The actual, as another poster provided, was a racist hiring procedure hidden in a test and apparently designed to rug-pull all the trainees paying their own way in training.

Apart from that, the intelligence is certainly needed, but with a heavy dose of spatial reasoning. the right kind of 'calm under pressure' is an excellent command of the details of ATC; anything else here is just lethal apathy.

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...