The NATS Listening Comprehension Test: What We Know and How to Prepare

If you pass the online aptitude tests, the next thing NATS asks of you is not more spatial puzzles. According to its careers page, Stage 2 is an online situational judgement test and an online listening comprehension test, completed within 14 days. The situational judgement half is covered in our SJT guide. The listening half gets far less attention, and far less has been written about it.

This guide sets out what NATS has published, what it hasn't, and how to train general listening skills, without pretending to know the test's contents.

What NATS publishes, and what it doesn't

NATS confirms three things about Stage 2: there is a listening comprehension test, it is taken online alongside the SJT, and you have 14 days to complete both.

What NATS does not publish applies here as much as anywhere: NATS doesn't publish the names of the individual tests, how many questions they have, how long each one takes or the pass mark. If you read a forum post or a prep site quoting an exact number of recordings or minutes, it is not coming from NATS. Your invitation email and the on-screen instructions are the only authority on the format, so read them slowly before you start.

Why listening matters in air traffic control

Almost every instruction a controller gives is spoken, and almost every reply comes back by voice. The safety net is the readback: the pilot repeats the instruction, and the controller has to actually hear it, not hear what they expected. A wrong flight level slipping past in a readback is exactly the kind of error controllers are trained to catch.

English also sits at the centre of the licence itself. The UK CAA states that an applicant for a student ATCO licence must have passed a Level 6 (expert) English Language Proficiency assessment, either as part of their initial training course or as a full language assessment at a UK certified ATCO initial training organisation. That happens during training, not at Stage 2, but it shows how much weight the profession puts on understanding spoken English precisely.

Remote proctoring changes how you should listen

This is the most practical point in this guide, and it comes straight from NATS. NATS says its Stage 1 and Stage 2 online assessments are virtually proctored to confirm who is taking them: with your consent, your device's camera takes regular photos during the assessment to check it is the same face throughout, and its microphone is used to detect the presence and duration of audio that could indicate a conversation. It advises candidates to stay in clear, direct view of the camera, not cover their face, and limit detectable noise such as speaking out loud.

Two habits that help many people listen will work against you here:

NATS's careers page doesn't say whether notes are allowed, or whether headphones are required or permitted. Check your instructions, and practise both with and without notes so neither rule throws you.

The listening skills worth training

Without knowing the test, you can still train general listening abilities: catching detail first time and holding on to it. These are the ones our own listening practice is built around:

Here is a short original example in the style of a radio exchange. It is our own practice material, not an example of NATS test content. Read it once, cover it, then answer.

What heading should Kestrel 427 end up on, and what altitude is it descending to? The answers are 260 and 4,000 feet. The trap is the readback: the pilot said 270, and if you weren't listening closely to the controller's "negative", that wrong value is the one that sticks. It is the same skill the readback check relies on: hear what was actually said, and go with the last valid instruction.

The conventions in that example come from CAP 413, the CAA's Radiotelephony Manual, which is free to download from the CAA website. Digits are spoken one at a time, "niner" is used for nine, altitudes use "thousand" and flight levels are read digit by digit. NATS doesn't say its listening test uses radio phraseology, so don't try to memorise the manual. Knowing the basic conventions simply makes aviation-style audio, like the example above, less unfamiliar.

A three-week listening plan

Fifteen to twenty minutes a day is enough. What makes it work is hearing each recording once, without rewinding, so you get used to catching detail the first time.

Week 1: numbers and detail

Week 2: corrections and speakers

Week 3: longer passages and inference

Throughout, track your hit rate. The point is not the score itself but noticing which type of detail you drop most often. For most people it is the corrected value or the second number in a pair.

On the day

A note on FEAST

If you're also applying to an organisation that uses EUROCONTROL's FEAST, its listening assessment is a separate thing. FEAST I: cognitive ability tests (such as decision-making, planning, memory, logical reasoning, visual perception, attention, multitasking and spatial orientation) plus an English listening and comprehension test (ELICIT), taking roughly 2.5 to 4 hours depending on which tests the organisation uses. EUROCONTROL lists who uses FEAST, and NATS is not on that list. EUROCONTROL offers free official FEAST practice for candidates at feast-training.eurocontrol.int — we recommend using it alongside any other preparation. Our FEAST guide covers the rest.

How ATC Practice can help

Our listening comprehension test is original practice for the skill, not a copy of the NATS test: recorded radio exchanges, broadcasts, briefings and workplace conversations, with questions on numbers, corrections, instructions and inference, and a transcript afterwards so you can see exactly what you missed. You can try the free listening demo, and the full test is part of the Complete plan.

If you're earlier in the process, start with the Stage 1 aptitude guide. If working memory is your weak point, the skill that lets you hold a heading while the next instruction arrives, our working memory guide is the natural companion to this one.

*Sources: NATS trainee air traffic controller careers page; UK CAA, ATCO English language proficiency endorsements; CAA CAP 413 Radiotelephony Manual; EUROCONTROL FEAST. Checked October 2026. NATS can change its process between campaigns, so always follow the instructions in your own invitation.*