ATPL Textbooks

ATPL textbooks and Theoretical Knowledge exams guide

The interested reader who has found my “PPL textbooks” guide useful may be planning in future to move on to a career in flying. fl ying. In this case you will need at some point to t ake a series of ground exams which are much tougher than those taken at PPL level. You may find this guide useful in selecting which set of t extbooks are best suited to your circumstances. If you have reached this stage you should be familiar with the acronyms used but they are explained below for the benefit of those new t o aviation training: Acronyms used

JAA – JAA – Joint Joint Aviation Authorities – Authorities – a a group of (mostly European) civil aviation regulators. JAR – JAR – Joint Joint Aviation Requirements – Requirements – a a common set of requirements adopted by all J AA members, for example in flight crew licensing CAA – CAA – Civil Civil Aviation Authority ATPL – ATPL – Airline Airline Transport Pilot Licence CPL/IR – CPL/IR – Commercial Commercial Pilot Licence with Instrument Rating TK – TK – Theoretical Theoretical Knowledge DL – DL – Distance Distance Learning FTO – FTO – Flight Flight Training Organisation At the end of the article I have included a few ideas of how the system could be changed to make the whole exams process more straightforward and cheaper for st udents. My brilliant ideas are usually ignored so feel free to skip them. But who knows, perhaps this article ma y be read one day by someone someone at the CAA or EASA who decides decides such innovative thinking is the way ahead !

Richard Bellaby July 2011

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ATPL textbooks and Theoretical Knowledge exams guide Ground training

The introduction of the JAR system for flight crew training in 1999 resulted in a considerable expansion in the choice of textbooks available on the market for the budding Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) student. For those new to flying it should be noted that someone who has been issued with a Commercial Pilot Licence with an Instrument Rating (a “CPL/IR” ) with theory exam passes at ATPL level has a “frozen” ATPL. They can fly as a First Officer Office r on a multi-crew aircraft aircraf t with their CPL but cannot be issued with an ATPL until they have over 1,500 hours of total flying experience. Prior to JAR there was only one published series avail able for ATPL study, which was “Ground Studies for Pilots” by Taylor Ta ylor and Parmar. These were revised by Roy Underdown and appear to be published versions of the ground school notes from the old College of Air Training at Hamble which closed in 1984. Other organisations such as the Professi onal Pilot Study Centre at Bournemouth and Trent Air Services at Cranfield which both specialised in correspondence courses ( or “distance “dist ance learning” to use 21st Century terminology) produced their own manuals which they sold as a complete set when you signed up for a course with them. The introduction of JAR certainly made the cost of passing the ground exams much more time consuming and expensive. Prior to JAR there were three routes: 

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Do a correspondence course. This was as it said on the tin: there was no requirement r equirement to attend any classes or “brush up” sessions prior to exams. Do a full time course. These were tailored in duration to what Flight Training Organisations (FTOs) found was required to teach the material. In the mid 90s for example Cabair at Cranfield used to run a course of 4 weeks duration for the “Navigation Group” of Group” of subjects and another 4 weeks course for the “Technical Group” Group”. The CAA required that you sit all of the subjects s ubjects in a “Group” Group” in one attempt over 2-3 days of exams so the courses were preparation for the Group the candidate planned to sit. Candidates would then have the option of immediately ploughing into the next Group Group or could take a break to the next Group Group depending on work commitments and financial circumstances. Do full time study as part of an “integrated” course which included both ground and flying training. At the time integrated was exactly e xactly as it suggests: students st udents would do flying one day, then ground classes the following until 30-40 weeks into the course so that theoretical learning could reinforce practical experience in the air for a substantial part of the course.

This UK national system which had worked for well for the previous 30-40 years was substantially changed with the introduction of the Europe-wide JAR system which the CAA was one of the first European countries to implement. The objective was to harmonise European flight crew licensing so enable free movement of labour across European boundaries. How much free movement of pilots to jobs in Europe has resulted is debata ble but we have ended up with a more prescriptive and expensive system. The components of a CP L/IR course were broken down into “modules”. The ground subjects now have the title of the


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ATPL Theoretical Knowledge (TK) course Module. It was specified that a course for this module had to contain 650 hours of classroom tuition. It was also stipulated t hat any Distance Learning TK course had to have at least 10% of this figure (so 65 hours) as classroom based teaching. This is the origins of the “brush“brush -up” week(s) held by training providers prior to the CAA exams which are held in the first week of every month. The former UK ground studies routes described above have been replaced with t he following options: 

