Proficiency: Up to Standard

Although the PTS is being swapped for the ACS, the genesis for the standard wasn’t the practical test; the standard was the result of an effort to fix the knowledge test. For years students and instructors have complained of absurd and irrelevant knowledge-test questions. Questions on topics such as the number of GPS satellites and how to conduct microwave landing system approaches have made the test more or less a memorization quiz, and not something that properly assesses a pilot’s mastery of the knowledge necessary to fly safely.

In response to the complaints, the FAA formed a working group—which AOPA chaired—charged with presenting guidelines on how to fix the problem. A major issue quickly became clear: The knowledge test had no standard. There was nothing beyond the generic list of aeronautical knowledge topics in Part 61 guiding the two guys in a room who wrote the questions.

As a result of the ACS, the FAA is revising all current knowledge test questions and writing all-new questions to align with the standards. Gone are the days when the people who write the questions could look in a handbook or technical order and pull out a random fact. It also means the questions will become further removed from the knowledge test guides and question banks students currently use to prepare. Those who led the project said the goal of the ACS is to make testing more relevant, although not necessarily easier.

There are a number of other benefits the FAA and industry hope to realize by making the change. One is simple organization. In the PTS, a number of special emphasis areas are listed in the introduction. These are topics such as collision avoidance, runway incursion avoidance, and so on. Examiners are supposed to test these, but there’s no guidance on when or how. The ACS puts these special emphasis areas in the right context. Land and hold short operations are in the risk management section for ground operations, for example.

There’s also hope that examiners will be able to better prepare for checkrides, and make the checkride scenarios more realistic. Before every oral and flight test, an examiner is required to make a plan of action that details scenarios under which tasks are tested. With the PTS, each examiner was on his own to make up whatever questions he wished. With the ACS’ focus on risk factors, there are detailed lists on what to consider for each scenario.

Given that the ultimate goal of any FAA test is to ensure a pilot has a basic level of knowledge and is safe enough to fly and gain more experience, the real measure of success for the ACS will always be accident statistics. Whether it will be successful in reducing accidents remains to be seen.

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