Start here
The short version
Canada runs its aircrew aptitude testing as a two day residential event at one location. You are flown in, put up, tested for about eight hours across two days, and told the outcome before you leave. The one sitting covers all three aircrew trades, Pilot, ACSO and AEC, and your score decides which of them you are eligible for, with Pilot the highest bar.
2
days of testing, roughly eight hours split evenly between them
3
aircrew trades assessed in one sitting: Pilot, ACSO and AEC
3
lifetime attempts, with twelve months between them
~30%
the most commonly quoted pass rate for pilot
How sure am I about each point?
Every point below carries a grade rather than being presented as equally solid. Beyond the official candidate guide, the CAF publishes very little about how this test goes, so a fair amount of what follows rests on a handful of accounts. The grade says which.
Well established
Reported, treat with care
Probably wrong or out of date
Unresolved
- Well established. Either published by the CAF in a recruiting message or on the official site, or repeated consistently by many candidates across several years.
- Reported. Comes from one or a few candidate accounts. Plausible and specific, but nobody has confirmed it since.
- Probably wrong. Still repeated in places, and contradicted by the current process. These are here because you will run into them.
- Unresolved. Accounts genuinely conflict and I cannot say which is right.
What this is, and what it isn’t. This is a candidate guide, not an
official document, and the CAF changes this process more often than you would expect. Nothing here
comes from inside the selection centre. If a detail matters to your application, confirm it with your
recruiting centre rather than with this page.
Vocabulary
What everything is called
The process comes with its own set of acronyms, and candidate threads use most of them interchangeably. This is what each one means.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| CFAST | Canadian Forces Aircrew Selection Test. The battery itself. This is the thing people call “aircrew selection”. |
| CFASC | Canadian Forces Aircrew Selection Centre. The unit that runs it, at CFB Trenton in Ontario. |
| ACS | Aircrew Selection. Used loosely for both the test and the trip. |
| CFAT | Canadian Forces Aptitude Test. The general entry test everyone sits, long before CFAST. Not the same thing. |
| CAPSS | Canadian Automated Pilot Selection System. The old flight simulator based test. Retired. See below. |
| Pilot | The highest CFAST result band. |
| ACSO | Air Combat Systems Officer. The middle band. Runs the navigation, sensor and weapon systems from the back of the aircraft. |
| AEC | Aerospace Control Officer. The third band. Air traffic control and air battle management. |
| CFEME | Canadian Forces Environmental Medicine Establishment, Toronto. Where the aircrew medical is adjudicated. |
| Air Factor | The aircrew medical category. Separate from CFAST and assessed after it. |
“Aircrew selection is a flight simulator test, so practise flying a simulated aircraft.” This is the old CAPSS process. It was retired well over a decade ago and the current battery has no simulator in it.
The change is documented by a candidate who sat the replacement in late 2013 and posted about it under the heading “NEW ACS”: the simulator was gone, and in its place were roughly 28 computer based tests spread over two days. Older forum threads, and some third party sites, still describe the simulator. One serving pilot who took part in developing the replacement summarised the difference neatly: the old selection was a simulator you flew for an hour at a time and came out of drenched in sweat, and the new one is “more mental, but it’s gruelling”.
One sitting covers three trades. You are not told simply that you passed. You are told which of Pilot, ACSO and AEC you qualified for, and Pilot is the highest bar.
This is consistent across many years of accounts and matches the recruiting messages, which route Pilot, ACSO and AEC applicants through the same centre. In practice it means the trip is worth taking even if Pilot is a long shot, because a result short of Pilot can still open two other aircrew trades. Candidates describe exactly that outcome often: “passed for AEC, so close to passing for ACSO but didn’t make it.” It also means a Pilot applicant who does not clear the top band has not necessarily wasted the attempt.
The CFAT is a separate, earlier test, and it has historically been the gate that decides whether you are sent to CFAST at all.