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Do a correspondence course. Except it is now known as a TK Distance Leaning (DL) course and has the 65 hours of classroom att endance requirement. Do a full time TK course . This now has the minimum of 650 classroom hours requirement. In practice this results in a course of 26 weeks duration. Do an “integrated course “integrated course”. In practice FTOs like Oxford and Cabair do the TK course for 26 weeks solid prior to starting any an y flying at all so I suggest that really reall y the title “integrated” CPL/IR course with TK knowledge knowl edge passes at ATPL level (a.k.a. the “frozen ATPL”) has become meaningless. What they are doing is in fact a Modular CPL/IR in one contiguous timescale.

To be an FTO approved to do any of the above in the UK a requirement is that each FTO must produce its own manuals for each TK subject. This will have a cost overhead and having produced a set of training manuals four of the providers have published them as books for purchase with the attraction of a greater size of market than previously existed before 1999. They would potentially be of interest to students studying in any of the JAR countries plus other in the Middle East and Asia which broadly follow the J AR system rather than the American FAA system. With English being the language of aviation an English speaking FTO has a clear advantage here compared to those schools and authors who speak and write English as a second language. The textbooks available

The main aim of this article is to review the four series of books available from pilot supplies shops from the following training providers: who are a large FTO who do flying training so can offer the ATPL TK course via Oxford – who any of the above three routes. Jeppesen – these these books were written by Atlantic Flight Training (AFT) at Coventry Airport. AFT are an FTO who also do flying training and at the time these books were written they used to do full time and DL courses at Coventry. AFT ceased doing ground training in the UK early in 2010. London Metropolitan University and Cranfield Aviation Training - these are both solely theoretical knowledge course training providers so can only offer the first two options – options – they they cannot offer an “integrated” course. London Met is a co-author of the Nordian series of books.


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What is currently available is vastly improved when compared to the training materials of past years. The quality of graphics and diagrams and use use of colour is in a different league to the monochrome thumbnail sketches and prose-heavy text of the past. They are available to anyone who has the money and inclination to buy them - you do not have to be a student at the school that produced them. I have used all of them to a great er or lesser extent so what follows is my opinion on each. I have shown how each series have spil t books across the exam subjects so that should a student be struggling he can easily see which is the one required. Each exam subject usually has its own dedicated book. A point to note is that each school includes the books or manuals as part of either a DL or full time course so if you signed up for a course with the FTO who produced them then you will not have to spend the £600-700 each set costs – costs – the the books will be included in the total course cost. Oxford Aviation Academy

Oxford has been training Commercial pilots since the early 1960s. Their spin prone Commercial Director does seem to like keeping people on their toes with regular name changes – changes – I I used to know them as Oxford Aviation Training and before that as Oxford Air Training School. School. Whatever Whatever the current name “Oxford” is the shorthand name that most refer to them as.

this is certainly the most detailed and comprehensive set of books on the Comments – this market. The books are lavishly illustrated in colour and the detail in diagrams is excellent. If you want to look something up and cannot find it in the Oxford books then I suggest that you will have to look hard to find it in another source. Page count is enormous at i n excess of 6,500 across the 14 books. Critique – With With individual books costing anything up to £60 I would expect at this sort of figure to buy a hardback book rather than the oversized paperback book that it is. The actual book size is A4. Oxford used to publish them in ring binders so this looks like a cheap way of getting a saleable book out of what used to be a manual. Unless viewed on a table these oversized paperbacks do flop around in a way a hardback book does not.

These books were written with the introduction of JAR and while they do cover absolutely everything that you could possibly need to know according to the JAR learning objectives, they do lack emphasis on what is really reall y important which you get from a dedicated set of course notes. When used as part of a classroom class room based course or as a supplement to a DL course they make an excellent, encyclopaedic reference. For use as the core of a DL course from Oxford they could be very ver y heavy going and only for the most dedicated or hyper enthusiastic. I would suggest to an ATPL student not to buy the complete set of manuals. A better method is if you find a particular subject very ver y difficult to understand then buy the relevant


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Oxford book to research the particular aspects you are struggling with by looking up the relevant chapter. This is made slightly slightl y more difficult in that there is no index at the back of each one. Oxford is no different here from most of the others and this reflects its origins as a manual. It does have the JAR leaning objective number at the start of each chapter so this t his could always be cross-referenced with the learning le arning objectives which are still available avail able on the JAR website (www.jaa.nl).. Jeppesen (with Atlantic Flight Training)

