Aviation Training

Learners, Instruction and Organization

Ross A.Telfer, Phillip J. Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138254800
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351956178
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The book is in three parts, which consider training from the perspective of the learner, the instructor and the organization. Its intended readership includes civil and military training and senior pilots, flying instructors, check pilots, CRM facilitators, Human Factors and safety departments, and aviation and educational psychologists as well as those in operations and air traffic management and regulatory authorities.

Part 1
Learners

1 Introduction to Part 1 - Learners

Phillip J Moore

This section contains eight chapters designed to examine the learner in the instructional cycle. While it might be stating the obvious, learners do differ from each other in a number of ways including age, experience, levels of expertise, preferences in the ways in which they learn, and in the ways in which they learn for more automated contexts. While the underlying principles of flight instruction have been standardisation and adherence to traditional methods, there are compelling arguments from other learning and instructing contexts for instruction to take into account the differences that individuals bring to learning (e.g. Biggs & Moore, 1993). These issues are taken up in this chapter with the aim of alerting those involved in training to take into account such individual differences when designing, implementing and evaluating training programmes.

The first chapter, by Tsang, is timely for she comprehensively, and critically, reviews the literature on aging and pilot performance. She shows that the average age of pilots is increasing and the number of pilots in the USA over 60 years of age has increased five-fold over the last 20 or so years. Tsang focuses on perception and decision making and analyses accident data as a function of age. The picture to emerge from her analyses is complex, it is not a simple issue of older individuals being poorer performers. Indeed, the finding that individual differences within an age group tends to increase with age makes it increasingly difficult to predict anyone's performance on the basis of age alone. Tsang concludes by suggesting that, if age influences pilot performance, it is not easily detected in the literature she so comprehensively surveyed.

Hunter's chapter takes quite a different perspective by examining the characteristics of a particular group of pilots in the USA, pilots who are primarily private licence holders. Hunter argues that while there are well established training programmes for those in the military and large civil carrier organisations, continuing pilot education for the private licence holder requires a different approach, particularly when a large number of such pilots fly 2.5 hours or less per month. Specifically, Hunter reports on a U.S.A. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) large scale survey of private licence holders that attempted to identify such things as skill and experience levels and when and how they fly. Hunter shows that the population of pilots has wide experience, as measured by hours, an average age of 50 years, and is relatively well educated. In looking at what should be trained, Hunter identifies fuel management incidents, flying visual flight rules (VFR) into instrument flight conditions (IMC), and personal minimums. Highlighted are the facts that some 20 percent of the private licence holders reported at least one instance in which they were so low on fuel they were uncertain if they would make it to an airport. Also one quarter of the pilots reported entering IMC while flying VFR. Such information, allied to analyses of seminars already conducted by the FAA, encourages Hunter to argue for training programs designed to meet the needs of this group of pilots through a variety of presentation modes including use of the Internet, computer software and video materials.

The third chapter, by Wiggins, looks at the nature of expertise. How is expertise characterised? How can the cognitive skills of expertise be identified? Wiggins then moves to examine ways in which transitions from novice to expertise can be enhanced through Cognitive Task Analysis (CAT), an analysis that focuses on decision-making, problem solving, the development and application of mental models as well as the integration and interpretation of relevant information. Armed with such information about the learners and the task, appropriate training objectives can then be developed. Wiggins argues that such an approach is likely to increase both training efficiency and pilot safety.

The issue of individual preferences about learning is raised in Schiewe and Moore's chapter on individual differences and Crew Resource Management (CRM) training. Do some people prefer to learn from lectures? Do some prefer to learn in groups through activities? Do some dislike anything they are presented with? They gathered information related to these questions as well as attitudinal and personal data (age, rank, previous CRM experience) from over 500 pilots undergoing CRM training with a large European carrier. From their analyses they report four groups of individuals: Enthusiasts, Dynamics, Cognitives, and Rejectors. Enthusiasts tend to like all methods of instruction. Dynamics tend to like group activity and team building while Cognitives tend to prefer lectures and presentations. Rejectors rate lowly all methods of instruction and content. Greatest changes in attitudes were seen in the Enthusiasts. Many of the results may surprise the reader as the groupings had very little to do with age, rank, previous experience in CRM, or pre training attitudes. The complex issue of how training organizations can take learning preferences into account is taken up in the concluding section of their chapter.

