Aptitude Test. They are good history. They show the FAA has been testing the same abilities for fifty years: speed, spatial sense and working memory. But they are research papers, and the tests in them are no longer given. Read one if you are curious about where the ATSA came from. Do not study from one.

A useful ATSA practice test PDF follows the real seven sections. Here is each one, the skill behind it, and whether paper practice moves you forward.

ATSA section

The skill it checks

Can a printout help?

Word problems

Fast math on distance, speed, time and fuel

Yes

Reading comprehension

Finding the one rule that applies in a block of procedure

Yes

Memory and variables

Holding values in mind after they disappear

Mostly

Spatial and visual relationships

Working out where another aircraft sits from your seat

Partly

Personality

How you tend to work, through statements about yourself

Yes, for the format

Memory game

Recalling items that flash up and vanish

No

ATC simulation

Keeping moving aircraft apart on a live screen

No

Sections a printed test can drill: word problems, reading, memory variables

Three sections suit paper well. Word problems are short math stories about climb rates, closing speeds and fuel. The skill is setting the sum up quickly by hand, so work them with a pencil and no calculator. Reading items give you a short passage of procedure and ask what it allows. The usual mistake is answering from common sense instead of from the words on the page. Memory and variables items give you a few values to hold, for example that one letter stands for 4 and another for 9, and then ask you to use them after they are gone. On paper, cover the values with a card before you answer.

The spatial section sits in between. You can learn the reasoning from drawings, and the samples below do exactly that, but on test day the aircraft appear on a screen and the timer runs while you turn the picture in your head. The personality section prints well for another reason. There is nothing to get right, so studying it will not raise your score. Reading a few ATSA personality test questions ahead of time simply means 108 statements late in a long morning do not catch you off guard. Answer as you are, since guessing at what the FAA wants tends to make answers inconsistent.

Sections that need a screen: ATC simulation and the memory game

The two sections that carry the most live pressure cannot be printed. In the ATC simulation, aircraft move across a screen and you change their speed, altitude or heading to keep them apart and send them to their exits. In the memory game, items show for a moment and disappear, and you recall them, sometimes while a second task is running. A sheet of paper sits still, so it cannot rehearse either one. Use an on-screen simulator from a prep provider, or any free browser game that has you track several moving objects at once. A week of short sessions is often enough to stop freezing when three things need you at the same moment.

Scratch paper rules on test day

You will not bring your own paper or pen. People who have sat the ATSA report that the test centre hands out a small erasable board or a scratch sheet with a marker, collects it at the end, and keeps your bag in a locker. That board is all you get for the math, so practice working small and neat on a single sheet. The testing vendor sets these rules and can change them, so read your test invitation for what is allowed, including whether an on-screen calculator is offered.

These nine air traffic controller test sample questions were written for this page, modeled on the sections that print well. Download the PDF to work them on paper, keep to the time shown, and cover each answer line until you have committed. For a worked item from every section, including the UK NATS test, see our air traffic controller aptitude test sample walkthrough.

Word problem and chart reading samples

1. Climb time (60 seconds). An aircraft at 4,000 feet climbs at 1,800 feet per minute. How long until it reaches 22,000 feet?Answer: 10 minutes. It needs another 18,000 feet, and 18,000 divided by 1,800 is 10.

2. Closing speed (90 seconds). Two aircraft are 150 nautical miles apart and flying straight at each other, one at 240 knots and one at 210 knots. In how many minutes will they meet?Answer: 20 minutes. Add the speeds for a closing speed of 450 knots. 150 divided by 450 is one third of an hour.

3. Fuel (90 seconds). A jet burns 2,400 pounds of fuel an hour. The flight is 45 minutes and it must also carry 30 minutes of reserve. How much fuel does it need on board?Answer: 3,000 pounds. That is 75 minutes, or 1.25 hours, times 2,400.

4. Reading a table (60 seconds). One runway handled 12 departures between 6 and 7 a.m., 16 between 7 and 8, 25 between 8 and 9, and 19 between 9 and 10. In which hour did departures jump the most over the hour before?Answer: 8 to 9 a.m., up by 9. The other changes are up 4 and down 6.

5. Reading a rule (60 seconds). Rule: an aircraft may not be cleared to land while another aircraft is on the same runway, and a runway counts as clear once the aircraft ahead has turned off onto a taxiway. Aircraft A has touched down and is slowing on the runway. Can aircraft B be cleared to land?Answer: No. A is slowing, but the rule only asks whether it has turned off, and it has not.

6. Memory variables (30 seconds, then cover). Read this line once, then cover it: K equals 7, R equals 2, T equals K minus R. With the line covered, what is T plus R?Answer: 7. T is 5, and 5 plus 2 is 7.

Spatial orientation samples: which side is the other plane on

Picture yourself in the cockpit, facing the way the aircraft is pointed. Headings are compass degrees: 360 is north, 090 is east, 180 is south and 270 is west.

