ATPG-IAAPS to Collaborate on EASA Training Input

The Aircrew Training Policy Group is adapting to the EU Agency’s new “communities” advisory structure.

If you have an idea that could improve commercial aviation training and may involve regulation in Europe, how do you go about getting that idea to the right people in the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)?

How about contacting a “training think tank”?

The Aircrew Training Policy Group (ATPG), which had its origins in the annual Heads of Training (HoT) meeting at Halldale Group’s European Airline Training Summit (EATS), is evolving to become a recognized training industry solutions-focused group.

ATPG is comprised of volunteers but its ideas now have access – via the International Association of Aviation Personnel Schools (IAAPS) - to EASA policymakers through the recently updated Stakeholder Advisory Body (SAB) process.

EASA ADVISORY PROCESS

“The EASA Member States and Industry are key stakeholders for the Agency,” said John Franklin, EASA Head of Safety Promotion. “They are directly affected by a large part of the Agency decisions and are valuable partners for achieving the Agency objectives. Both groups of stakeholders (Member States and Industry) are represented in the EASA advisory bodies; that provides a forum for consultation of interested parties and national authorities on Agency priorities, both at strategic and technical levels. The bodies advise the Agency on EU-wide safety priorities, on strategic and horizontal issues affecting the aviation sector, on rulemaking drafting, and on the content and priorities of the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS).”

The SAB, together with its “communities” (COMMs) and “activity groups” (AGs) is now the formal consultation framework between the Agency and industry on setting strategic priorities and regulation implementation. The SAB, COMMs, and AGs are composed of nominated and approved representatives, primarily from industry associations.

These are the current EASA SAB communities:

• Aerodromes (ADR.COMM),
• ATM/ANS (ATM/ANS.COMM),
• Commercial  Aviation - large transport airplanes and business jets (CA.COMM),
• Drones and UAM (D.COMM),
• General Aviation (GA.COMM),
• Rotorcraft  (R.COMM).

You’ll note there is no “Training Community.” In fact, though, training is represented in each of the six COMMs.

“In the beginning we proposed to have a specific training community,” said Thomas Leoff, Chairman of the IAAPS and recently retired Manager Training Standards for Lufthansa Aviation Training. “We couldn't get enough support. But at the end of the day, we convinced all the others that we have to have something which is cross-domain dealing with training.”

The overarching SAB ‘Plenary’ has 36 representatives from the various sectors with six seats each allocated to manufacturers, commercial operators (such as Airlines for Europe - A4E and the International Air Transport Association - IATA...); aviation personnel (European Cockpit Association - ECA, International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations - IFATCA...; and non-EU stakeholders (Aerospace Industries Association of America - AIA, General Aviation Manufacturers Association - GAMA...). Three seats go to general / non-commercial operators such as the European Business Aviation Association - EBAA. Two each for airports (Airports Council International - ACI), air traffic management / air navigation services (Civil Air Navigation Services Organization - CANSO), Air Sports (Europe Air Sports - EAS), and the training industry. And one seat each for aerospace medicine (European Society of Aerospace Medicine - ESAM) and maintenance (European Independent Maintenance Group - EIMG).

The two training industry seats are currently represented by IAAPS (Leoff) and the European Aviation Maintenance Training Committee - EAMTC (Hans Mayer, President).

The SAB Plenary Chair is Giancarlo Buono, IATA’s Director Safety and Flight Operations, Europe.

One of the Activity Groups is a commercial air transport safety committee. “We didn't want to lose this function,” said Leoff, “so we created a permanent AG.”

Parallel to the SAB, EASA has a Member States’ Advisory Body (MAB) and Technical Bodies (TeBs) – air traffic management, air crew, safety management, etc. - as forums for discussion.

In the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS), “we have training as a strategic item,” noted Franklin. In the ‘Six Basic Blocks of Safety’ promotion activity, the emphasis is on “having enough competent people who are operationally ready and fit for duty.”

“I've got competent people coming into the company, but how do I make sure I help them then be operationally ready for what they're going to do for us, specifically?” he explained. “A lot of people I talk to are realizing they need to think more about that.”

“It doesn't matter whether you're a controller or an engineer or a pilot. What does competent look like?”

The SAB, Franklin said, “One role of the different groups under the SAB focuses on how we bring all of the stakeholders together to ensure we understand what that looks like in each domain. The groups and activities under the SAB are designed to have manageable groups but with the widest possible experience and diversity of views.”

