Originally Posted by Zaphod Beblebrox
I will pollute this thread with some musings.
It has been ordained in the US that carriers are strongly encouraged to create training modules for AQP on revised stall recovery.
Actually, the “strong encouragement” came from the Flight Standards Offices in Washington, through the AQP Office, when various circumstances illuminated during the investigation of the Colgan Air accident. During this investigation, it came to light that airlines training under AQP were authorized to substitute some required tasks with another required task - where the tasks involved were thought to use or require sufficiently similar control applications. With this substitution/reduction in the tasks involved, it was almost immediately recognized that the newly available time could then be used to address other tasks or other training applications, like line scenario training. Unfortunately, in at least one case, a major airline was found to have completely eliminated the required training/testing task of “Recovery from Stalls/Approaches to Stall” and authorized the substitution of “Windshear Encounter on Approach” or “Windshear Encounter on Takeoff” to take its place, and this substitution had been in place for an undisclosed number of years.
When senior FAA managers learned that all AQP authorized airlines were able to make such substitutions, and without further, detailed, analysis of all other AQP authorized airlines, it would not be possible to say what other airlines, if any, may be authorized to make the same or similar substitutions. Without waiting for such analysis and because of the increased focus on airline stall training in the wake of the Colgan crash, senior FAA management officials immediately took steps to ensure that each AQP authorized airline was, in fact, training/checking on the appropriate “Recovery from Stalls/Approaches to Stall” task.
It would appear that instead of returning to the traditional task descriptions of training/testing in such “stall” tasks, either the airline or AQP managers suggested or encouraged the development of a task that was different from what was contained in the existing regulations and practical testing standards. As far as I know, whether or not there is one or more “newly developed” tasks and whether or not this/these task(s) are to be trained only, or both trained and tested, is unknown to anyone outside of the airline and the AQP management officials.