In the glare of the violent agreement above, the discussion might have overlooked the likelihood of achieving more or improved training, even with some reduction in ‘checking’.
Also, whether this training would achieve the desired safety improvements; can we ever be sure that training aimed to improve human performance will always result in improved performance during challenging events?
I would argue that the industry is max-out, no more training time / money. Improvements have to come from within – less checking as per Airbus; more learning, but what and how. A premise of learning is first learned, best remembered, thus initial type rating training for understanding may be of greater value than recurrent checking. However, more time during recurrent training on generic awareness and decision making could have even greater learning value (generating experience), particularly if supported with everyday refreshment – debriefing.
In a very safe industry rare events standout; yet each event differs. Similarities can be identified but often this depends on who looks and what is sought – agenda bias.
The initiating scenarios often involve the man-machine interface in normal operation opposed to the oft cited manual flight. All of which must be viewed against the complex backdrop of modern operations; man, machine, environment.
Projecting accidents back from result to identify a cause can easily focus on the last activity – manual flight (hindsight bias); however viewing a range of ‘most likely’ initiating situations which lead to a result might identify contributions including man-machine interface in normal operations – awareness and decision making. In this there is little or no association with manual flight until the event has developed, thus for these rare and demanding events avoidance must be the priority; avoidance requires understanding.
Recent accidents also have indications of systematic failure, where all levels of the industry contribute, more often with latent factors, which when these come together present situations which pilots have not been, nor can be trained for.
For this the industry needs to consider alternative paths to improvement or at least maintaining safety levels, not just training.