The two chapters by Mouloua, Gilson and Koonce (Chapter 5) and Moore and Telfer (Chapter 6) tackle the problem of increasing automation. While increasing automation may have reduced the burdens of excessive in-flight workload, increased fuel efficiency and enhanced all weather flying, it has resulted in other problems. These problems include loss of situational awareness, reduced monitoring efficiency, and increased mental workloads. Mouloua and his colleagues review very recent work on pilots' interactions with cockpit automation, human-automation monitoring, and automation and pilot training. They propose that understanding how pilots interact with automation in the cockpit is crucial for safety, pilot and system performance as well as for the design of systems themselves. Exemplifying the problems, they draw attention to the ever-increasing number of alert systems on modern aircraft. How do pilots react to such alarms? What are the implications for training?

Moore and Telfer further examine automation in the cockpit but also include discussion on movements to automate instruction through Computer Based Training (CBT). They trace the movement towards greater automation in both the cockpit and instruction whilst reviewing some of the recent investigations of pilots' attitudes to such developments. Taking a practical perspective, Moore and Telfer then report on the ways in which successful pilots go about learning when converting to more technologically sophisticated aircraft.

Almost like a companion chapter to Moore and Telfer's, Gebers brings his vast training experience with South African Airways to Chapter 7 where he proposes guidelines as to how crew members can achieve the best from the training courses they attend. Gebers stresses the importance of both mental and physical preparation for training and provides useful advice as to how trainees undergoing type training can gain the most from their ground school and the simulator. Reflections on route training and recurrent training enhance the chapter. He makes well the point that there are no easy methods for learning vast amounts of information in a short time.

The final chapter in this first section is by Sellars and McNabb from Air Niugini, In some senses the chapter is quite different from the others in this part of the book but its concerns for individuals and how they might better fit into an airline makes it compatible with previous chapters. The chapter is written in the context of two pressures: increased localisation in airlines in Asia and the Pacific; and the attrition rate in national cadet pilot training. Sellars and McNabb detail an innovative programme designed along the lines of the Head Start programs of the 1970s in Education. As the name suggests, the program is designed to give cadet pilots a "head start" before they actually undertake pilot training. The programme consists of four phases each with specific goals and objectives. The earliest phase focuses on quite detailed personal reports to the cadets which detail their strengths and weaknesses (as assessed during selection) and makes suggestions as to ways in which their weaknesses might be overcome. Sellars and McNabb provide examples of such reporting. This information provides a basis for the activities undertaken in Phase 1. Phase 2 sees the cadets posted to flight operations where they undertake a variety of tasks aimed at developing professional attitudes and standards. Mentoring is then introduced at Phase 3 while the last phase is the actual flight training out-of country. For those interested in developing a Head Start type program, Sellars and McNabb provide a schedule of a typical program used by the airline.

In all, these chapters foreground learners as individuals who have wide ranging differences. Each person in a training program brings their own "baggage" with them, baggage that includes their abilities, past experiences, preferred ways of learning, motives and strategies for learning, levels of expertise, attitudes towards training and so on. Clearly some of these will be seen to be more important in some situations than others. The challenge for those designing, implementing and evaluating training programs is to identify which individual differences are important in the context of organizational constraints.

References

Biggs, J.B. & Moore, P.J. (1993). The process of learning. Sydney: Prentice Hall Australia.

2 Age and pilot performance

Pamela S Tsang

The interests and concerns in age and pilot performance

One reason for the recent heightened concern and interest in aging issues is because the population is aging. Based on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) annual surveys and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) annual reports from 1968 to 1987, Bruckart (1992) estimated that the mean pilot age increased from 35 to 40 years and the number of pilots over the age of60 increased five-fold. However, an examination of the general aviation accidents showed a decrease in accident rate over the 20 years period for each age group of a 5-year interval from under age 20 to over age 60.

Measuring pilot performance is an enduring issue that has escaped simple solutions. There are three major approaches to assess pilot performance: subjective evaluation of actual flight performance by the instructor or check pilot, quantitative off-line pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 Learners
• Part 2 Instruction
• Part 3 Organization
• Author index
• Subject index