The PPL Ground School Exams

There are nine ground school exams to take. They cover a range of practical and theoretical topics such as Aviation Law, which defines the Rules of the Air, Communications, which contains the theoretical part of using the radio and radio-based navigation aids, or Principles of Flight, which gives an introduction to how planes stay in the air, and how they fly straight while they're up there.

Each ground school exam is a multiple choice written test consisting of either 12 or 16 questions and taking between 20 and 50 minutes, depending on the subject. There are 120 questions in total and the pass mark for each exam is 75% - which means that if the test has 12 questions then you must answer 9 correctly, or if it's 16 questions then 12 answers must be correct to pass. The nine exam subjects are as follows:

Some of the exams, such as Navigation, require calculations to be made in the exam, but most are tests of knowledge and recall.

The exams must be completed within six "sittings", where a sitting is defined as a ten day period. For example, if you take one exam on a Monday, another on the Friday, and then another on the following Tuesday, then you have completed three exams in one sitting.

You need to plan your revision so that you take exams either in pairs or groups of three, remembering to allow for the fact that you may need an extra sitting to retake exams that you didn't pass first time. The order that you take the exams in is entirely up to you, but we have a suggested timetable that you can use as a basis for your planning which you can view by clicking here.

Next: Sittings >