Line Training Question Bank

[Bushpilot7]

Hi all.

I have been tasked with in house line and route checks at the company that I work for.

I mostly see line check captains ask technical questions during these checks, but I am trying to bring a bit more to the table, as there are plenty of other things such as crm/awops/etc to consider, especially when conducting P1 upgrade sector training.

We operate multi crew, single engine turbine aircraft from an international airport to quite a few bush airstrips.

(Something to consider: I don’t come from an instruction background)
Thus I am looking for advice, and specifically questions and answers, etc that I can use during line training.
I am in the process of building some form of question bank, with topics ranging from aircraft technical, operational considerations, awops, crm, emergencies, difficult customers, unknown scenarios, etc, but my imagination only goes as far as my nose.

The idea is not to bombard the person next to me with 100 questions per flight, but rather to build confidence and knowledge so that they will be better prepared in their role.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[ScepticalOptomist]

I would think about your particular operation and tailor the questions accordingly.

I think using someone with no instructing background to conduct line / route checks is a recipe for disaster unless you are committed to learning the art of instruction.

A generic bank of questions and answers won’t serve you well. Thinking about how you go about your operation and asking questions you know the answer to may be a better approach.

Good luck.

[BoeingDriver99]

I think you can have a question bank for technical stuff like "aircraft technical, operational considerations, awops, emergencies" but for "crm, difficult customers, unknown scenarios, etc" you can create scenarios that get the candidate to stop and think before they speak and to use their experience and technical knowledge to come up with solutions.

There are no 100% correct answers for CRM or difficult customers but there are correct thought processes and that's what you want to check and develop.

An example of a scenario is:

Your First Officer turns up at report time looking tired and dishevelled; a little bit worse for wear. What do you do?

The assumption that people fall into is taking basic data to create a narrative in their mind and come to a conclusion without testing it - ie the FO is tired from a night of partying/hungover so you should offload them and report them.

Or you stop and think for a second; then ask some basic questions "Hey mate, how are you?" "How did you sleep?" And they answer "Sorry, I'm a bit tired this morning; we have a newborn baby at home so it's all hands on deck at home - keep an eye on me today!"

A scenario like this gets the candidate thinking and using reasonable questions to find out more facts to create a more accurate representation of the scenario and the ability to judge it more accurately.

[Bushpilot7]

Just to clarify, I mentioned no instruction background, as I haven't done any instruction in quite a few years - but I did the rating quite a while back, and use some of the fundamentals quite often during multi-crew flights. I have also been part of training at the companies I have worked for previously.

I am merely asking for suggestions to broaden the scope of questions.
Any questions received will be thoroughly checked and changed to fit our operations of course. :ok:

[Bushpilot7]

Yeah totally get what you are saying.

It is exactly this part that I'm trying to broaden the most.
...scenarios that get the candidate to stop and think before they speak and to use their experience and technical knowledge to come up with solutions
The rest of the questions as you mentioned are either right or wrong. I have quite a few of those to ask, but I am always trying to work on getting more.
People talk, and it is easy for one crew member to tell another one what I have asked during our flight, which defeats the purpose of teaching/questioning the next crew member.

[excrab]

When I was a line trainer, and at every airline I’ve worked for before or since there was no need for a “line check question bank”. When I first started as a line trainer we would do checks from an operating seat, but that changed at the end of the 1990s and since then annual and final line checks have been conducted from the jump seat observing a properly constituted crew. Normally the check is also to assess CRM and NOTECHS as much as flying; and those can’t be assessed if the line trainer is interfering, if I was being checked and the trainer started interrupting with irrelevant questions I would ask them to shut up or sit in the cabin and let us get on with the job of safely operating the aircraft in accordance with company SOPs.
Line training sectors, of course, are different.

[Bushpilot7]

It will be for line training sectors. Line checks as you said would be slightly different

[Check Airman]

Yeah totally get what you are saying.

It is exactly this part that I'm trying to broaden the most.

The rest of the questions as you mentioned are either right or wrong. I have quite a few of those to ask, but I am always trying to work on getting more.
People talk, and it is easy for one crew member to tell another one what I have asked during our flight, which defeats the purpose of teaching/questioning the next crew member.

The problem is that we don’t know your operation. You’ve got to be talking about things specific to your operation to make the questions of any value to the student or the instructor. A British Airways 747 “question bank” would bear little resemblance to the EasyJet equivalent.