The CFAT is a roughly 60 question general aptitude test taken at a recruiting centre, covering verbal reasoning, spatial reasoning and problem solving. It is combined with a personality inventory into a single score, and for a competitive trade like Pilot the cut-off for that score is raised. Several accounts state plainly that a weak CFAT means you never get offered a CFAST date. Graded amber because at least one 2025 account says the CFAT requirement was dropped in late 2024 for aircrew candidates, and reports a debriefing officer noticing weaker candidates arriving as a result. Confirm which applies to you.
On the ground
The two days
CFAST is residential and the CAF pays for it. You are booked by your recruiting centre, flown to Trenton, accommodated, and flown home. Candidates are routinely reimbursed for the travel.
The testing is about eight hours, split evenly across two days. It is all computer based.
The eight hours over two days figure is repeated consistently, including in a detailed 2024 account that also lists the domains: eye, hand and foot control, short term memory, multitasking, mental arithmetic and spatial reasoning. The 2013 account of the new format put it at roughly 28 separate tests. Whether it is still 28 today is unclear, but the shape of the thing, many short tests rather than a few long ones, has not changed.
You will feel like you failed. Everyone does, and it is built in.
This is the single most repeated piece of advice about CFAST and it comes from every era of account. One candidate: “Not a single person thought they were doing well, which I think is also a part of the test design.” Another, more usefully: “many of the tests are designed to be extremely difficult or impossible. They’ll just keep getting harder as you go. Half of the exam is to see how you handle being time compressed and doing things that are difficult.” Several people who passed report that the tests they thought they had ruined turned out to be among their strongest. Treat the feeling as noise, not signal.
The first night’s sleep does real work. Day two starts early and carries a full half of the testing.
Advice from a candidate who did it right: go to bed early enough to get eight or nine hours, get up with enough time to eat breakfast without rushing, and do not spend the evening reading forum threads. “If you stay up late on reddit, wake up at the last minute, then have to rush across the base to CFASC, you are not doing yourself any favours.” This matters more than it would in a one day test, because a bad first night costs you half the battery rather than none of it.
Getting there is described as more stressful than the test. The joining instructions are widely called confusing.
One 2024 account: “the most difficult part for me was making all the travel preparations to go by myself and then going. Just getting there really sucks because the information they give you is often confusing and poorly worded and I needed to send a bunch of emails just to know what I was supposed to do.” Ask your recruiting centre the boring logistical questions early rather than the night before.
You get a debrief. If you fall short, you are told which areas let you down.
Candidates are taken in one by one and given their results. Someone who failed and then passed on a second attempt described the value of it directly: “If you fell short, guaranteed you got told in the debrief what to work on. Laser focus on those skills and improve your weaknesses. It’s very doable.” Their own first attempt was short on the maths for pilot, and they passed comfortably the second time. It is the main reason a second attempt is worth more than a blind one: you go back knowing exactly what to work on.
The battery
The tests, one by one
The fullest public description of the CFAST battery is a candidate write-up from the mid 2010s that walks through every named test in the official candidate guide and suggests how to practise each one. It has been reposted many times since. What follows is that list, with the caveat that the battery has almost certainly been revised since.
Read this next to the official candidate guide. The CAF publishes a
candidate guide that names and explains every test. Candidates who have done well consistently say the
same thing about it: it tells you far more than people assume, and most of them did not read it
properly. The write-up below was itself built by working through that guide.
The named testsCFAST
Reported battery
Airborne Numerical · Angles, Bearings and Degrees · Auditory Capacity · CLAN · Mathematical
Reasoning · Instrument Comprehension · Digit Recognition · Cognitive Updating · Numerical
Operations · Situational Awareness · Sensory Motor Apparatus · Rapid Tracking · Spatial Integration
· System Logic · Table Reading · Target Recognition · Trace 1 and Trace 2 · Vigilance · Visual Search
Source: a candidate write-up worked up from the official candidate guide, widely reposted. Mid 2010s.
Almost every test in that list also appears in the RAF’s CBAT under the same name, which is why most of the practice material you will find online is British.
