Category: Pilot

Ab Initio / ATO

APC: Matching Quality Candidates with Quality ATOs

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.

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Pilot

Airline Pilot Training: Time to Revisit the Basics?

Many recent airline accidents have shown clear evidence of a common cause, whether from fatal crashes or devastating hull losses without fatalities. That common cause is the inability of the pilots, in far too many cases, to cope with the situation they have faced. Sometimes it was when the automatic systems failed, requiring them to fly manually. In others, they were trying to deal with what should have been a relatively benign situation and they simply did not cope.

Members of the Flight Operations Group (FOG) of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) have been studying these matters for some time but individually, rather than as a group, with a common purpose. The members came together recently to discuss the reintroduction of the Boeing 737 MAX and what sort of training would be needed to achieve the best outcome. It very quickly became apparent that concerns about training standards on the MAX were not restricted to that aircraft alone. It was obvious that there is a need to review the way that pilots are trained to fly all types of public transport aircraft.

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