Free ATSA practice app for the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (2026)
Free ATSA practice app for the 2026 Air Traffic Skills Assessment: Brain Preflight gives air traffic controller applicants 5 free practice sessions every day, a free alternative to paid ATSA prep such as ATSAPro. Brain Preflight brings short aptitude exercises to your iPhone for an ATSA preparation routine: mental maths, memory, spatial reasoning and divided attention. Get 5 free sessions every day, choosing any exercise without a purchase or subscription. Installed exercises work offline, and the app is available in 5 languages. This guide combines practice methods with official FAA assessment and booking resources.
Country overview: United States — military, police, ATSA and dispatch.
Brain Preflight · 2026-10-19
Comparing ATSA apps? Read our free ATSAPro alternative comparison.
Start with the FAA assessment instructions
The Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA) is an employment aptitude assessment for FAA air traffic controller applicants. It is not the same assessment as EUROCONTROL’s FEAST. Pearson VUE’s FAA page explains booking and test-day arrangements. Follow your invitation for the requirements that apply to you.
Build a practice plan around errors
Try a short mental arithmetic, memory or spatial exercise first. Review incorrect answers without a timer. Record whether the problem was understanding an instruction, doing the calculation or keeping information in mind. Then repeat a comparable session and compare accuracy as well as speed. This is a suggested practice method, not a prediction of your ATSA result.
Which sector is already at its blue-plane limit?
Count the planes in the shaded boxes. Each sector can hold four planes in the zone, including at most two blue ones. Tap the sector you think has reached its blue limit.
Upper sector
Look again. Two planes are in this zone, but only one is blue. There is room for one more blue plane.
Lower sector
Correct. Both planes in the shaded zone are blue. There is room for two more planes overall, but a third blue plane would exceed the blue limit.
These are the rules of Brain Preflight’s own exercise. In the app, select the FAA air traffic controller program and choose Airways to practice both sectors.
Choose this program in the installed app · Get Brain Preflight on the App Store
Practise divided attention separately
A combined exercise can expose mistakes that do not appear when you work on one task alone. Brain Preflight includes a psychomotor exercise where you track a target while answering other prompts, plus memory, reasoning and spatial exercises. Use these to practise their mechanics. A touchscreen exercise does not reproduce the equipment, scoring or content of the official ATSA.
Before test day
Use the official booking instructions to check your identification, location and arrival time. Pearson VUE recommends rest, a meal and allowing enough time to reach the test centre. Avoid treating an app score as a hiring threshold. Recruitment decisions and qualifying standards belong to the FAA.
Questions about your preparation
Is ATSA the same test as FEAST?
No. ATSA is the FAA assessment discussed in this guide; FEAST is a separate air traffic control assessment system. Start from the assessment named in your recruitment invitation, then use the relevant guide and official candidate instructions.
What should I review after an ATSA practice session?
Record whether an error came from forgetting information, misunderstanding a rule, rushing a calculation or losing track of concurrent tasks. Choose the next exercise to address that error. An app score does not predict an FAA result or hiring decision.
Sources
Explore Brain Preflight on iPhoneIndependent app, not affiliated with the organisations named here.