The full EASA ATPL(A) Performance syllabus for aeroplanes, taught properly: the certification codes and performance classes, the general theory of level flight, range, endurance, climb and descent, performance class B from take-off factors to graph work, the class A world of V1, balanced fields, contaminated runways, derated thrust and improved climb, drift-down and obstacle clearance, and the charts and tables that turn theory into a regulated take-off mass — every learning objective explained and every calculation worked in full.
Before any chart is read, two frameworks decide what the numbers mean: the certification specification the aeroplane was built under, and the performance class its operation falls into. This module sets up both, then follows a performance figure from raw flight-test measurement through gross to net, so that every factored distance and decremented gradient in the rest of the subject has a pedigree you understand.
Performance is the most calculation-heavy subject in the ATPL, but the calculations only make sense once you know whose rules produced the numbers. This module starts there: the legal machinery of CS-23, CS-25 and the operational performance classes, and the measured-gross-net ladder that turns test-pilot data into the cautious figures on your charts.
Level flight is a balance, and everything in cruise performance follows from where that balance sits on the curves: the fastest and slowest the aeroplane can fly, the speed that keeps it airborne longest, and the speed that carries it furthest per kilogram of fuel. This module works through the equilibrium, the holding speeds of jets and propellers, and the whole machinery of specific range.
The curves drawn in module 1 now start paying rent. One lesson balances thrust against drag to find the speeds a level aeroplane can and should fly, and what it costs to simply stay airborne; the next turns to the cruise question proper: how to buy the most distance with the fuel on board.
Going up is bought with excess thrust and excess power, and coming down is the controlled spending of height. This module resolves the forces of the steady climb, builds Vx and Vy from the curve gaps, prices in weight, altitude, configuration and a failed engine, and then turns the same machinery downhill for the glide and the powered descent.
The climb is where the level-flight curves earn their keep: every gap between available and required becomes angle or rate. One lesson climbs, one descends, and between them they set up half the class A material to come, from take-off climb gradients to the drift-down.
The light propeller aeroplanes of performance class B get the subject's first full operational treatment: the certification speeds and their factor floors, what an engine failure does to a light twin, every variable that stretches a take-off or landing distance, the wind arithmetic of components and accountability, and the engine-failure flight path a multi-engine class B departure must protect. The second lesson adds the en-route rules and the single's glide sums, then turns it all into chart work.
Class B is where the general theory grows teeth: real speeds with regulatory floors, real distances with factors, and a take-off flight path with obstacles in it. Everything learned here reappears scaled up in the class A modules, so the habits formed on the light twins are the habits the jets will use.
The class A take-off is the most regulated minute in aviation, and the syllabus gives it more learning objectives than any other topic in Performance. This module works through it in five passes: the V-speed chain and the CS-25 distances, the balanced field and the field-length limit, the climb-out segments and obstacle clearance, wet and contaminated runways, and the optimisations of derated thrust, flap choice and improved climb.
Everything the course has built converges on the jet transport's take-off: the certified speeds with their interlocking floors and ceilings, three distances measured against three declared lengths, and an engine failure assumed at the least convenient moment of every single departure. Five lessons take it apart in order.
Between the take-off and the landing lies the jet's working day: the IAS-Mach climb schedule with its crossover, the cruise altitudes that optimum range and buffet margins negotiate between them, the economics of the cost index, and the two descents that bookend it all, the everyday one and the engine-out drift-down with terrain waiting below.
Module 2 taught the theory of cruise; this module flies it at 37,000 ft. One lesson climbs the jet to its optimum altitude and keeps it there against buffet and economics; the next brings it down, by choice in the descent schedule or by necessity in the drift-down.
The course's last mile: the approach and landing rules that decide whether the destination runway is long enough before the flight ever leaves, the brake heat that limits how quickly the aeroplane can turn around, and the craft of actually reading the manufacturer's tables and charts, where every number this course has taught finally gets looked up.
One lesson closes the flight: the go-around guarantees, the 60 per cent rule and its wet and contaminated extensions, and everything that stretches a landing. The other closes the course: the RTOM tables, drift-down charts and landing data through which all of it is applied in practice.