Airborne Numerical, Cognitive Updating, Numerical Operations, Situational Awareness, Sensory Motor Apparatus, Rapid Tracking, Spatial Integration, System Logic, Table Reading, Vigilance, and both Trace tests all appear in the RAF list under identical names. Angles and Bearings, Instrument Comprehension, Target Recognition and Digit Recognition map across just as cleanly. This is not a coincidence, and the reason is in the next point.
The Canadian battery was reportedly modelled on the RAF’s. A candidate who sat the new format in 2013 said so explicitly.
Their advice to the next intake: “If you need more study material, look into RAF testing as this is what the new model is based on.” Given the near identical test names, that is easy to believe, and it is the single most useful fact on this page: it means practice material written for the RAF test is not a rough substitute for CFAST preparation, it is close to the same thing, and there is far more of it. Graded amber because it is one candidate’s understanding rather than an official statement, and neither air force publishes the provenance of its battery.
Your multitasking test is CLAN. British material describes FLAG instead, which replaced CLAN in the RAF battery in 2021, so this is the one place UK practice material does not match what you will sit.
CLAN runs three tasks at once: coloured dots travelling toward colour coded zones, a letter sequence to hold and pick out of scrambled options, and rapid arithmetic against a timer. FLAG is structurally very close, so drilling one prepares you for the other, but they are not identical and the practice apps carry one or the other without always saying which. Do not assume a UK app’s FLAG module is your test.
There is a foot control element. The Sensory Motor Apparatus test uses rudder pedals as well as a joystick.
The write-up describes it as controlling a dot with a joystick on one axis and pedals on the other, and warns that “disconnecting your hands from one axis and connecting your feet is not easy”. A 2024 summary of the battery independently lists “eye-hand-foot control” as one of the domains. This is worth knowing in advance because almost nobody has used rudder pedals before, and it is the one part of the battery where the physical setup itself is unfamiliar.
Speed, distance and time arithmetic comes up a lot, and it is the most practisable thing in the battery.
Every era of account says this. The 2013 write-up: “Study up on your time/distance/speed and fuel consumption, as there is a lot of it, a lot of math and make sure you can do it quickly.” A 2023 post recommends doing “a ton of speed distance time problems and get good at finding the shortcuts for solving them quickly”. A candidate who failed and then passed says their first attempt was short specifically on maths for pilot. If you only prepare one thing, prepare this.
How much of this list is still accurate is genuinely unknown.
The write-up dates from the mid 2010s and the battery has been revised at least once since it was written. A pilot who applied over a decade ago and answered questions in 2026 was careful to say “I can’t speak to the new selection process as I underwent the previous aircrew selection program that is no longer in use.” Treat the list as the shape of the thing rather than a current running order, and read the official candidate guide you are sent for the version you will actually sit.
Weighting
What it counts for
CFAST is not a hurdle you clear and forget. For aircrew trades it is the largest single component of your competitiveness, and candidates who understand that prepare differently.
For aircrew trades, CFAST is reported to be worth about half your entire application.
The clearest statement of it: for a normal trade the split is roughly 60% aptitude test, 15% personality inventory and 25% interview and miscellaneous factors, and “if you’re applying for a trade that has a special assessment like Aircrew Selection, cut the above percentages in half and assign 50% to the special assessment”. A separate account gives the same result in different numbers for one entry plan: CFAST 50%, CFAT 30%, personality inventory about 7.5%, interview and other factors about 12.5%. A third puts it as “roughly 85% of your application for Pilot will be decided based on test results alone”. Different sources, same conclusion.
Academics, flying hours and life experience matter far less than people expect.
Repeated constantly by people already in the trade. Pilot accepts essentially any bachelor’s degree, and the subject is not weighted. A private pilot’s licence is described as worth “a couple points to your interview score and very very slightly helpful for aircrew selection”, and several serving pilots warn that civilian flying habits can actively hinder military training later. One summary: “Competition for recruitment or transfer over to Pilot is based almost entirely on test scores.”
You are not aiming to pass. You are aiming to score, because the offer comes off a ranked list afterwards.