These books were actually written by Atlantic Flight Training (AFT) based at Coventry airport and have Jeppesen’s name name on the cover, presumably for marketing purposes and to give a more international appeal. Your money does buy Comments – Your you a hardback book. Coverage is comprehensive and there are more photographs of real life examples of aeroplane parts and equipment than in any of the other competitors. They are about two thirds of the page length of the Oxford books. Much of this is due to them not having sample questions at the end of each chapter in the way that the Oxford books do. This is a particular dislike of mine. The text should cover what need need to be explained and not pad out out with large numbers of questions on what you have just read at the end of each chapter. I believe that this is where the on-line question bank should be be used or a separate questionsand-answers book or manual should be provided. Worked question examples in the text are a more productive use of space, for example when calculati ng conversion angles in General Navigation. Critique – conciseness conciseness of the books does very. The Aircraft General Knowledge books in particular are really to the sort of level more appropriate for a maintenance engineer’s course. It is difficult to get to t o grips with basics that are required by b y the pilot among the mass of material. The stuff on properties of materials used (aluminium, titanium, steel etc) is all very interesting stuff – stuff – but but we are flying the things, not building them ! The Performance book in particular is very good and I do know is used by a couple of the schools in preference to their own particular manual on the subject.

The diagrams used are clear enough and have associated photographs to show actual examples of equipment used. However rather too many of them are of the ass ortment of vintage machines such as the Lockheed Electra and Douglas DC6 which happen to be at Coventry Airport which is where AFT are based. Where photos are used it would be best if they were taken of parts and equipment used by the “baseline” ai rcraft used for the JAR J AR syllabus, which are the Piper Seneca for the piston engine tw in and the Boeing 737 for the Medium Range Jet Twin. There is also a lack of consistency in the diagrams. Some are drawn from other sources, often in a monochrome format while others have been produced by an in-house graphic artist. It all works but but just does not have the consistency level of the other publications.


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The books are on their second edition while Oxford is now on edition five. There are numerous typos in the text which shows that the second editions were rushed into print without thorough proofreading. I actually did the f ull time 650 hour ATPL theoretical knowledge course at AFT in 2007 and we did have some good sporting fun f un spotting the errors in the books when they were displayed in pdf format on the interacti ve whiteboard. I actually tended to rely on what was taught in the classroom and used these books for reference where some extra reading re ading was required to consolidate knowledge and for this they proved adequate, of which more later in this article. One big problem with this series is that in early 2010 AFT stopped doing full time ground school at Coventry and made all of the ground school staff ( man y of whom had contributed to these books) redundant. It is therefore difficult to see how Jeppesen can keep them updated in the future unless some arrangement has been made with re gard to copyright. Nordian (with London Metropolitan University)

These are published by a consortium of Norwegian and Swedish schools plus London London Metropolitan University, hence the “Nor” in the name. London Met has been doing ATPL ground studies for 30+ years (prior to 1992 it was London City Polytechnic). And well done them - how many other UK academic institutions have ever bothered to offer something for trainee pilots ? It makes a refreshing change from Sport Science, Media Studies and other quasi-academic quasi-academic fluff. It’s just a pity they are based in the most expensive city in the country in which to live and study.

Comments – Another Another set of durable hardback books, split over 15 volumes with exactly the same division as Jeppesen. They are also als o of a much smaller and more convenient size than Oxford or Jeppesen and avoid the “doorstop” effect of some of the heavier subjects. Effort has clearly been made to consolidate and simplify material, which is of benefit to those who speak and read English as a second language. The diagrams are numerous and tend towards the simple and schematic to explain the principles involved rather than the “engineers drawing” type present in some of the other series . Use of colour is good without being lavish in the way that the Oxford books are.

with this series is the layout of the text. Each page page has the text Critique – My big dislike with split into two columns which does not allow your reading to flow easily. I don’t kno w if this is a consequence of using some archaic deskt op publishing package but it does give them the look of a manual for sat nav device or a mobile phone. I do like the way the book outer covers are given a colour coding which gives some differentiation according to JAR subject area – area – Mass Mass & Balance, Performance and Flight Planning are all in the 030 category and coloured brown, for example. It seems more down to earth than the Oxford book covers with their large airliner pictures beloved to plane spotters on the front covers and gives a less pretentious first impression.


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ATPL Textbooks

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