ATPL & PPL theory notes
Twelve subjects rewritten as structured revision notes — key concepts, clear diagrams, every formula, and the exam tips that go with them. One download. Yours for good.
Two licences, two packs
PPL theory and ATPL theory are different exams with different demands. Each pack is written for one of them — so nothing you read is wasted.
For your very first theory exams — the nine PPL(A) subjects, condensed into notes you can finish in an evening and revise the morning of the test.
For the long haul — twelve of the thirteen ATPL(A) subjects, rebuilt as revision notes you can go through again and again before each sitting.
Sitting only two or three subjects this session? Buy them one by one
What Pilote Autrement is
ATPL theory gives you two tools and neither is built for revision.
The course material explains everything, at length, in an order designed for teaching — brilliant the first time through, unusable the week before a sitting. The question bank does the opposite: it trains you to recognise an answer you have seen before, which holds up right until the wording changes.
Pilote Autrement is the layer in between. One set of notes per subject, structured the way the syllabus is structured, written so that a topic you understood in October can be rebuilt in your head in four minutes in March. That is the whole ambition — and the reason the notes are short.
Nothing is shortened until it is explained. Each topic starts from the mechanism — why the needle moves, why the limit exists — and only then collapses into the line you will actually recall under exam pressure.
Every subject uses the same page architecture and the same official EASA numbering. Once you have revised one subject you already know how to read the next eleven.
These are revision notes, not a course. They are designed for the fourth pass, not the first — which is why they are dense, bulleted, and free of narrative filler.
Where the notes come from
You are about to trust a document with your exam preparation. You should know exactly how it was put together, what it is based on, and what it does not do.
Each subject follows the official EASA subject numbering and topic order — 010 Air Law through 090 Communications. The notes do not invent their own sequence, so they map onto whatever course you are already enrolled in.
An ATPL student working through the same syllabus. Each subject is written while studying it, which is why the notes emphasise the parts that are genuinely hard rather than the parts that are easy to write about.
Standard ATPL ground-school course material and the published EASA regulations and syllabus documents for each subject. Where sources disagree — and on a few Air Law and Operational Procedures points they do — the regulation text wins.
A topic is only reduced to a bullet once it has been understood in full. The test applied to every line is simple: could a student rebuild the reasoning from this line alone? If not, the line goes back.
Mistakes get reported by students and fixed. Every correction and addition reaches everyone who owns the pack, free, for as long as the pack exists. There is no version you can be stuck on.
Twelve of the thirteen ATPL(A) subjects are written. Communications (090) is still being written and is not included yet — when it ships, existing owners get it at no cost.
What these notes are not. They are not a question bank, and they are not an approved training course. Under EASA rules your ATO course is what enters you for the theoretical exams — these notes are what you revise from once you are enrolled. Anyone telling you a PDF replaces ground school is selling you something.
Every subject
Every ATPL subject exists on its own, at its own price, with its own page count. Take the two you are sitting in April, or take the pack and stop thinking about it.
ICAO annexes, airspace and rules of the air, licensing, and the operator regulation you are expected to quote rather than reason about.
Airframe, systems, powerplant and electrics — the largest subject in the syllabus, and the one that rewards structure most.
Pitot-static and gyroscopic instruments, EFIS colour logic, autoflight modes and the warning systems behind them.
Loading limits, centre of gravity, moments and index units — short, arithmetic, and entirely about not dropping a decimal.
Take-off, climb, cruise and landing performance across aeroplane classes, and the graph-reading the exam is really testing.
Fuel policy, route and chart work, ATS flight plans, and in-flight monitoring against the plan you filed.
Physiology, perception and illusions, stress and fatigue, and the crew decision-making models named in the exam.
Atmosphere and pressure systems, cloud, icing and thunderstorms, plus reading METAR and TAF without hesitation.
The Earth, charts and projections, dead reckoning and time — the arithmetic that underpins every navigation question.
VOR, NDB, DME, ILS, radar and RNAV/GNSS: how each aid works, what it cannot do, and how each one fails.
Threat and error management, dangerous goods, low-visibility operations and the emergency procedures that follow.
Lift and drag, stability and control, high-speed flight and the edges of the flight envelope — heavily diagrammed.
VFR and IFR radiotelephony, standard phraseology and communication-failure procedures. The thirteenth subject is being written now.