Passing CFAST puts you on a competitively ranked merit list, and offers are made from it as slots appear. One candidate had “almost perfect scores at aircrew selection” and still spent years waiting. Another passed and sat on the list for ten weeks before an offer. So the difference between scraping through and scoring well is not pass versus fail, it is how long you wait and whether an offer ever comes. As one account puts it: “you’re not looking at a pass or meeting the minimum. You’re aiming to achieve the highest score you can because you’ll be competing against others.”
The numbers
Pass rates and attempts
Quoted pass rates vary more than any other figure, partly because people quote the rate for different trades and different years as though they were the same number.
| Year | Quoted rate | Source shape |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 4 of 15 on one intake, 0 of 10 the week before | Candidate, first sitting of the new format |
| 2015 | 40 to 50% | Recruiting-adjacent explainer |
| 2017 | Around 30% | Serving pilot |
| 2019 | 20 to 50% | Serving pilot, explicitly rough |
| 2020 | About a 70% failure rate | Serving pilot |
| 2024 | About 30% for pilot applicants | Detailed candidate summary |
| 2025 | 33% | Candidate, quoting staff |
| 2026 | 30 to 40% | Serving pilot |
Roughly a third of pilot candidates pass. The spread of quoted figures narrows once you separate trades and eras.
The band that survives scrutiny is about 30 to 40% for Pilot specifically. The higher figures, 40 to 50%, tend to describe passing for any aircrew trade rather than for Pilot, which is a different and easier question given one sitting streams you into three bands. The very low 2013 numbers come from the first intakes of a brand new format and should not be read as current. A senior pilot’s figure of “60 to 70% don’t make it past this point” sits comfortably with the modern band.
Three attempts in a lifetime, twelve months apart.
Stated plainly in 2017: “You can attempt it again after a year, up to three times.” Restated in 2022: “If you don’t score high enough to be selected as a pilot you can re-attempt the aptitude test in 12 months. You can do the test a maximum of 3 times.” A 2026 candidate describes going for their third and final attempt after sitting it in 2022 and 2024, which fits. Worth knowing, because it means a first attempt is genuinely a reconnaissance run rather than your only shot.
A result is reported to be valid for two years, so a slow application can outlive its own test score.
One account states it directly: “Aircrew selection is only valid 2 years.” Another candidate weighing a trade change worried that a wait of “two, three or even four years” would mean redoing aircrew selection. Given that Canadian application timelines of two to four years are common in these accounts, this is a real risk rather than a theoretical one, and it is worth asking your recruiting centre about if your file stalls.
It is expensive to run, and places are limited. That is part of why the CFAT gate existed.
A 2025 candidate relays the reasoning from staff: with a pass rate around a third and the CAF covering airfare, hotel, food and the staff to supervise, each seat costs real money. The same account notes the debriefing officer’s complaint after the CFAT was dropped, that some candidates were now scoring zero on tests that an earlier filter would have caught. Whatever the current gate is, the underlying pressure has not changed.
Afterwards
What happens after
Passing CFAST is one gate of several, and two of the ones that follow catch people out because they have nothing to do with aptitude.
- Anthropometric measurements. You are measured to check you physically fit the training aircraft. This happens at the selection centre, often the same trip. One candidate at 6 feet 5 passed for helicopter and multi engine streams but was close to the limit, and notes that sitting height and thigh length matter more than overall height.
- The aircrew medical. Separate from the ordinary recruiting medical, with more tests, and adjudicated by CFEME in Toronto. It produces your Air Factor. Candidates commonly report this as the slowest step in the whole application, and several report doing CFAST first specifically so they are not paying for medical testing before knowing whether they qualify at all.
- The competition list. Passing does not produce an offer. You are ranked against everyone else and wait. Waits of weeks to years appear throughout these accounts, and some people are never selected.
- The offer. Made by email, and nothing is binding until enrolment. Every account is emphatic that you remain a civilian throughout, and that you should not resign a job or sell anything on the strength of a strong result.
The order is deliberate. Doing the cheap, high attrition test before
the expensive, slow medical is the sensible sequencing and the CAF generally follows it. If your
recruiting centre proposes the reverse, it is worth asking why.
