Built for the chair you’ll sit in.
ModernATC exists because the path from TOL to CPC is long, expensive, and unforgiving, and the study tools shouldn’t be the part that makes it harder.
The math that started this.
Roughly a third of FAA Academy trainees don’t make it out of OKC certified. Some of that is structural, Academy attrition has been an open conversation for decades. Some of it is luck, sequencing, or instructor pairings. But a meaningful slice of attrition is preparation: phraseology that doesn’t come automatically, .65 paragraphs that sound familiar but won’t produce when tested, separation rules that fall apart under time pressure.
The existing tools don’t fit this generation, whther it’s paper flashcards, scattered PDFs, forums, or a decade-old textbook. Really, they have never been efficient enough for controllers. They don’t adapt to which cards you keep missing. They don’t track when you’re about to forget. They don’t cite the paragraph the question came from, so a wrong answer turns into a search instead of a fix.
ModernATC is the tool we wished existed when we were in the pipeline. And, the tool needed when we spent years training new controllers. It’s here now, and ready to help you get your CPC.
Lines we won’t cross.
Every card cites the regulation it came from, and are public works of the U.S. Government. We do not scrape commercial textbooks. We do not reproduce paywalled corpora. We do not include Academy test items.
Down to the paragraph, not just the chapter. If you get a card wrong, the answer key tells you exactly what regulation to go to and what chapter and paragrph to read.
Export your review history, FSRS state, and deck composition as CSV or JSON whenever you want. We don’t hold your work hostage.
Whether you are studying for the ATSA, Academy, CTI, new facility, or CPC, we are making this to help you. If there is something we can do better, then tell us and we will do what we can to make it happen.
A small team and the people advising it.
ModernATC is built by a small team that includes former controllers, trainees who’ve excelled through the pipeline, software engineers who’ve shipped consumer learning products, and aviation educators who consult on content review. Every card is reviewed against its citation by a human before it ships.
We’re a privately funded, US-based company. We have no obligation to investor growth targets that would push us to do things that aren’t in our students’ interest. The product gets better when it helps people pass, and that’s the whole business.
If you’d like to contribute by writing cards, peer- reviewing answer keys, advising on the curriculum, or something else, then drop us a line at hello@modernatc.com.