PILOT TRAINING
Is Your Training
Fit For Purpose?
Accident reports increasingly bear witness to shortcomings in the
current model for training design. This has particular resonance when
considered in light of the vast rate of growth predicted for the airline
industry over the coming decade. Norman MacLeod writes.
T
Image credit: Star Alliance
he recent report into the A340
runway over-run at Johannesburg
airport in April 2004 cited pilot training as a causal factor. The captain, his first flight
at the controls of the A340, used an ineffective
technique to rotate the aircraft.
The crash of the Cessna Citation at Zurich
in 2001, during which the pilot lost control after
a night IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) take-off, was also the result of inadequate
skills. The first officer was an occasional contract
pilot who had failed his initial instrument rating
on type and had subsequently been trained in-company. The operator failed to keep line check
reports and so no documentary evidence of the
pilot’s proficiency was available.
Together these two events go to the heart of
airline pilot training: how to develop and sustain
skills. Skilled performers such as pilots acquire
proficiency at different rates. We also know that
skills decay at different rates. In a perfect world
training inputs and checking would be matched to
individual needs. In the real world, however, pilot
training is based on intervals and manoeuvres.
Regulatory requirements set a minimum target for
airlines to meet in terms of the exposure to training and the verification of competence out on the
14 CAT MAGAZINE ı ISSUE 3/2006