Preparation
What actually helps
Opinion divides sharply on whether you can prepare for an aptitude test at all. The useful version of the argument is not about raw ability, it is about not wasting attention on the unfamiliar.
The “you can’t prepare for it” advice is half right and gets quoted as though it were entirely right.
The best rebuttal in these accounts: “Lots of people will tell you that you can’t really prepare, but I have to say this is very bad advice. Sure, you can’t do much to improve your baseline aptitude. But you can maximize how well you’re able to approach the tests.” Knowing the format, the controls and the arithmetic in advance means the working memory you have goes on the task rather than on working out what the task is. The write-up that catalogued the battery ends on the same honest note: it may help, it may not, but going in unsurprised is worth something on its own.
Mental arithmetic under time pressure is the highest yield thing to drill, and it is the one thing everyone agrees on.
Speed, distance and time in particular. Candidates recommend timed arithmetic drills and speed distance time problem sets, and the recurring instruction is to find the shortcuts rather than to compute carefully. This is also the area most often named in debriefs as the reason someone fell short of Pilot.
Time on a joystick helps, because the stick itself should not be the new thing on the day.
Several of the tests are psychomotor, and one of them adds rudder pedals. The reasoning given by the battery write-up is the right one: “If you can get good with the stick, it’ll free up processing power to deal with the other tasks.” The gain is not better hand-eye coordination, it is not spending attention on the control. Serving members are more sceptical about video games in general, though one who passed on a second attempt makes a specific case for games that require pattern recognition and prediction rather than reflexes alone.
Read the official candidate guide properly. It names every test, and most candidates skim it.
This is the cheapest advantage available and it is repeatedly wasted. The candidate who catalogued the whole battery did it purely by reading the guide carefully and thinking about what each description implied. Note that opinions on the guide differ: a 2013 candidate called it “absolutely not helpful”, while later ones call it the best thing available. The guide has been revised since, which probably explains the disagreement.
On practice apps. Several exist, some aimed at the UK test and some
at the Canadian one, and candidates in these threads recommend and build them constantly. They are not
the real test and none of them is endorsed by the CAF. The SkyWatch games are simulations built from
public descriptions in exactly the same way, and the same caveat applies to them.
Comparison
Using UK practice material
Most of the practice material online, SkyWatch included, is written for the RAF’s CBAT. Because the two batteries are so close, that material is worth using. Here is what carries across to CFAST and what does not.
| CFAST (what you will sit) | RAF CBAT (what UK material describes) | |
|---|---|---|
| Name | CFAST, at CFASC Trenton | CBAT |
| Length | Two days, about eight hours | One day |
| Residential | Yes, flown in and accommodated | No |
| Trades assessed | The three aircrew trades only, and the result streams you into the highest band you cleared | Every branch you applied for, aircrew and ground, scored in the same sitting |
| Attempts | Three, twelve months apart | Three |
| Result validity | Reported as two years | Not time limited in the same way |
| Feedback | A debrief naming your weak areas | Much less |
| Multitasking test | CLAN | FLAG since 2021 |
| Foot controls | Yes, rudder pedals in the sensory motor test | Yes |
Most UK preparation carries across directly, because the test lists are nearly the same.
Trace 1 and 2, Vigilance, Rapid Tracking, Sensory Motor Apparatus, Spatial Integration, System Logic, Table Reading, Cognitive Updating, Situational Awareness, Numerical Operations and Airborne Numerical all appear under the same names on both sides. The differences that matter are the shape of the event rather than the content of the tests: two days instead of one, aircrew trades only, and a debrief that actually tells you something.
Do not assume UK pass marks, cut-offs or scoring bands mean anything for CFAST.
The test content overlaps heavily. The scoring does not transfer at all, and no equivalent of the UK’s published pass mark circulates in Canadian accounts. Canadian candidates talk about being above or below the line for each of three trades, and about ranking on a competition list afterwards, rather than about a single number. If you see a UK score quoted as though it applies to CFAST, it does not.