If your invitation email mentions "scales" with strange lowercase names, you are meeting cut-e. Aon's assessment suite is built from many very short, laser-focused online tests, most under fifteen minutes, and airlines assemble them into custom batteries for pilot and ATC selection. The format feels different from every other screening: less marathon, more sprint series. This guide explains the system, the scales candidates most often report, and how to prepare for the sprint format.
What is the Aon cut-e Test?
cut-e is an assessment company founded in Hamburg and acquired by Aon, whose online psychometric suite is used by airlines worldwide, including major European and Gulf carriers, for pilot and controller screening. Instead of one long battery, cut-e offers dozens of small instruments called scales, each measuring one narrow ability, and each operator picks its own set.
The signature traits: tests are short and dense, many are adaptive, difficulty rising as you answer well, and several use formats found nowhere else, like grid-based deduction or figure-switching rules. Because each scale is brief, there is no time to settle in; the first item counts as much as the last, and the format itself is half the difficulty for an unprepared candidate.
Aviation Aptitude is an independent training platform with no affiliation to Aon; scale lists below are candidate-reported and operators change their selections freely.
Which Skills Do the cut-e Scales Test?
Commonly reported scales in aviation batteries map onto our modules:
- Memory scales: remembering and updating item sequences, as in the visual memory test and running memory span test
- Numerical scales: fast arithmetic and applied speed, distance and time items, as in the mental arithmetic test and speed distance time test
- Inductive and deductive scales: continuing patterns and applying rule grids, as in the number series test and logic and reasoning test
- Attention and concentration scales: rapid target filtering under time, as in the perceptual speed test and concentration test
- Multitasking scales: two or more streams handled at once, as in the divided attention test
- Spatial scales: orientation and mental rotation, as in the spatial orientation test and cube rotation test
- Personality and situational questionnaires, of the kind described in our personality test guide
Commonly Reported cut-e Scale Names
cut-e instruments carry short code names beginning with "scales", and invitation emails often list them, which is usually the moment candidates start searching. The names most commonly reported in aviation batteries, with the matching training on this site:
- scales eql, applied numeracy: building equations from given numbers under time; train with the mental arithmetic test
- Monitoring ability items (reported as scales cmo and similar): tracking moving objects and reacting to state changes; train with the monitoring test and vigilance test
- Spatial orientation items: headings, relative bearings and instrument-style orientation; train with the spatial orientation test
- Inductive and deductive reasoning scales: discovering rules in tables and grids; train with the logic and reasoning test and number series test
- Multitasking and complex control items: two or more streams at once; train with the divided attention test
- Memory scales: retaining and updating item sets; train with the visual memory test and running memory span test
Aon renames, retires and introduces instruments over time and operators mix aviation-specific items with general scales, so treat any specific list, including this one, as a snapshot from candidate reports rather than a catalog.
How the Assessment Runs
Most cut-e batteries are completed online from home, unproctored or lightly proctored, with a possible verification retest later at an assessment center. Each scale opens with instructions and a couple of practice items, then scores immediately. Adaptive scales feel strange by design: answer well and the items get harder, so nearly everyone finishes feeling stretched. That feeling says nothing about your result; percentile against the applicant norm decides, not the sensation of difficulty.
In an adaptive test, feeling that it got hard is evidence you were doing well, not that you failed.
How to Prepare: Strategies That Actually Work
- Learn each format before test day. With eight or twelve minutes per scale, decoding an unfamiliar mechanic during the test is fatal. Practice until every reported format is recognizable at a glance.
- Train for instant starts. Sprint tests reward the first minute as much as the last. Begin practice sessions cold, no warm-up, to build the habit of full speed from item one.
- Expect the difficulty climb. Rehearse continuing calmly past items that feel too hard; abandoning precision in the last third is the classic adaptive-test failure.
- Keep an error budget in mind. Most scales score accuracy against speed. Reckless guessing costs more than a beat of thought; frozen perfectionism costs more than an occasional miss.
- Prepare the home setup like an exam room. Stable connection, silence, headphones, notifications off. A doorbell during an eight-minute scale can cost a percentile band.
- Cross-train the underlying skills. Format fluency gets you to the start line; the score itself comes from trained memory, arithmetic and attention, built over weeks in the modules linked above.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Sitting the battery cold to "see how it goes" when a verification retest can revisit the result.
- Judging performance by how hard the final items felt and tilting for the rest of the session.
- Preparing generic IQ material instead of the specific reported scale formats.
- Ignoring the situational and personality components, which operators read carefully.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did the cut-e test feel so hard at the end?
Many scales are adaptive: answer well and the items get harder, so nearly everyone finishes feeling stretched. That feeling is evidence you were scoring, not failing.
How long is a cut-e assessment?
Individual scales commonly run under fifteen minutes each; a full airline battery of several scales plus questionnaires typically spans one to two hours online.
Can I retake a cut-e test?
Retakes belong to the recruiting operator, and a verification retest at an assessment centre can revisit online results at any time, which is why genuine fluency beats a lucky first sitting.
Practice This Skill
Train the underlying abilities scale by scale in the Aviation Aptitude app: short, timed modules with levels that climb like an adaptive test. The free diagnostic maps your profile across memory, numerical, spatial and attention skills, and each module's guide on this site details its strategy.