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ATPL subject 040

ATPL Human Performance and Limitations: what it covers and how to study it

Human Performance and Limitations (subject 040) is about the pilot: how the body and mind work, where they fail, and how crews manage that through crew resource management and threat and error management.

By Matthew Dowell, airline training captain and Chief Flight Instructor. A revision guide, not approved by any regulator. Your training organisation sets the syllabus and exam rules, and regulations always take precedence.

What the Human Performance and Limitations paper covers

• Basic physiology and the effects of altitude
• Vision, hearing and balance, and how they can mislead
• Psychology: perception, memory, attention and decision-making
• Stress, fatigue and workload
• CRM, and threat and error management

Where students find it hard

There is a lot of terminology, and questions often depend on the exact meaning of a term. Students who rely on general knowledge of psychology or physiology find that the paper wants the specific aviation framing. It is also a subject that feels abstract until you connect it to real flying.

How to study Human Performance and Limitations

• Learn the key terms precisely, and be able to give a flying example for each.
• Connect each topic to a situation in the cockpit so it sticks.
• Use the question bank to find terms you only half remember.

The Mastering ATPL book for this subject

This subject links directly to how airlines assess pilots. See our guide to competency-based training.

Mastering ATPL · Subject 040

Human Performance and Limitations

Physiology, psychology, CRM and threat and error management.

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How this book is organised

The book follows the topics listed above, in turn, starting with basic physiology and the effects of altitude; vision, hearing and balance, and how they can mislead; psychology, so you can see which part of the paper you are covering at any point. It is a complete revision guide and question bank built on the full published learning objectives for the subject, and it ends with a mock examination weighted as the real one. Work through a section, test yourself on it, and keep the mock examination for the end, under timed conditions.

Related subjects

• ATPL Operational Procedures
• ATPL Communications
• ATPL Flight Planning
• ATPL Meteorology

See also: all 13 ATPL subjects and 14 study guides · how the EASA ATPL exams work · what order to study and sit the papers · Human Performance and Limitations in the airline technical interview.