The Strategic Priorities section of the current EPAS states: “Despite the obvious technological advances that have made the aviation industry safer and more efficient in the last few decades, the way that those working in the industry are trained has not changed significantly: classroom-based lectures followed by the generic task-based on-the-job training are prevalent and often there is insufficient correlation between the desired competencies and their practical application in the workplace. Training delivered to aviation personnel might not sufficiently prepare them to operate safely or efficiently in their work environment. Furthermore, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has created an unprecedented situation, possible skills and knowledge degradation and reduced adherence to procedures and with it associated safety risks.”

And there’s this admission: “Some of the new methods to optimise learning and recurrent training cannot work within the existing prescriptive regulatory framework. In addition, the UAS (unmanned air systems) expansion will require the training of remote pilots. This, in turn, triggers the need for regulators and competent authorities to make available staff able to understand and evaluate the new CBTA (competency-based training and assessment)-based training programmes for initial certification and to carry out efficient oversight activities. Furthermore, a new generation of instructors (‘evaluators’ in CBTA terms) and examiners needs to be formed to properly implement the new training methodologies within the training providers. Special attention to the methodology implemented for the assessment should also be paid, ensuring that an accepted and appropriate benchmark in terms of inter-rater reliability should also be adopted.”

BIRTH OF THE ATPG

A decade ago, at the EATS conference in Berlin, Leoff recalled, “it was a few months before the new regulations – aircrew and air operations - were about to become active, and we had the Heads of Training meeting in the evening before the first day. Peter Moxham (then Chair, International Professional Pilot Training Group - IPPTG), was the main moderator. He asked me whether I would be willing to support him in the moderation, and I agreed.”

Trevor Woods (then EASA Flight Standards Director, today Director of Regulatory Standards for eVTOL OEM Vertical Aerospace), “who was new in his role then at EASA, was participating but he definitely wished to not be recognised by the majority of people. He wanted to be the proverbial fly on the wall and get a first-hand impression,” Leoff described. “It was a very, very, very lively discussion to phrase it very simply. People were very angry, very upset because the guidance provided for the introduction of the new regulation was rather poor, and not least because most of the national authorities had no good understanding on what was about to happen.”

“In the break, Trevor approached Peter and myself and told us he had spoken to (then EASA Executive Director) Patrick Ky, and Patrick told him that he should approach us and ask whether we could nominate a few people that could provide industry’s perspective and advice on how to better introduce those regulations. So Peter and myself agreed, based on our personal networks, on a number of people whom we nominated to Trevor. Two weeks later, we had a first meeting in Cologne and created a list of hot potatoes that needed to be dealt with, either directly linked to the introduction of the regulations or of high interest for other reasons, but cross-community across Europe for all national authorities. And then we took it from there.”

In subsequent years, Moxham would hand over leadership of the ATPG to Ryanair Head of Training Captain Andy O’Shea, FRAeS (now Chair of the Airline Pilot Club), who was succeeded by Captain Andy Mitchell, FRAeS (then President, Use Before Flight; now Head of Training for FTEJerez).

ATPG 3.0

Throughout its history, the ATPG has provided unofficial advice to EASA. But with the new formalized SAB communities structure, they were left without a conduit to training decision-makers. After some discussion, the “think tank” concept emerged. “In our IAAPS annual meeting this year, we will have hopefully a formal approval by our members,” Leoff added.

The ATPG is now co-chaired by Captain Philip Adrian, FRAeS, CEO of Netherlands-based Multi-Pilot Simulations (MPS) and Captain Veronica Zunic, Accountable Manager at Salient Aero, Croatia. They come from different backgrounds but complement each other, said Adrian.

Zunic started her flying career in the 1990s “when women were even less welcome in the flight deck than they are today.” Born in Malawi, she was the first female and first white person to join Air Malawi, “which was a challenge in itself.” She flew there for 10 years before moving to Asia for a one-year contract and ended up staying 21 years. Along the way she was an instructor for Airbus in Beijing, started an ATO in Vietnam, and since 2022 has focused on Type Rating training, instructor training and examiner training for Salient, whose brand she shares with Captain Michael Varney, FRAeS. She’s looking for funding to build a flight training center in Zagreb.

Adrian has been a Competency-Based Training and Assessment Task Force (CBTATF) expert and founding member for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), EASA Evidence-Based Training Chair, as well as Upset Prevention and Recovery Training Chair, and was Boeing Chief Pilot, Regulatory Strategy.

