How to write a Part-66 essay: key points, report style and timing

The first word of the question says what kind of answer earns the key points, so read it before you plan anything. Describe asks for the thing or the job as it is, in the order it happens, with the steps, the checks and the precautions. Explain asks why, so each step needs its reason, the cause behind it or what goes wrong without it, and an explain answer that only describes makes half its points at best.

Outline and state ask for less: the main stages, or the facts themselves named exactly and with their figures, without the detail a describe question wants. Discuss and compare ask for more, the points on each side or the differences between two methods, set side by side and weighed. List is the trap of the set, because under EASA’s guidance the answer is still marked as a report, so write the items as sentences, a short paragraph each, rather than as a column of words.

Some questions put you in the job instead, asking you to detail your actions or how you would deal with a situation. Answer those as the engineer doing the work, in the order you would do it, from the first check to the entry in the records, and where a question carries two command words, describe and explain, answer both halves in the order it asks them.

EASA’s guidance to examiners (GM 66.B.200, point 6) is where the shape of a good answer is written down. It says the essay checks that you “can prepare a concise technical report for the maintenance record”, that a question asks for “a technical report style, in a logical sequence (beginning, middle and end)”, and that “the report should not be indexed, itemised or listed”. It gives the key points 60 of the 100 marks and the report 40, so a bare list that makes every point still gives away marks it did not need to lose. That is guidance to examiners rather than the regulation, and it is EASA’s: the CAA’s own guidance is not public.

So write it the way a good entry in the maintenance record reads. Open with a sentence that says what the job is and why it is being done, give each key point a short paragraph of its own in the order the work happens, and finish where the job finishes, with the final checks, the paperwork and the aircraft returned to service. Short paragraphs keep every point in plain view of whoever marks it, and connected prose shows that you know how the points follow from each other.

Two habits follow from the shape of the question, and the module essay pages go into both. A Module 7 answer is usually a procedure, so it runs in sequence with the precautions before, during and after the job, and an answer on the UK CAA’s Module 10 paper is usually a rule in action, so each paragraph says who may act, under whose approval, within what period and on what evidence.

A figure earns its key point only with its unit. A pressure, a torque or a clearance written as a bare number is a point half made, because nobody could act on it, so give the value, the unit and, where it matters, the condition it holds under, such as the temperature, the direction or the stage of the job.

A figure that is wrong costs the key point it belongs to, under EASA’s guidance and in Prep66’s marking alike, and nothing more is taken off in either. In the room the regulation also asks for no significant error and defines none, so a guessed value is a risk not worth taking: check each figure against its unit as you write it, and where you are unsure of one, set out the step and its check without inventing a number.

Names work the same way. A trade name and a generic name are both correct names, Skydrol or phosphate ester hydraulic fluid, lockwire or locking wire, and Prep66’s marking sheets accept both. What loses the point is the wrong component, the wrong material or the wrong direction, written down with confidence.

Give it a budget and keep to it: 2 minutes to jot the key points down in the order the work happens, 15 to write them up as the report, and the last 3 to read it back for every figure and its unit. Keep the time by the clock in the room, because if you sit with the CAA a watch is on its list of prohibited items.

If you sit with the CAA, the essay paper is a session of its own, written on the essay answer paper the CAA supplies with a pen you bring yourself. Writing speed and legibility are part of the job there: an answer you can type in 20 minutes may not be one you can write out by hand in the same time, so practise some essays on paper too.

A Part-147 organisation sets its own arrangements and may run the essay paper on screen or on paper, so ask yours how it is sat and spend your last few weeks of practice in that form.

Write the key points down before you read your answer: the facts a full answer has to contain, one short line each, taken from the study book or the revision guide. Then go through your essay one point at a time and underline the sentence that makes each, because a point you cannot underline was not made however close the paragraph came, and a point made with the wrong figure was not made either.

Then read it a second time as a report. Does it start at the beginning and end where the job ends, is it prose rather than a list, are the technical terms the right ones, and could someone read it once at speed and follow it? Those four questions are the presentation half of the mark, and they are the quickest half to improve.

Prep66’s result screen is that same check done for you with the sheet open: the points you missed listed first, the sentence that earned each of the others printed under it, and the report read against the same four questions, so the marks you lost are never a mystery and the next essay starts from them.