Every ELP scenario task — picture description, sequence narration, ATC role-play — ends the same way. After you’ve described the engine fire or the emergency evacuation, the examiner asks the wrap-up question: “Have you ever experienced a similar situation?”
This question is not optional small talk. It appears in virtually every exam report we’ve collected. And it’s where prepared candidates pull ahead — because it’s the one question you can fully prepare for in advance.
Why This Question Decides Your Score
The scenario description tests whether you can narrate someone else’s situation. The experience question tests something harder and more valuable: spontaneous, personal, extended speech — exactly the territory where Level 5 is won or lost.
Your goal: be able to present several irregular-operations experiences in your own words, at presentation quality, before you walk in. Not memorized scripts — but stories you’ve told out loud enough times that the words come without searching.
The Home-Turf Pivot
Here’s the key insight: you will almost never have experienced the exact scenario in the picture. Shown a cargo fire? You’ve probably never had one. That’s fine — the examiner doesn’t expect you to.
The skill is pivoting to YOUR ground: “I’ve never experienced a cargo fire itself, but I did have a similar situation where an abnormal indication forced us to change our plan…” — and now you’re telling a story you’ve prepared, on territory you own.
One warning: don’t force the connection. If the scenario is a medical emergency and you pivot to your favorite go-around story with no logical bridge, the examiner may conclude you didn’t understand the question — and that hits your comprehension score. The bridge sentence matters: name the common element (an unexpected event, a time-pressure decision, a diversion) before you pivot.
Build a Wide Home Turf
The wider your prepared territory, the shorter the pivot distance from any scenario. Organize your stories into groups that cover the exam’s favorite themes:
- Equipment failure. Any abnormal indication, system malfunction, or MEL situation you’ve handled. One good story here covers a huge range of technical scenarios.
- GTB / ATB. A ground turn-back or air turn-back is a complete narrative package: problem, decision, coordination, outcome. If you have one, polish it — it pivots to almost anything.
- Weather encounters. Turbulence injury risk, windshear go-around, diversion for weather minimums.
- Simulator training. This is the underused one: “I haven’t experienced an engine fire in line operations, but in our recurrent simulator training we flew exactly this scenario…” — a sim story is a legitimate, honest answer, and you have dozens of them.
Prepare Each Story to Presentation Level
For each story in your collection, practice the four-part structure out loud: when and where, what happened, how you responded, and the outcome. Two to three minutes per story, told in short independent sentences, using vocabulary you actually own.
Four or five polished stories across the groups above will cover nearly any scenario the exam throws at you. The candidates who score 5 aren’t the ones who got lucky with a familiar picture — they’re the ones whose home turf was wide enough that every picture felt familiar.
Want to know which scenarios actually appear? Our exam reports list the follow-up questions pilots were asked — including how the “similar experience” question was phrased for each scenario.