Is Air Law (010) Hard? And Can You Memorise It?

The regulatory framework of civil aviation: ICAO conventions, EASA regulations, Air Traffic Services, aerodromes, search and rescue, and accident investigation.

It is the vocabulary the rest of the syllabus assumes — which is why it works so well as a first subject.

For the full topic-by-topic syllabus breakdown, see the Air Law subject guide.

Any single number here would be false precision, so we won’t give one. As a rough planning figure, most self-study candidates allocate 40–80 hours per subject, and students report Air Law typically sitting toward the lower end of that range. A comparatively compact exam (40 questions in 60 minutes) with no calculation content.

Your own figure depends on background, maths comfort and whether you are studying full-time — treat the range as a budget to adjust, not a target to hit.

Air Law is the most legitimately memorisation-led subject in the syllabus: the exam asks what the rule is, and there is rarely a derivation to fall back on. Precise recall — exact figures, exact responsibilities — is the skill being tested.

That said, hanging the rules on their structure (which convention, which annex, which authority) makes them far easier to retain than as a flat list of facts. Memorise, but memorise in an organised way.

Air Law anchors the regulatory cluster: sit it alongside Operational Procedures (070) and Communications (090), which share its rules-and-procedures character and much of its material.

How the pairings fit into a full plan — and why order matters — is covered in the recommended order of study, with the sitting mechanics in sittings & limits.