Did you? So you can probably explain what is a competency base training?!?! And in what aspects is it new? Yes he's been able to reply longs answers to short questions, but he's clever enough to stay very vague. Are you naïve enough to think that MPL reinvent the training process, the way we learn skills and acquire competency?
Well I think I did...
OK I grant you 'competency based training' is not a new concept as such, but I don't think Dieter Harms is claiming to have invented it. It was however a novel idea to conceptualise it more for the purposes of teaching someone to fly.
In essence "competency based" can mean different things depending on the context.
In an interview for example "competency based" means asking questions based on real life experiences, getting a candidate to illustrate their "competencies" by using examples. So as opposed to asking "what is your attitude to personal conflict" the candidate might be asked to illustrate a time they had a disagreement with someone, how they dealt with it and how they learnt from it.
In the context the MPL what it means is from an early stage the student is continuously assessed against "competencies" such as decision making, situational awareness and physical skill. These concepts are obviously not new at all, but what the MPL is trying to do is conceptualise them in a more formalised way so that they are embedded as a basis for everything.
Because in the ATPL context the concepts are often introduced in a more haphazard fashion and often learnt by hard experience rather than by indoctrination from the outset.
When I did my PPL there was not really any conceptualised grounding at all, concepts of decision making, threat and error management etc were all introduced often in random and uncoordinated fashion with the emphasis on the outcome being one of achieving a certain standard of physical skill.
Going back to the video; what I understood from it was not that anything new has been "invented", that is not what is being claimed here. What is being done is an attempt to gather together all the concepts that aviation has developed over the years that make it safer and more efficient and integrate them into the training structure from the outset. The theory being that if they are embedded the pilot will have a better understanding of the "competencies" s/he needs to operate the aircraft successfully.
Another point, Lee asked him why would the airline go for the MPL, he asked, "is it cheaper, is it faster?" and the senile man replied, "it's neither, it's just better". What a joke, in both cases the Trainee pays for his training, in both cases the training all the way up to the type rating doesn't cost a penny to the airline.
That is obviously the case in the UK but it isn't everywhere, a lot of MPL courses are sponsored. Anyway I don't see what that has to do with understanding his argument in its essence.