Your journey
Becoming an airline pilot is five long stages, and theory is only two of them. Knowing the shape of the path is the difference between planning it and surviving it.
Pass the EASA Class 1 before you pay a school a deposit. Vision, colour vision, ECG and audiogram are the ones that end careers before they start.
Your first licence and your first theory exams — nine subjects, each passed at 75%. This is where you find out how you revise.
PPL Pack · €29,90Thirteen subjects from the European Central Question Bank, all passed at 75%. You get 18 months from your first sitting and six sittings to do it.
ATPL Pack · €69,90Commercial licence, instrument rating with PBN, multi-engine piston, plus UPRT and MCC before any airline will look at you.
Airline assessment, type rating on the aircraft you will actually fly, then line training under supervision until you are released.
The community
Pilote Autrement began as one student publishing what he was revising, in public, while sitting the same exams as everyone reading. That has not really changed.
A diagram gets posted. Forty people say the wing-loading explanation is still confusing. It gets rewritten, and the corrected version goes into the notes — and to everyone who already bought them. The audience is not decoration on this site; it is the review process that makes the pages better.
If you are studying alone, in a second language, or in a time zone where nobody else is awake, this is the part that matters most.
From students
Messages sent in by students using the notes, copied as they were written.
Clear, well-structured, and straight to the essentials. Saves me a lot of time compared to studying only from the main books — perfect for quick revision sessions.
Studying for my ATPL conversion and these notes are gold. Wish I had them during my first round.
Way better than any other summary I tried. Easy to follow even with English as a second language.
Really helpful for my CPL/ATPL prep. Clean diagrams and well organised chapters.
Doing my training in Dubai and these notes are perfect for last-minute review. Highly recommend.
Clean, organised, no fluff. Exactly what I needed before the exams.
Every review here was sent in by a real buyer, copied as written. Star ratings appear only once a real rating is recorded against a review.
Buying, access and support
Digital products live or die on the small print. Here is all of it, before you pay rather than after.
Everything is digital. Your files are available as soon as the payment goes through — nothing is shipped and nothing is waited for.
Checkout runs on Shopify. Card details never touch this site and are never seen by Pilote Autrement. Your email is used for your order and your updates — nothing else.
Corrections, rewrites and new material go to everyone who owns the pack, at no extra cost. There is no subscription and no renewal.
Standard PDFs. Read them on an iPad, a laptop or a phone, annotate them, print them. They work offline and they do not expire.
No, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. Under EASA rules an approved training organisation is what enters you for the theoretical examinations — your ATO course is a regulatory step, not a study preference.
These notes are what you revise from once you are enrolled. They sit alongside your course, they do not replace it.
No. This is not a question bank, and it deliberately is not one. The official questions come from the European Central Question Bank, which is not public, and drilling remembered questions is exactly the habit that fails when the wording changes.
What the notes do include is the reasoning each question is built on, plus Exam Tips boxes that name the distinctions and traps a topic is usually tested through. Use them with whatever question bank your school gives you.
Partly, and it depends on the subject. Aerodynamics, meteorology, navigation, instrumentation and human performance are physics and physiology — they do not change with the authority, and students training under other regulators use these notes for exactly those subjects.
Air Law and Operational Procedures are the opposite: they are written against European regulation and will not match another authority's rules. Buy accordingly.
Because it is not written yet. Twelve of the thirteen ATPL(A) subjects are finished; 090 Communications is still being put together, and shipping a thin version of it to round the number up to thirteen would be dishonest.
When it is ready it goes into the pack, and everyone who already bought the pack receives it free.
If you have not downloaded the files yet, yes — email your order number and you will be refunded in full.
Once the files have been downloaded the order is final. That is the standard position for digital content under French consumer law: by buying, you agree to immediate delivery and waive the withdrawal period at the moment access begins.
If something is technically broken — a link that fails, a file that will not open — that is not a refund question. Write in and access gets restored or the files resent, free. Read the full refund policy.
If you are sitting one or two subjects this session and want to see the style first, buy those subjects. Nothing is lost — the pack simply costs more than the sum of what you already own.
If you are doing the full ATPL, the pack is €69,90 against €168,80 subject by subject, so it pays for itself at roughly the fifth subject.
Start now
Twelve subjects, 414 pages, every update from here on — one payment, downloaded before you close this tab.