Taking an FAA airman knowledge test can cost up to $150 per attempt, with failures reflecting on your permament FAA record. Recently a much larger than normal failure rate was noted in the Fundamentals of Instructing (FOI), Airline Transport PIlot (ATP) and Flight Engineer (FE) exams and it came to the attention of the AOPA and others that the FAA had made unannounced changes to these exams.
Last year, the FAA had announced a 2-year program on revamping the entire exam process, increasing the number of questions in the test bank and aiming to move the tests to an internet based test platform. The industry was not expecting the changes to take place already and with no prior notification to flight schools, instructors or the aviation companies that produce study materials.
A spokesperson from ASA (Aviation Supplies & Academics, Inc) has stated in an interview that since the new tests were released on February 14th that the failure rate for the Fundamentals of Instructing (FOI) exam has jumped from 14% to 59%. This increase was in the first two weeks since the new test was introduced.
ASA has raised some major concerns with the rollout of these new tests. When previously updating tests, the FAA would have a validation process that allowed questions to be 'pretested.' This pretest allowed the agency to ensure they had fair, quality, questions. The process lasted for 4 months and the trial questions did not count toward the final test score. This is the same procedure used by many other government agencies when adding new topics and data into a test bank of questions.
ASA further stated that the available public data did not reflect the new test topics. There was no prior release of topics or parallel questions that indicated what new topics were being added to those already contained in the bank of test questions. This played a dramatic part in the increased failure rate as some of these new topics were added at a higher 'weight' resulting in a failing grade if the test takers knowledge in just two of these topics was lacking.
The FAA also didn't provide an update to it's knowledge test guides (FAA-G-8082). As stated previously this made it appear as if the test being adminsitered was the same as previous editions and students were not aware that questions from some of the newest Advisory Circulars were included.
ASA has provided updates online to it's print test guides here and expect the updates to be availble for it's Prepware software within 2 weeks. ASA stated they 'continually track feedback on tests and create updates as necessary to ensure applicants are not "surpised" by a new knowledge requirement.'
It is unknown at this time if the FAA is planning to proceed with any further unannounced changes to the remaining airman knowledge tests or if they will pause with the role-out to begin the more traditional process for adding new questions and topics.
Please follow this column as we try and obtain more information from the FAA and will follow the changes and updates due to the impact on a large portion of the pilot population still undergoung various aspects of their training.
Comments