The More Things Change…

Two learnings, or re-learnings, stood out to me from the CAT Leader Forum workshop/webinar series we have been conducting the past few months: Change, at least in aviation training, does not happen fast. And it does not happen consistently around the world.

The workshops and webinars focused around five key topics which were identified by European and Gulf States Heads of Training, thus the phrase ‘HoT’ issues. They tagged Skills Decay, XR Emergence, EBT, Big Data, and UPRT as areas needing more attention and definition. (A summary of the findings and recommendations for each topic can be found on pages 32-33 of this issue.)

For those of us who have been immersed in these issues the past number of years, it might seem that they should be settled. Resolved. Routine. The RAeS working groups, FAA ARCs or EASA Advisory Bodies sweated the details, ICAO published the guidance, and regulators worldwide, having accepted the consensus wisdom, have implemented the improvements. Right?

The Multi-crew Pilot Licence (MPL) is a poster child for a roll-out that went awry. Uptake globally was slow (NIH in the US). Many ATOs who marketed the new concept merely did a cosmetic bolt-on to their traditional training methodology. And a few seemed to get it right.

And despite a plethora of available information across several years, we continued to find corners of the world where MPL was largely unknown.

Evidence-Based Training? Similar findings. Some of the larger, better-resourced carriers have embraced it but are taking a cautious test-and-prove path to implementation. Many regulators outside Cologne are still content with the prescriptive tick-the-box training, reluctant to blaze trails.

Upset Prevention and Recovery Training is, alas, tracking a similar path. Some were surprised when the virtual HoT group added it to the list of ongoing challenges. Haven’t we been doing UPRT for more than a decade? Sure, EASA requires training in an aerobatic aircraft, but the FAA doesn’t, yet isn’t everyone on pretty much the same page? Apparently not. As Capt. Jacques Drappier wrote in his report on the recent CAT workshop, “…non-standard interpretation by some regulators and non-standard advice from OEMs relating to how training should be delivered… feeds the confusion which UPRT was supposed to address.”

Shortly after the Skills Decay webinar in April, one feedback was that the US, having restarted flight operations sooner than most of the rest of the world, was beyond the problem of “rusty pilots.” Continuing ASRS self-reports by pilots of errors and hesitant decision-making would suggest otherwise (a 500% or more increase in unstabilised approaches and other manual handling-related). More recently, US carriers cancelled thousands of flights for lack of re-trained personnel; some overworked crews complained of exhaustion.

Areas such as Europe and Asia-Pacific, still slow to recover, face a similar dilemma of needing to re-qualify pilots, cabin crew and maintenance techs who are months out of practice.

Big Data has emerged more recently (though it can be argued that EBT and the US AQP are both intensely data-driven programmes). The surprise was that there is, to date, no clear definition of “what data” should be collected and how it should be applied to produce better, safer pilots. Halldale and the Airline Training Policy Group are following up to assemble a working group to identify a common taxonomy, data harmonisation standards and best practices to share with the global training community.

X-Reality and its VR, AR, MR, etc. variants have been embraced by the aviation training community, though until this spring the quality of the headsets limited it to maintenance and cabin crew training applications. But with the advent of professional-grade VR/AR, flight training is now centre stage, and indeed the first such motion-based VR simulator has been qualified by EASA.

The irregular application of innovative, promising training methodologies and technologies should not be surprising, given the variances of inertia, politics, funding, and expertise. How can we stimulate the embrace of change… for the enhancement of safety? Collaboration and communication are the ignition, and that’s the objective behind the CAT Leader Forum.