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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0271.PDF
FLIGHT, 26 February I960 271 SELECTING PILOTS FOR THE CIVIL COLLEGE Short-list Problems: Should the Clubs Provide Pre-entry Training? By PHILIP CLEIFE ^ DURING service with the Royal Air Force the writeracquired specialist experience of the problems of flying training when in command of the Training ResearchSquadron of the Empire Flying School. In the course of this duty he was concerned with special investiga-tions and controlled experiments in connection with training-research projects, among which were thesubjects of pilot selection and pilot assessment during basic training. He emphasizes that the viewsexpressed are his own and are not put forward on behalf of any organization or operator. _ _ „ . NEXT September there will occur an event which historymay well record as a milestone in the progress of flyingtraining. About seventy young men will be filling uptheir arrival reports at the new College of Air Training [see page 573, Flight, November 20, 1959], where they will enjoy thedistinction of becoming the first students to take the two-year course which is to be sponsored by the airline corporations, theMinistry of Aviation and the Ministry of Education. This State- subsidized scheme is estimated to cost between £4,500 and £5,000for each pilot trained. The course will essentially be of university character. Inaddition to the mastery of aircraft operation, air navigation and engineering, the students will have to acquire a comprehensiveunderstanding of the whole business of air transport, including administration, economics, commercial planning and internationalrelationships. On graduation they will emerge trained to the highest standards for the parts they will have to play as pilotsand commanders in international aviation. The prospect is an exciting one, but our enthusiasm must betempered by the thought of the difficulties which must inevitably accompany the introduction of the plan. One of these—and itmust already be engaging the very serious attention of the sponsors —is the problem of making the final selection of the candidateswho will be chosen for this expensive training. The Problem. It is a fair assumption that selection will haveto be made from a large number of applicants. As the scheme becomes more firmly established, this number will probablyincrease—it may run into thousands a year. Yet the estimated annual requirement for pilots has been quoted as 75 to 100. There should be little difficulty with the processes of initialselection, which will not differ materially from those employed in other industrial and military spheres, and which will be carriedout in several stages of screening. After that there will remain a number—possibly a large number—of keen young men of theright age who are of high educational standard, physically fit, and between whom there is apparently little or nothing to choose.From these must be selected the few who will be earmarked for flying training; and they must possess exceptional qualifications. Now it is a known fact, incontestably established during nearlyhalf a century of flying training, that aptitude to fly and command an aeroplane is one of the most difficult of all human accomplish-ments to predict on the ground. The complex combination of personal qualities needed is such that there is no simple yardstickby which they can be measured during an interview or test. It is not, unfortunately, just a straightforward question of assessingmanual dexterity, co-ordination, or speed of reactions. These can be measured by machines, but the results give us only a partof the picture. All that we know for certain is that aptitude for piloting an aeroplane is an ingredient of character. Those whopossess it in good measure are "naturals"—they will learn quicker, they will be more likely to react correctly to any given situation, andthey will be safer. They will, in fact, "belong to the air." There is no significant correlation between this aptitude andthose other personal qualities which can be assessed on the ground. In any batch of pupils selected after interview andexamination to as nearly a uniformly high standard as possible, a few will be discovered during training to be exceptional pilots; a'arger number will range from fair average to indifferent; and a few will be found so completely lacking in pilot aptitude thatprofessional training would be a waste of time. Thus it is axiomatic that at some stage during flying training there must bewastage, and the higher the standard the greater the wastage. Any training to be given at the new College of Air TrainingTo students who are below the exceptionally high standard required must be regarded as costly wastage indeed. The lowestcost will be the expense of the training they receive before they are suspended. The highest could be a disastrous accident inlater years, if an unsuitable student were allowed to finish the course. Thus is posed the very difficult but fascinating problemof how to select, from the numbers available, those individuals who are best fitted to become the airline captains of the future. Wastage. A most effective way of making the best final selectionis to train students in sufficient numbers to allow for wastage, and then eliminate those who are discovered to lack pilot aptitude—the greatest proportion of all wastage occurs during the early stages of training. But I submit that it would be wholly undesir-able if such wastage should occur at the College, because: — (1) The resources of a cosdy air college should not be wasted onearly basic training anyway—an establishment which is essentially a university should not concern itself with "prep school" work. (2) It would be hopelessly uneconomic to give such expensivetraining to a large number of candidates in order to pick out the exceptional pilots. Such advanced training as must be envisagedshould be reserved for highly selected students who with few excep- tions might be expected to finish the course. (3) In the companionable atmosphere of a flying school, with itsfriendly personal relations between instructors and pupils, it is some- what difficult to be ruthless, and the elimination of marginal students(who may be extremely enthusiastic and likeable young men) is not always achieved as easily as may be thought. This begs the question of whether some form of pre-entrytraining ought not to be given to the short-listed candidates before final selection is made for entry to the College. Upon this issuepivots the whole weight of selection policy. There are many who will contend that the case for pre-entry training is over-whelming and so manifestly self-evident that argument in its favour is superfluous. Per contra, others disagree and claim thatmodern operational techniques have so changed that sheer aptitude for flying, as evident during basic training, is no longerimportant and that what is wanted is the right personality. Here, then, is the crux of this tremendously interesting problem.Are we going to select our future airline captains according to their observed ability to fly, or are we going to choose them onpersonality? If the latter, what are going to be the criteria we shall use to assess it? Education? Intelligence? Background?Games? What, in fact, are the traits in the personal make-up of the candidate that we must be sure of before we accept him? The Requirement. Let us first examine the problem and tryto decide to what extent the development of high-speed, high- altitude flight has changed the pilot requirement from what itused to be. Now it is a fact that although the advance in aircraft performance during recent years has undoubtedly made greaterdemands upon the pilot in some respects, it has at the same time been accompanied by compensating factors such as 9,000ftrunways, automatic control, and radio aids undreamt of by the average pilot of twenty-five years ago: so, in the overall picture,the requirement for pilot aptitude has not in itself changed so very much. Reaction speed, judgment, air sense, mental orienta-tion, and the faculty of "belonging to the air" remain much as they have always been—a combination of personal qualitiespresent in the first place and developed by training and perfected by flight experience, for which there is no substitute. But there are two ways in which high-speed, high-altitudeflight has intensified the demands upon the pilot. First, the complexities of the aircraft itself, with its ancillary systems,limitations, and operational margins, require of him a much In the heading picture: Chipmunks of the Airways Aero Club
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