EPST – European Pilot Selection & Training

EPST – European Pilot Selection & Training is a Dutch pilot selection and training organisation based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and has operated since 1997. It is best known as the home of the COMPASS pilot aptitude test, which it developed and validated in the late 1990s and which has since been licensed to airlines and training organisations worldwide. Rather than running a conventional single-campus flight school, EPST screens every applicant through an airline-style assessment and then delivers training to EASA standards through a network of partner ATOs, a model that has made it one of the most established routes to the flight deck for Dutch and wider European cadets.

Training at EPST

EPST offers an integrated programme of around eighteen months in which the ATPL theory and flying phases are delivered at one of its partner academies — OSM Aviation Academy at Arendal in Norway, Global Aviation at Megara in Greece or Aero Locarno in Switzerland — before cadets return to Utrecht for an APS MCC course flown on a Boeing 737 simulator. Its selection-first approach is designed around airline employability, and graduates have an established record of placement with carriers such as Transavia and easyJet, alongside EPST's business supplying pilot selection services to airlines themselves.

Entry is deliberately demanding: every applicant must first pass EPST's own COMPASS screening, with the Advanced COMPASS assessment following at a later stage, so candidates are effectively facing an airline-standard selection process before training even begins. Because acceptance hinges on these computer-based aptitude and psychometric tests, arriving well practised in the skills they measure — mental arithmetic, multitasking, hand-eye coordination and spatial reasoning — can make a decisive difference to earning a place.