ATPG has 12 full members and several associate members. Representation includes:

• ·OEMs such as Boeing: Captain Stuart Gruber, Senior Airline Training -Deployment - Manager;
• ·former Airbus Director of Flight Operations and Training Policy Christian Norden (now CEO Norden.aero);
•  Captain Karl O’Neill, Chief Instructor at Aer Lingus;
• Johan Glantz, FRAeS, Head of Regulatory Affairs Africa, Europe and Middle East region for CAE;
• David Lord, Manager Regulatory Affairs - Europe at FlightSafety International;
• Andy Mitchell of FTEJerez;
• Kyle Johnston, Chief Theoretical Knowledge Instructor at Atlantic Flight Training Academy;
• Jacqui Suren, FRAeS, UK Civil Aviation Authority Subject Matter Expert;
• Luis Martins, Chief Theoretical Knowledge Instructor at FTEJerez (Secretary);
• Leoff, IAAPS.

Associate ATPG members include:

• Andy O’Shea of APC;
• Renier Yann, IATA Head of Training and Licensing;
• Tanja Harter, Board Director Technical Affairs, European Cockpit Association:
• Jens Frost, CEO, Centre Air Pilot Academy;
• Ryanair Head of Crew Training Captain Paul Kelly.

“By having this diverse group of highly qualified individuals, supported by the major organizations involved in flight training, most issues affecting training come to bear, ranging from KSA-100 questions for initial training through Type Rating and CBTA issues for airlines, and everything in-between,” said Adrian.

“Throughout the years, the mission of ATPG has been to identify and provide solutions to items which affect training. These are, by definition, non-regulatory in nature, as ATPG is not an official Rule Making Task (RMT) but serves as an advisory body only.” Significant items achieved by the ATPG in the past are the APS-MCC, later followed by the eAPS-MCC, white papers on language issues and other items.

Zunic noted ATPG membership is “very heavy in certain areas and completely lacking in other areas.” For example, they’d like to add representation from the rotorcraft training community, drones, and academics / universities.

Zunic became involved with ATPG three years ago amidst frustration about not being able to easily get new devices approved to use for training. “There are so many good devices coming out that have the potential to do better training than what we do at present.” (At the time, virtual reality, “and we still don't have VR as an approved training device” - for fixed-wing training.) “So I reached out to a few people and said this is really frustrating. I can use the devices, but I can't obtain any credits for it because the regulations are so rigid that there's no flexibility. One thing led to another and they said contact the ATPG.”

One of her current projects is legal support for people who have been sexually harassed, bullied, abused, in the workplace. “We've got 26 different countries with different national laws and regulations to contend with so producing something that's generic is almost impossible for Europe, but at least some guidance to put out - to flight training schools, to operators...”

“There's a lot of court cases of people being brought to task on this and then getting back into their jobs as if nothing happened.” At the EATS 2024 conference in Cascais, Portugal next week, Zunic will be talking at the Women in Aviation Training (WiAT) conference “from my experience and knowledge: the fact that from basic training, from the day a person off the street decides to get involved in aviation, be it piloting, cabin crew, maintenance, ground staff, air traffic control... doesn't matter.”

“I've been in commercial aviation for over 30 years. I have never seen a CRM (crew resource management) training subject on how to behave in the flight deck, which is an enclosed space and can be of mixed gender. There is zero guidance and basic expectation management for anybody entering aviation. And I think that's an issue that we need to raise,” she added.

Other topics ATPG is looking to address is confusion between CBTA and EBT, the European Question Bank for examinations, and Aviation English. “We're trying to be there for industry, to listen to the issues that industry has, see if they're valid, what we can do to support, to help them,” said Zunic. “We are not funded. We don't have a company listed under our names. We're just a group of people who want to improve things.”

Adrian opined that, “as a group of individuals representing a large swath of industry on the training side, training is our strength, not industry representation. We didn't do enough to bring that through to anything tangible.”

“ATPG had always positioned itself as the advisory board for EASA on all things training. It kind of lost its way, its means and its reason.” Now, he believes the SAB will be “a more streamlined approach to dealing with industry.”

Adrian wants to use the EATS Head of Training meeting to help drive the ATPG agenda. “We believe that the ATPG is in a unique position to take actions from the HoT and say (to IAAPS / EASA) this is what came back from industry. We're now trying to implement it and feed back to industry what we have done, how it's done, what the actions have been, and take that to a higher level.”

“We need to be open to controversial ideas, to those people that do not agree. I always listen to the naysayers more than the ‘yes man,’ because that's where you get the true opinion.”

Read More:

EASA, EATS & the Professional Pilot Training Industry - https://www.halldale.com/civil-aviation/10577-easa-eats-the-professional-pilot-training-industry

The Why, How and Formation of the ATPG | Halldale Group

ATPG 2.0 | Halldale Group