7. Left or right (20 seconds). You are heading 180, due south. Another aircraft is due east of you. Is it on your left or your right?Answer: Left. Facing south, east is on your left hand.

8. Left or right (20 seconds). You are heading 270, due west. Another aircraft is due north of you. Left or right?Answer: Right. Facing west, north is on your right hand.

9. Courses (30 seconds). You are heading 030. An aircraft ahead of you is heading 210. Are you flying the same way, opposite ways, or crossing?Answer: Opposite ways. 210 minus 030 is 180, so the courses are exact reverses. If you share a line, you are flying at each other.

Mark yourself on accuracy first and speed second. If you got all nine right but took twice the time shown, your next two weeks belong to speed. If you missed the spatial items, sketch a small compass in the corner of your scratch sheet and turn it to face your heading each time, until you can do it without the sketch.

Prep takes weeks, the test takes a morning, and the training after it takes years. If you have typed "am I suited to be an air traffic controller" into a search bar, that instinct is sound, and the time to follow it is before the first practice set. The FAA generally takes new applicants only before their 31st birthday, so a wasted year of prep costs more here than in most fields.

O*NET's summary of the controller job lists the core tasks: issuing takeoff and landing instructions, watching aircraft on radar, and directing traffic on the ground and in the air. Around those tasks sits the shape of the job. Shifts rotate through nights, weekends and holidays. Long quiet stretches can turn into a few minutes where everything happens at once. You speak in fixed phrases and follow fixed procedures, with a team at your elbow and a supervisor who can hear every word.

What the pass rate tells you about difficulty

The FAA does not post a pass rate. The closest public figure is in a 2023 inspector general report on the ATSA. From 2018 to 2020, 16,988 applicants were eligible to sit it. 6,841 passed, about 40 percent. Only 3,073, about 18 percent, scored in the two bands the FAA hires from. So the bar that matters is closer to one in five than to the pass line.

Who finds the ATSA hard, and why

Most people find the ATSA hard, though not because any single question is clever. Each item is something a capable school leaver could do. The weight comes from doing hundreds of them back to back, then moving to a simulation where three aircraft want your attention at once. People who find it easier tend to stay calm when several things compete for them, do mental math quickly, and picture objects from another angle without effort. People who find it harder often know how to solve every item but slow down under a timer, or lock up when a second task arrives.

The first group can practice its way up a band. The second group should practice too, and also ask a plainer question: is a career built on that exact pressure one they want for decades? Some people are quick under pressure and still find that years of nights, fixed rules and constant watchfulness wear them thin. Others do their best work in exactly that setting. The ATSA does not try to sort those two groups, and a practice PDF cannot either.

Search for a free download of ATSA practice and you will turn up four kinds of file. Each is good for something different, and one of them is close to useless for the ATSA.

Type of file

What it is

Good for

Weak spot

FAA research reports

Decades-old studies hosted on faa.gov

Seeing how the FAA thinks about aptitude

The tests they describe are retired

Aviation knowledge question banks

Thousands of questions on airspace, weather and radio rules

Academy study, if you are hired

The ATSA does not test knowledge

ATSA-format practice PDFs

Printable items modeled on the real sections

Math, reading, memory variables and spatial items

No simulation and no memory game

On-screen simulators

Timed practice in a browser or app

The simulation, the memory game and pace

Usually paid, and quality varies

The best plan uses two of them together: an ATSA-format PDF for the sections that print, and a simulator for the ones that move. The research reports are worth a skim for context. If a seller offers a free PDF and then asks for payment at the download step, check what is inside before you pay.

Why an aviation knowledge PDF prepares you for the wrong test

Some files sold as an air traffic controller test PDF are packed with questions on airspace classes, weather reports and radio phrasing. That material matters later, at the FAA Academy, if you get that far. It does not appear on the ATSA, which measures how quickly you reason and remember rather than what you have studied. Our guide to achievement versus aptitude tests explains why the two need different prep. Before you buy any PDF, check that its contents list the ATSA sections in the table above. If the contents list meteorology and regulations instead, it was written for another exam. For a deeper look at each section and how results relate to tower, approach and en route work, read our Air Traffic Skills Assessment guide. If you are weighing the cockpit as well as the tower, our guide to free pilot aptitude tests covers that screen, and the technical skills assessment test guide covers job tests that mix reasoning with hands-on tasks.

Print, Simulate, Then Weigh the Job Itself

Print the sample set and work it on a timer. Spend your screen time on the simulation and the memory game. Then look hard at the job's daily conditions, because that is what Pigment's career test is for. For someone eyeing the tower, it reads three things the job leans on: whether your attention holds through long quiet stretches, how you act when time runs short, and how you feel about working inside rules you did not write. It plays no part in FAA hiring. It is for your own decision.

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