Preparing for the Canadian AME Exams

Once you meet the experience and training requirements for a given AME rating (M1, M2, E, or S), the remaining gate is Transport Canada's written examinations for that rating — genuinely two separate exams, not one: a technical examination (systems/technical knowledge specific to your rating) and a regulatory examination (the CARs regulatory framework). See our AME Regulatory Exam and AME Technical Exams guides for exactly how each is structured.

Both require a 70% passing grade. This is a meaningful bar — it means partial familiarity with the material isn't enough; the exams are designed to confirm genuine working knowledge across the full breadth of the syllabus, not just the topics a candidate happens to feel confident about.

Transport Canada's retake conditions add real cost to being under-prepared: after a first failed attempt, you cannot be re-examined sooner than 30 days later, and after a subsequent failure, the wait extends to six months. A six-month gap can mean a real delay to starting work in a new rating, so it's worth treating the first attempt as the one to actually pass, rather than a low-stakes trial run.

Work topic-by-topic rather than trying to absorb the entire syllabus at once — regulatory and technical material like this rewards spaced, repeated exposure far more than long single-session cramming. Mix three modes of study: reading/lessons to build initial understanding of a topic, flashcards or spaced repetition for the parts of the material that are essentially memorization (regulatory references, specific figures, terminology), and timed practice questions to build both recall speed and comfort with how the real exam phrases things — see our AME Practice Questions guide for how to get the most out of that third mode specifically.

Take at least one full-length, timed mock exam under realistic conditions before the real thing — not just isolated practice questions. Knowing the material is different from being able to retrieve it accurately, quickly, and under time pressure across a full exam's worth of questions, and a mock exam is what surfaces the gap between the two.

Track your performance by topic area rather than just an overall score, so your remaining study time goes toward genuinely weak areas instead of re-reviewing material you've already got solid.

PassCARs is built around exactly this structure: topic-organized lessons, spaced-repetition flashcards for the memorization-heavy regulatory material, a full-length mock exam mode built to mirror the real exam's format, and progress tracking broken down by topic so you can see where to focus. A free preview is available before you need to pay for full access — see the M1 vs M2 and CARs Standard 566 guides if you're still working out exactly which rating and requirements apply to you before diving into exam prep itself.