AVIATION VOICES
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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ATPG

ATPG 2.0

The Aircrew Training Policy Group, an independent cadre of subject experts who help to advise EASA, unofficially, on near-term issues and long-term strategies for flight training, has a new cast of characters and a range of ambitious projects. Rick Adams, FRAeS, spoke with ATPG Chair, Capt. Andy Mitchell, FRAeS.

“ATPG is very much a tactical group. Can we help the industry to have better communication channels, be able to speak and talk quicker to identify pain points and really just get feedback in both directions”, Capt. Mitchell told CAT. The former GB Airways and easyJet pilot and A320 trainer took on the Chairperson’s role of the Aircrew Training Policy Group earlier this year, succeeding Capt. Andy O’Shea, FRAeS (former Head of Flight and Cabin Crew Training for Ryanair and now CEO of Airline Pilot Club). Mitchell founded the Madrid, Spain-based aviation tech company, Use Before Flight, which focuses on evidence-based training solutions.

“We come to the group as independent experts within the industry. We’re not an official advisory group and therefore we are not political at all. We are purely technical. When something comes up from one of our sub-groups where we want to feed it back to EASA, we do it via the right channels”, Mitchell explained.

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