AIDA 2

I have heard the AIDA 2 pass rate is low. Why?

Start with something that usually gets skipped: holding your breath, equalising and moving underwater are not things humans are born good at. Most land sports take an ability you already have and sharpen it. Freediving does not — it asks you to learn a whole set of operations your body has never performed. Doing all of it on your first course was never the default outcome.

But the real reason is the structure of the course, not you.

You will hear people say one agency is stricter and another is softer. My view is that if you lay the equivalent levels side by side, the courses run to much the same length and much the same density. That is not a coincidence. Courses are designed to be finishable in a few days because of a very practical commercial reality: someone arrives in an island country, sees that the course takes a few days, and decides to try it.

Then there is cost. If the course ran over one or two weeks, I am confident any instructor could raise the pass rate. But it would not be economically viable — the fee would climb and most people simply would not come. So what actually happens is this: in a limited amount of time, you are taught the techniques in full. Whether you can produce them straight away depends a great deal on the individual.

So — if you finish AIDA 2 without ticking every performance requirement, do not be discouraged. Those standards are a marker of the ability we want you to reach, not a guarantee that finishing the course hands it to you. Reaching them reasonably takes a bit more practice, and always did.