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Comment by dgfitz

2 months ago

I'll never find it, but a few days ago someone here posted an anecdotal story that class sizes were between 10-20 and failure/drop rate was ~50%.

I probably read the same thing, the most galling to me wasn't the failure rate it was that once you've failed you can never reapply.

  • For some jobs, your aptitude should matter. If a test has some discriminating power between people with aptitude and those without aptitude, then perhaps failing that test should really matter. For ATC staff perhaps OCD-adjacent traits are good and ADD-adjacent traits are bad. Maybe you don't want someone with epilepsy in ATC even though that's unfair.

    Maybe we all want to be Olympic athletes and a few work hard to become so, but what should happen if we lack some necessary skill?

Across 2023 and 2024 the en route academy pass rate was ~66% and terminal pass rate was ~73%. Of that, ~25% of en route trainees fail at their facility and ~15-20% of terminal trainees fail at their facility. There are ~2 en route trainees per terminal trainee.