Demise of the Knowledge Test Supplement
by Russ Still
Published
Updated
Take a look at these two FAA approach charts below. On the left we have the version of the RNAV approach for Runway 3 at the Central Maine Airport. Its identifier is OWK. This comes from the FAA’s Knowledge Testing Supplement for Instrument Rating published in 2017.
To the right is the current IAP (as of April 16, 2026) for the same runway, same airport. These are updated by the FAA every 28 days. A lot of changes have happened since 2017, but up until now, May 2026, every instrument student in the last nine years has used the old Figure 250 from the Testing Supplement to answer knowledge test questions.
Before the test, you knew what the chart would look like since it was published in the Testing Supplement. No surprises. But as I've been reporting for the last several years, this book's days are numbered.
The FAA has now confirmed its official retirement date: October 27, 2026. If you take an instrument Knowledge Test on that date or later, you'll no longer have a Knowledge Testing Supplement on the table beside you. Figures and Legends relevant to a test question will appear onscreen, right there with the question itself. In fact, they're already there now.
Why Is This Happening?
The Testing Supplements are being retired because of a decision made by the FAA and PSI back in 2020. I reported on it at the time.
So, why the changes? It's simple, and they already told us in 2020. The FAA is determined to stop students from passing tests by memorizing test questions.
To reduce students' reliance on memorizing test questions and answers, PSI redesigned the entire testing process. To help thwart memorization, they decided to do away with the canned Figures from the Supplements. Their goal was to greet students with Figures that they might not have ever seen before. This required them to embed the Figures onscreen, directly in the questions.
Once that was done, they could remove use of the Test Supplement books entirely. And this opened up the option to change the Figures at test time. One person might see a completely different figure for a question than someone else would see. This capability would completely neutralize attempts to memorize real test questions from commercially available practice quizzes. Taking these over and over again won't help you anymore.
That means it's time to actually learn the material being taught.
What Else is Going On?
While the current retirements of the Test Supplements affect the Instrument (IRA) and Remote Pilot (UAG) exams, the same process is lining up for all of the other tests. In fact, part of the progress is going on right now.
In the "old days", exam questions frequently started with a reference to a Figure from the Testing Supplement. I say "old days" because earlier this year, PSI began removing all of these "Refer to Figure..." declarations in the questions. So you had the book lying there, but you would refer to the figure onscreen. To see it in the Supplement, you'd have to thumb through the book until you found the one that matched.
With the transference of Figures onto the computer monitor, the need for the physical Supplement book would evaporate. And once all Figures were onscreen, PSI could shuffle them around with ease. This means that passing FAA exams via memorization is going to be a whole lot harder, and eventually, impossible. The test questions you see will be unlike any others. This is one form of dynamic question creation that PSI refers to as AIG, for Automatic Item Generation. They will likely also use AI to phrase the questions at test time.
Consider this old favorite from the Private Pilot (PAR) exam. Figure 12.
When prepping for the test, you knew in advance which five METARs might show up. It was pretty easy to just memorize them all to become bullet proof. But it's a new world now. PSI could throw brand new METARs into each test. No amount of memorization can help you in this situation. You have to know how to read them.
To Summarize
The whole reason that the FAA and PSI have undertaken these changes to the testing model is this - they don't want students to pass exams by memorizing test questions. It has taken over five years, but their promise to revamp the Knowledge Testing process is here.
- Figures Now Appear Onscreen
- Figures Will Soon be Randomly Generated
- Knowledge Testing Supplements are Being Retired
- Memorization is Becoming an Ineffective Way to Pass an Exam
Because the FAA has changed, reworded, and added questions quarterly, it's been highly likely that you would see "new" questions on exams. This was especially likely if, rather than learn the material, you opted to memorize questions from someone's test bank. But these new upgrades to the testing model make it even more likely that there will be a predominant number of questions that you've never seen before. In fact, they may only exist for one moment in time. And that's the precise moment that you take the Knowledge Test.
