The flight director simulation is the closest an aptitude battery gets to actually flying. A voice calls out targets, climb to five thousand, turn right heading two seven zero, reduce speed, and you fly them on three instruments with a stick and a throttle, against realistic lag and, at the top level, turbulence and coupled controls. This guide covers the aircraft model, the capture-and-hold scoring that decides everything, and the technique that works per axis.
What is the Flight Director Test?
The test measures instrument flying aptitude before flight training: hearing a target, choosing the right control, capturing the value without overshooting and then holding it while the next call arrives. Assessors read it as trainability made visible, because the behaviours it scores, smooth inputs, early corrections, disciplined holds, are exactly what flight instructors grade later at far greater cost.
The simulated aircraft is deliberately simple but honest: climbs and descents run through the stick's pitch axis, turns through roll, and speed through a throttle that stays where you set it. Every axis responds with lag, so inputs made now pay off seconds later, and at the highest level a climb bleeds speed through coupling while turbulence nudges everything continuously.
Which Exams Include the Flight Director Test?
Command-following instrument tasks appear across pilot screening. Candidates commonly report this test type in:
- DLR screenings, in applied multitasking and simulation stages
- COMPASS and Advanced COMPASS by EPST, whose control tasks run on similar principles
- PILAPT, in tracking-with-commands combinations
- Airline simulator assessments, where basic attitude flying to called targets is the classic direct-entry exercise, as described in our pilot selection guide
Providers revise their batteries continuously and publish no official syllabus; read this list as candidate-reported guidance.
How the Test Works: Format and Rules
The rules:
- Three arc instruments show altitude, heading and speed; commands arrive by voice, with an orange target bug marking the goal on early levels.
- Stick: up is climb, right is right turn; the throttle is absolute and holds its position.
- Capture requires staying inside tolerance, 100 ft, 5 degrees or 10 knots, continuously for two seconds.
- After capture, the hold is still scored: half of each command's points come from staying inside tolerance until the next call.
- Levels add axes one at a time, then remove the target bugs (radio only), then add coupled controls and turbulence on the longest run.
This is exactly how it looks in the test:
Capture is half the score. The hold is the other half, and it is the half candidates forget the moment they hear "captured".
Scoring: What a Good Result Looks Like
Each command is scored on capture speed against an ideal time derived from the size of the change, on hold accuracy afterwards, with deductions for overshoot and a heavy penalty for moving the wrong way first. Axis scores average their commands, the composite averages the axes, and the pass mark is 55. The result lists every call with your reaction time, capture time and overshoot, so one read tells you whether your problem is latency, aggression or abandoned holds. Strong candidates react within about a second, capture close to the ideal time and keep wrong-way inputs at zero.
How to Prepare: Strategies That Actually Work
- Lead the target, then bleed the rate. Drive toward the value briskly, but start reducing your input well before arrival; the two-second capture window only starts once you are inside tolerance and staying there.
- Verbalise the direction before moving. "Climb, so stick up": half a second of naming eliminates the wrong-way penalty that a hasty grab invites.
- Trim your attention to the active axis, guard the others. Commands come one at a time, but the uncommanded axes still drift, and the hold score watches them too.
- Fly the throttle like a setting, not a button. It stays where you leave it; set an estimate, watch the trend through the lag, and refine once.
- Train radio-only mode deliberately. When the bugs disappear, you must hold the number in memory while flying it; that is the working memory load arriving on top of control.
- Expect the coupling. At the top level a climb costs speed; pair each pitch input with a small throttle correction and the level flies itself.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Overshooting through the target because the input was still large at arrival.
- Celebrating capture and drifting out of tolerance while waiting for the next call.
- Chasing turbulence with big corrections instead of holding a calm average.
- Forgetting the heading wraps: a 30 degree turn commanded through north confuses candidates who read the arc, not the aircraft.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a flight director in a real aircraft?
Guidance bars on the attitude indicator that show the pilot what inputs the autopilot would make; the aptitude version borrows the idea of flying commanded targets precisely.
Do I need flying experience for this test?
No; the simulation assumes none and scores trainability. Candidates with simulator hobby time adapt faster to lag, but the capture-and-hold discipline is learnable by anyone within sessions.
Why is holding the value scored after capture?
Because real flying is mostly holding: reaching an altitude matters less than staying there while workload continues, so the score splits evenly between the two behaviours.
Practice This Skill
Instrument flying aptitude is built one captured target at a time. Train with the Flight Director module, which reproduces the voice commands, the lagged aircraft, the capture-and-hold scoring and the per-call debrief exactly as described here. Level 1 is free, and the guided tutorial walks you through the controls before your first command.