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The International Civil Aviation Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It changes the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth.
The phenomenon of “competency”. Why is it important? Why is not enough for a pilot to just follow the instructions and simply complete a task after task? And, on the whole, how is it related to safety? The links between all these are direct.
A fully-licensed commercial pilot does not necessarily mean a competent commercial pilot able to properly operate in the multi-crew environment.
A pilot educated only through the task-based method is not enough for the industry today. A professional without relevant competences mastered up to a certain level is not enough to ensure the highest quality and, most importantly, enhanced safety in dynamic aviation.
Thus, who is a competent pilot then? Definitely, it is the one greatly juggling all the technical knowledge. But, it is also the one prepared to professionally apply these technical skills in absolutely unexpected, sometimes stressful, situations.
Considering a number of such examples and analyzing the way pilots
react to extraordinary situations it became clear that there is a need
to check if existing pilot training approaches and methods adhere to real conditions in the cockpit, if training programs are not outdated and bring true value.
Consequently, it triggered the following conclusion: in order to
properly handle “human factor” in various extraordinary circumstances,
technical background has to go hand in hand with the core competencies.
These were not made up just for fun. Each of the competencies was presented after thorough examinations of pilots’ performance, reasons and circumstances of minor/major accidents. These competences is the result of continuous safety analyses carried out by the experts.”
Controls the aircraft flight path through automation, including appropriate use of flight management systems and guidance.
EBT vs traditional crew training
For decades, the content of flight crew training programmes remained unchanged, according to regulation. Training curricula included repetitive exposures to a set of prescribed events, which, as technology evolved, became highly improbable with modern aeroplanes. In addition, these events were mainly examples of negative performance and we just expected crews to learn effectively from them. In some cases, we learned what NOT to do but rarely what could or should have been done to change the outcome of the event. (You might also be interested in Safety II) This gives little help to the crew if faced with a similar or any other challenge.
Training programmes were consequently saturated
with items that may not necessarily mitigate the real risks or enhance
safety in modern air transport operations.
*Pic source https://hackernoon.com/technical-vs-non-technical-marketers-lets-end-the-snobbery-w7v37k1*
Furthermore, training approaches traditionally regarded non-technical skills (through Crew Resource Management courses) and technical flying skills (during simulator sessions) separately. Learning from past events, we have come to realize that air incidents and accidents rarely result from the improper use of a given skill alone, but rather involve a combination of both technical and non-technical aspects.
The training concept shift proposed under EBT is not simply to replace a sometimes-outdated set of critical events with a new set, but rather to use the events as a vehicle for developing and assessing crew performance across the range of behavioral competencies. In addition, EBT requires instructors and trainers to focus on the root causes of sub-standard behaviors, rather than merely asking a flight crew to repeat a maneuver with no real understanding as to why it was not successfully flown in the first instance.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to foresee all plausible accident scenarios in today’s aviation system, which characterized by complexity and high reliability. EBT addresses this limitation by moving from pure scenario-based training to prioritizing the development and assessment of behavioral competencies, hence leading to improved training outcomes. The aim is that by mastering a finite number of defined competencies a pilot will be able to manage previously unseen potentially dangerous situations in flight.
*Picture sourced from https://www.ediweekly.com/55414-2/*
Under the EBT training concept, qualified flight simulation
training devices (FSTDs) should be used to the maximum extent possible
for assessing and developing crew competence. Crews should be exposed to
a wide variety of situations that may be faced in line operations. In
today’s high-fidelity simulator environment sophisticated training tools
exist that are often not used effectively, as training regulatory
requirements are oriented more significantly toward checking.
EBT seeks
to redress the imbalance between training and checking as it recognizes
that an assessment of competence is necessary, but once completed,
pilots learn more effectively when being trained by competent
instructors to perform tasks and manage events measured according to a
given set of behavioral indicators, while not under pure test
conditions.
The development of a baseline EBT program requires the
determination by each air operator of critical training events based on
data, the development of training scenarios and the definition of
appropriate flight crew performance criteria when managing these events
and scenarios.
- https://www.icao.int/safety/TrainairPlus_Archive/Documents/South%20Africa%20Regional%20Symposium%20Presentations/Panel%201%20-%20Challenges/4%20NGAP_%20IATA%20Presentation%20VF.pdf
- https://www.osmaviationacademy.com/blog/the-core-competencies-of-a-professional-pilot
- https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Evidence_based_training_(EBT)
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