Average IQ of Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers: What Data Exist

People search for the "average IQ of a pilot" and the "IQ of air traffic controllers", and the confident answers online sit on thin ground. We looked for representative IQ surveys of either job and did not find one. What does exist is smaller and more interesting: one measured sample of 50 aircrew, a 1974 FAA statement about controllers, published selection cut-offs for military pilots and controllers, and meta-analyses of how well aptitude tests predict pilot training success. This guide sets out each, with the limits stated.

What IQ do pilots have?

The one measured set we could read is from India. Maiya, Joseph and Chandana of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Indian Air Force, Bangalore, gave the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence to 50 healthy aircrew (Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, July 2011, vol. 37, no. 2, pages 298 to 304). The mean verbal IQ was 110.26 (SD 7.84), the mean performance IQ 115.38 (SD 7.10) and the mean full-scale IQ 114.26 (SD 6.37). The abstract calls it an initial effort to establish baseline data for intellectual abilities in this population.

Two readings of those numbers are fair, and both are our arithmetic. First, a full-scale mean of 114.26 sits near the 83rd percentile of the test's norm group, assuming the usual mean of 100 and SD of 15; you can check any value with our IQ percentile calculator. Second, an SD of 6.37 is less than half the 15 of the general population, which is what you expect when a profession screens people on ability, because selection cuts off the bottom of the distribution and compresses the rest. The limits are plain: 50 people, one air force, one country, one abbreviated test, and no comparison with applicants who were turned away.

A larger US source gives direction but no number. AVweb reported in 2005 that Daniel Orme of the University of Missouri-Columbia had tested more than 5,600 US Air Force personnel over five years and found that "military aviators score significantly higher on standardized intelligence tests than the average person". The article prints no IQ value and frames the database as a way to set norms for evaluating pilots after a head injury. We could not find the underlying dataset. It supports "above average" and nothing more precise.

What IQ do air traffic controllers have?

The best primary statement is old. A December 1974 FAA Civil Aeromedical Institute report by Roger C. Smith, "A Realistic View of the People in Air Traffic Control", says that controllers "usually obtain scores on this measure that fall in the upper 20 percent of the general population". The measure is the California Test of Mental Maturity, which the report calls a general measure of intelligence. It adds that controllers tend to do especially well on spatial orientation, spatial visualization, memory, numerical ability and abstract reasoning.

Read it carefully. It is a percentile band from 52 years ago, on a test from that era, describing a workforce that has since turned over. The 80th percentile is about IQ 113 on a mean-100, SD-15 scale, so "upper 20 percent" is consistent with a typical controller somewhere above that, but the report does not say where, and it prints no mean. We would not turn it into a single figure. For the wider picture of occupations and scores, read average IQ by occupation: what the data shows.

What do the selection tests ask for?

Both jobs select through batteries and cut-offs, and the official documents publish minimums, not averages. The US Air Force's Officer Training School announcement (effective 6 December 2024) lists AFOQT minimum standards: commissioning requires 15 Verbal and 10 Quantitative; the pilot, helicopter and remotely piloted aircraft pilot row adds a Pilot score of 25. Pilot applicants must also take the Test of Basic Aviation Skills, which produces a Pilot Candidate Selection Method (PCSM) score, and the announcement requires a minimum PCSM of 10. The Army Recruiting Command page for flight warrant officers (updated 16 December 2024) requires a score of 40 or higher on the Selection Instrument for Flight Training (SIFT), with one retest after 45 days. The US Navy's ASTB-E FAQ says only that "the minimum score requirements differ by program and service".

Those numbers are floors on tests with their own scales, and none of them is an IQ. A bare "25" does not tell you how a selected pilot scored on average, and none of these pages says. For how another military test relates to IQ, see the ASVAB and AFQT score-to-IQ conversion.

For controllers, the FAA's careers page describes the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA) as a 3.5-hour computer-based test of cognitive skills, taken in person at a Pearson VUE centre, with "Well-Qualified" required. Applicants must be under 31, and the FAA says less than 10% of all applicants meet the requirements and are accepted into the training programme. The bands, item types and scores are not published on the pages we read, so there is nothing to convert. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the occupation's 2025 median pay at $148,080 a year, with 24,000 jobs, typical entry education of an associate's degree, and says the FAA requires controllers to retire at age 56.

How well do aptitude tests predict pilot success?

This is the part with real numbers. Hunter and Burke (International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 1994) meta-analysed 68 published studies from 1940 to 1990, with 468 correlations on a cumulated 437,258 cases, and found that validities declined across the five decades. Martinussen (1996) located 66 independent samples from 50 studies. The best predictors of pilot performance were combined indexes of several cognitive or psychomotor tests (.37) and previous training experience (.30). Cognitive tests averaged .24, psychomotor and information-processing tests .24, aviation information .24, and biographical inventories .23. Intelligence tests alone were among the lowest, at .16, with academic tests at .15 and personality tests at .14.

So a pilot's "IQ" is a poor description of how the job is filled. Ree and Carretta (1996) review the military record from the First World War onward and conclude that general cognitive ability (g) was a better predictor of pilot criteria than specific abilities, although some specific abilities or job knowledge added to g's predictive power. Together the findings say two things that fit: ability matters, and a single intelligence test is a weaker screen than a battery that includes aviation skills and experience. Our guide to what cognitive ability tests predict at work covers the same logic for other jobs.

For controllers, the strongest public number comes from the FAA's own validation of its earlier battery. Ramos, Heil and Manning (DOT/FAA/AM-01/6, March 2001) tested 1,232 working controllers in the concurrent validation study of the AT-SAT battery and report a best estimate of battery validity of .76, "extremely high" in the report's words. That figure is the correlation with a composite job-performance criterion after corrections for range restriction, shrinkage and criterion unreliability, so it is not comparable with the raw .16 to .37 values above. The FAA's current careers pages name only the ATSA, and we found no public validation of it.

Why is there no pilot IQ average?

• Employers select on composites, licences and experience, not on a published IQ, and they rarely release scores
• Selection compresses the range, so a sample of working pilots shows a high mean and a narrow spread, as the Indian Air Force study does
• Cut-offs differ by service and programme, and the test scales are not IQ scales
• Older figures, such as the 1974 FAA band, describe a different workforce and a different test
• A mean is not a requirement: no page says a person needs a particular IQ to qualify

To read any score you do have against the population, take the IQ Metrics test and place it on the IQ bell curve. For what the scores in the high 110s mean, see what an IQ of 110 means and what an IQ of 120 means, and for hiring tests more broadly, IQ tests for job interviews and whether IQ tests are legal for hiring.

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