u/Akara91

asking the folks who went through eurocontrol or national ans selections. the multitasking and memory parts of feast look brutal from the outside. did people around you prep seriously or just show up? and did prep actually separate the passes from the fails?

same debate in every cadet thread: half the people say aptitude tests cant be trained, the other half grinded mental math and memory drills for months and credit exactly that. if you went through easyjet/ryanair/lufthansa selections, what did you do to prep and would you do it again?

im a solo dev. my app trains the cognitive tests airlines use to select cadet pilots, timed mental math, memory sequences, multitasking. i assumed my audience was the few thousand people a year who apply to cadet programs.

what im finding instead: the same cognitive formats show up in tons of other selections, train drivers, air traffic control, corporate hiring assessments. and beyond that theres a whole crowd of people with zero career reason who just want to know how theyd score on the thing that filters airline pilots.

so the niche i built for might be the smallest slice of the actual market, which makes me rethink who the app is really for.

the app is called Brain Preflight (cant put links in this sub)

I build a small iPhone app that recreates the aptitude tests airlines use to screen cadet pilots, and the memory sections are the part I keep wondering about for this community. They are short sequences, letters, numbers, instrument readings, recalled after a delay, under a clock, and sometimes while a tracking task is running at the same time.

Loci and the major system are built for depth: long lists, encoded carefully, retrieved in order. The pilot test format seems to attack exactly the opposite end, no time to encode anything elaborately, and your attention is split while the items arrive.

So genuine question for people who train these techniques seriously: do they still give you an edge when the format is fast, small and hostile to deliberate encoding? Or does trained memory collapse back to normal short term capacity once a second task is running? Has anyone here actually tried a speeded battery like this?

I build a small iPhone app that recreates the aptitude tests airlines use to screen cadet pilots, the COMPASS and cut-e style batteries. On paper FEAST looks like a close cousin: tracking tasks, divided attention with things to catch at the edge of the screen, short term memory sequences, mental math on a clock, spatial orientation.

Controllers who sat FEAST, how close is that impression to reality? Is the weighting different, more memory and less psychomotor, more raw speed? And did anything actually help you prepare, or is it one of those batteries where you walk in and find out what you are made of?

Asking because there seems to be very little FEAST specific prep material out there compared to the pilot side, and I want to understand how big the overlap really is.

I build a small iPhone app that recreates the cognitive tests airlines use to screen cadet pilots, and the thing that fails most candidates is not the difficulty, it is the clock. The math is easy arithmetic, but every question has seconds on it, and one miss tends to snowball into three because people tilt.

Speedrunners are the only community I can think of that deliberately trains executing under a live timer for hours, with a reset always one mistake away. Managing the choke on a PB pace final split is basically part of the craft, and nobody else practices that on purpose.

So genuine question: does it carry over? Are you noticeably calmer than the people around you in exams, job interviews, driving tests, anything with a clock and one shot? Or does the composure stay attached to the game you grind and vanish everywhere else?

I build a small iPhone app that recreates the multitasking tests airlines use to screen cadet pilots. One section makes you track a moving target with one hand while answering mental math and memory prompts, with gauge alarms on the side. Most people completely fall apart the first time they try it.

StarCraft players are the group I would bet on before anyone else. Macro and micro in parallel, scouting while producing, camera hopping between bases and fights, injects on a timer in your head, all under a clock that never stops. From the outside it looks like exactly the same skill.

So genuine question for people with serious ladder time: does it leave the game with you? Do you notice the multitasking when driving, working, cooking, playing other genres? Or is it hotkey muscle memory that stays in the client and never transfers? Curious whether the skill is general or game specific.

I build a small iPhone app that recreates the multitasking tests airlines use to screen cadet pilots. One section makes you track a moving target with one hand while answering mental math and memory prompts at the same time. Most people completely fall apart the first time they try it.

Ever since I started working on it I keep wondering if drummers would be unusually good at this. Limb independence, keeping time, reading a bar ahead while playing another, it feels like the same skill dressed differently.

So genuine question for people who drum seriously: do you notice your multitasking transferring to other stuff, like flight sims, gaming, driving, holding a conversation while doing something else? Or does it stay locked to the kit? Curious whether the skill is general or drumming specific.

edit: for the curious ones, the app is called Brain Preflight

Airline cadet selection is basically a harder Human Benchmark. Reaction time but you track a moving target with it. Number memory but the digits arrive while you do arithmetic. Sequence memory but under a clock that adapts to you. And one test HB has no equivalent for: tracking plus mental maths plus gauge alarms, all at once.

The interesting part is the scoring. You are not ranked against everyone, you are ranked against other applicants, so the bar is people who trained for weeks.

I rebuilt these mechanics in a free iOS app, Brain Preflight. I am the developer. Not linking it since I do not want this to read as an ad, you can find it on the App Store. Free tier is 5 sessions a day.

If anyone here tries it I am genuinely curious whether high HB scores carry over. My bet is reaction and memory transfer, the multitask one humbles everyone the first time.