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Aviation History
1995
1995 - 1423.PDF
PILOT TRAINING at the very least, your potential customers. We would like them to think well of us, even if they are rejected," he adds. All applicants who meet the requirements undergo an English-language test and intelli gence tests. Those who pass are invited to attend an assessment centre, where their abil ity to get on with otiiers is assessed, their basic co-ordination tested through ball games, and their leadership skills examined by means of a structured leadership test. This phase, con ducted by the airline's human-resources department, assesses ten major competencies which highlight the adaptation to automated cockpits crew-resource management and teamwork — managing change; coping with detail; adaptability; planning ability; team ori entation; communication skills; determina tion; decision making; initiating; and customer awareness. The next stage is conducted by a manage ment pilot and a personnel manager, and includes interviews and psychometric tests. The results are fed back to the candidate in a short interview with a company psychologist. "Among the characteristics probed is the degree of motivation," says Jenkins. Two- crew aircraft mean that, unless there is dra matic expansion, pilots can expect to spend half their working career as co-pilots. Unless they retain strong motivation, this can be dif ficult for bright young people, who might have been senior managers in other profes- Coping with technology KIERAN DALY/TOULOUSE The almost universal use of cockpit-resource-management (CRM) techniques will be one of the major features of training as airline pilot-recruitment reaches its next peak. Even though the concept is today far from new, its practice is still very much in development and is having to evolve in paral lel with man-machine interface changes in the cockpit. There is also a pressing need for CRM principles to be better tailored for use in cultures outside the developed Western nations where, largely, they were born. At Airbus Industrie, where the manufac turer's CRM syllabus has just been substan tially overhauled, vice-president of training and flight operations Pierre Baud says: "We have two problems — providing CRM for a crew of two non-Anglo-Saxon pilots and for an Anglo-Saxon with a non-Anglo-Saxon pilot. It is clear that some cultures are less communicative than others. At Airbus, we will not change their culture — but we will give them all the tools to understand that, in a medium-technology cockpit, we have to cross-check each other and check, for exam ple, the flight-management system [FMS] sions by their mid-thirties. All evidence is objectively assessed at a review meeting; board scores are allocated for each of the categories, and a decision to accept or reject is made. Next, a comprehensive company medical is a further filter, followed by 5h in a Piper Warrior, to assess die candidate's ability to accept train ing. The final decision is made on the basis of the grading report, with the successful candi dates moving on to ab initio training. EMIRATES PLANS Emirates plans to change the process this year when its own fixed training device is installed. "This will enable us to assess psy chomotor ability at the initial stages of selection, where I firmly believe it belongs," says Jenkins. "Assessors are only human and there can be occasions when an otherwise splendid candidate obtains only a mediocre flying-grading report. The tendency is to give the candidate the benefit of the doubt and the result is a training problem." For commercial schools, the path is some times less clear. Also, carriers and training insti tutions are now beginning to question some of the best-established tenets of pilot training in ways which could again overturn current selec tion guidelines. The head of training at the Oxford Air Training School Bruce Latton, says that it is time for some of these to be re-exam ined by airlines, and at regulatory level. against external navigation aids. Airbus human-factors specialist Eddy Racca notes that this is in any case delicate ground. Although some studies have suggested a link between accident rates and cultural factors — notably the power-distance index which mea sures the interpersonal power between two individuals as perceived by the less powerful of the two — the evidence is by no means clear- cut. Racca says: "Some studies show safety-lev els related to big [geographical] areas. We have to be very careful about those studies. It is very difficult to relate the level of safety to a specific culture and, anyway, human factors are related to the basic culture of people over 1,000 or 2,000 years. That is mainly a question of dis tance-power relationships." Airbus' new programme is named Team Enhancement in Aviation Management and is aimed at cabin and maintenance staff as well as pilots. Airbus says that some principal features would be the presentation of the philosophy of systems and procedures; the total separation of training in the aircraft (without and with failures); and fully inte grated human-factors training. Despite the adverse publicity that Airbus has had to weather in relation to its advanced technology, training officials at major Airbus operators remain highly sup- Are light aircraft still necessary in training? Similarly, British Airways' senior manag er of training, Capt Bob Salisbury, questions as possibly wasteful the system of progres sion from basic training in light singles, through a series of increasingly advanced types, un-learning and re-learning at each level: "For modern heavy-jet-transport training, should we be trading in these old concepts and moving to a totally new prod uct designed to totally new requirements? Salisbury continues: "For the sceptics who believe that you must fly a light aircraft first, I would suggest you watch a modem full-flight simulator being flown by a young man or woman with no previous experience, but with good instruction. They have known no other environ ment, so the simulator is the one they adapt to— and they adapt quickly and fly it well." Q portive. United Airlines manager of fleet operations and A320 fleet captain Bill Reichert concedes that his organisation was "somewhat apprehensive" when United ordered the A320, because it "...had not operated an aircraft with such a high level of sophistication before". That apprehen sion "...has proven to be unfounded", he says, noting that the type has "...met or exceeded our expectations in all areas" and is "fun to fly". The A320 is the second type, after the Boeing 737-300, for which United has successfully used a US Federal Aviation Administration-approved Advanced Qualification Programme to train its pilots. Cathay Pacific, which is now operating the A330 and A340, is similarly pleased. Flying- training manager for Airbus types John Bent explains that he and fleet manager Rick Fry researched the A320's history and worked hard to "...demystify' the technology' and to try to correct extreme and inaccurate percep tions" among pilots and management. Bent says: "It is not enough to just apply tradition al training programmes to significantly new technology. Glass/FMS-equipped flight- decks are powerful tools for efficient flight, but can also become powerful traps if they are given dominant priority over plain com mon sense [or] airmanship." 36 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 17 - 23 May 1995
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