Airmanship which remains largely undefined, is the aviators version of Seamanship - the art of operating a ship or boat. Thus the Gosport System is heavily intertwined with Airmanship.
Airmanship has always been clearly defined although at the last FI seminar I was at I noticed that none of the 28 instructors could define it either, although that is par for the course with current low standards. How on earth can you teach airmanship if you don't know what it is? I seem to remember we had this discussion a while ago with instructors who couldnt understand what situational awareness was either! (TEM, by the way, has been part of the FI course for the last 10 years, I know of)
Airmanship is defined by EASA as: “The consistent use of good judgement and well-developed knowledge, skills and attitudes to accomplish flight objectives.”.
In my day at Oxford it was, “ to take the safest and most appropriate course of action in a given set of circumstances”
TEM seeks to quantiy many of the factors we currently list under Airmanship. Re-educating those who have been brought up the old way is a difficult if not impossible task therefore presenting new ideas may appear to overide traditional common sense.
Again incorrect, TEM address partially the realisation by agencies throughout the aviation world that 70-90 % of accidents have a human factor element within them.
Telling pilots that they need to keep a good lookout in the circuit is good airmanship but it doesnt really address the problem of the aircraft you didnt know about joining from the crosswind deadside and colliding with you at circuit height (Leicester) (Hamble)
Airmanship is more an attitude, TEM is scenario based risk management
Threat and Error Management is branded as the 'new' Airmanship.
But does TEM replace Airmanship completely, or compliment it?
Both approaches put flight safety first.
TEM tends to offer a more 'professional' approach to 'airmanship' by discussing those topics before flight in a way that a seasoned (professional) pilot would do.
TEM isnt in any way the “new airmanship” nor does it replace it . It is part of Airmanship as is Aviation Decision Making, Cockpit Resource Management and Situational Awareness. However all these new airmanship tools have been developed from within professional public transport flying not within the flying school community where they are still trying to extricate themselves from WW2 Tiger Moth instruction and work out if they should be doing taxy checks or not!
TEM also is an academic exercise so you cannot liken it to Smith Barrie’s teaching(apart from he was the first instructor to probably think outside the box) which was about practical flying instruction in the air involving technical skill. TEM needs to be taught on the ground and it’s about encouraging pilots to think about and manage specific risk.