Commercial Aviation Safety & Training
Captain John Bent, FRAeS
Organic growth of surviving flight schools is happening but not at a pace to provide a market correction any time soon. Many experienced flight instructors have gone to the airlines and the shortage of flight instructors is the critical path risk to ATOs. Additionally, training aircraft production lead times are now long.
Amidst the current chaos of the global airline scene, are young people still interested in becoming airline pilots? The Airline Pilot Club has grown from 800 to 19,000 members in the past two years as they raise the training standards for pre-selection and ATO quality. Rick Adams, FRAeS, outlines their concept.
In the regulatory world, all flight schools fall into one of two categories – they are either an Approved Training Organisation (ATO) via the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), or some other aviation authority; or they are not approved. There is no distinction made, by the regulators, between the various ATOs on the authorized lists.
Frankly, many regulatory agencies are stretched thin and lack the resources and expertise to delve beyond a basic pass/fail determination.
In the real world, there is a great deal of difference between ATOs – from the very good to the marginally adequate.