Today’s Flight School

“The most dangerous words in the English language are ‘we’ve always done it this way’” – Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper, United States Navy.

It may be 2021, but a lot of flight schools are still doing things the same way they did in 1991.  In one of our previous articles we looked at how flight instruction could move forward.  In this article we will look at some ways in which flight schools themselves could follow suit.

Student Selection. 

Prior to COVID-19 grinding the aviation industry to a halt, flight schools were having serious issues keeping up with training.  A shortage of experienced flight instructors and increased student demand were the perfect storm causing training at some Flight Training Units (FTUs) to have year-long graduation delays.  Demand simply exceeded capacity and FTUs were sometimes quite inefficient with training, owing in many cases to not properly screening pilot candidates.

Given their finite capacity to train, FTUs would be well recommended to only accept applicants meeting a baseline chance of success.  Airlines have long used cognitive, behavioral, psychological, and complex task-adaptability evaluations in their selection processes.  FTUs could incorporate this type of screening to help ensure their candidates could complete the training without major issues – creating a more reliable and manageable training program.  Improving student selection improves the training environment AND provides a return on investment.

Innovative Training Plans. 

The requirements for various licenses and ratings have changed little over time.  However, the proposed development of Approved Training Organizations (ATOs) can offer larger schools greater flexibility in adapting to today’s training needs.  In short, if an FTU can show that a candidate has the required knowledge and skill to hold a CPL with Multi-IFR, for example, based on 100 simulator hours, 50 in-flight hours, and 500 hours groundschool - that specialized program could be approved by Transport Canada.  It’s up to the FTU to develop a plan that works and it need not be based off of any arbitrary numbers prescribed by the CARs.

This is the same type of program that allows for a Multi-Crew Pilot Licence (MPL).  If an FTU is training airline pilots, what is the purpose of having them do VFR diversions and precautionary landings to a grass runway?  Would the student not be better served by the early introduction of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Threat and Error Management (TEM), low-visibility operations, and the crew-concept?  MPL holders cannot rent an aircraft and go flying VFR… but at completion of their program they are much better airline cadets than those who under-went a traditional training program designed decades ago – at least for the job of being a direct-entry airline pilot.  As the saying goes: train like you fly and fly like you were trained.

Even for schools that would be too small to implement such courses, elements of them could be incredibly valuable.  For example, Competency Based Training (CBT) is at the core of ATO programs.  In essence, it is about meeting the skill and knowledge requirements, not about reaching a set number of hours which may or may not adequately reflect the abilities of the candidate.

In a simple flight training CBT system, instructors not only assess their students on a marking scale of 1-4, but they do so for each element in the flight test standards (aircraft handling, technical skills, situational awareness, flight management, safety margins). The FTU tracks the trends by flight number, stage of the syllabus, and/or exercise.  What may emerge is that we see students excel at aircraft handling during diversions, but the flight management scores are low.  This indicates to the CFI they need to target more training on flight management skills rather than just saying “practice more diversions”.  While it takes time and resources, CBT adds efficiencies to the final training product which may result in increased training capacity.

Encouraging More Use of SBT and TEM. 

Scenario based training teaches students how to think and makes training more relevant and effective.  Threat and Error Management teaches practical decision making and proactive risk mitigation. FTUs need to take the time and effort to train their instructors on effectively implementing SBT and TEM into everyday flight training.  Examples can also be integrated into the school’s training syllabus to provide suggestions and guidance.  This can be done at little to no-cost but provide a big bump in training efficiency and safety.

Incorporate More Risk Management. 

You can do everything perfectly legally, but still have an accident.  Policies and procedures are in place at schools to minimize risk, but sometimes combinations develop which are both legal and deadly. FTUs are highly recommended to use a simple Flight Risk Assessment Tool prior to each flight which takes little time to complete, but can offer a huge red flag when certain risky combinations develop.  This is another no-cost activity that has the potential to not only save lives, but significant costs owing to even minor incidents.

Invest in Safety Management. 

A proper Safety Management System allows FTUs to find out what is really happening on the flight line.  Most schools have a way to receive safety reports, but often lack in the follow-up, analysis, and trending part of an SMS that is critical to its success.  This is often where latent or systemic threats can be found that put the operation at risk.

Flight Data Analysis (FDA) is another tool that can improve safety dramatically.  Think of it as a scaled down, cost-effective version of a flight data recorder that reports each flight upon landing.  The FDA software will automatically flag for triggers defined by the operator as a potentially unsafe situation (think aircraft overspeeds, low-level flying, etc).  It can also be used to flag trends amongst the fleet so that dangerous company-wide habits can be addressed proactively.  One example that many operators have had great success with is reducing unstable approaches that continue to a landing.  This is the number one worldwide accident category from flight training to airline operations and FDA provides tools to help address it.

SMS and FDA have an enormous return on investment through reduced direct and indirect accident/incident costs when implemented correctly.

How does your flight school line up with the above?  If you already excel at these things, great!  If you have room for improvement, these may be some areas you want to start with.  Do you want more information about these topics and how to implement them? Use a Flight Instructor Refresher Course to renew your rating instead of a flight test.  We discuss these things and many more interesting topics to help you advance the quality of your operation.