Evidence Based Training for Pilots. What does it mean?
 

Flight International 26 June-2 July 2012 has an article by David Learmount on pilot training. He quotes extensively from speakers at the Flightglobal Safety in Aviation -Asia conference held in Singapore in May.

One speaker - Bill Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation, states pilot training is "dangerously outdated"...warning that rules and practices that favour quantity - like the accumulation of flight hours - over quality in terms of measurable piloting performance, would not have a beneficial effect on airline safety standards.

Captain Dieter Harms owns the title of "father of the MPL". He defined "pilot core competencies" as a group of related behaviours, based upon job requirements, which describe how to operate modern multi-crew transport airplane safely, effectively and efficiently. They (pilot core competencies) describe what proficient performance in all phases of flight operations looks like. They include the name of the competency, a description, and a list of behavioural indicators."

I won't bore you further since my eyes have already glazed over at this bumpf because frankly I have no bloody idea what these eminent(?) speakers are on about.

Captain John Bent, Asia Manager of the Professional Aviation Board of Certification (PABC) talks about "how modern line pilots should be kept up to speed with their job". The article says Bent is a fan of cutting-edge thinking among training planners, and practioners at the Royal Aeronautical Society, IATA, ICAO and airlines like Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Virgin Australia, Qatar Airways and Air Transat who are recent converts to evidence-based training.

Will some kind soul with lots of patience please tell me what is this "Evidence-based training?" How does it differ from normal flying training that I and thousands of my ex-Service pilot and civilian trained compatriots have experienced in the past sixty years. And flew safely, too. :confused:

We are just starting on evidence based training, so we have to learn a whole lot. However under the existing rules it is a very cautious departure from the dreaded standard training and checks that basically only rehashed the same items every six months since there were so many boxes to tick that a normal simulator session is just about enough to cover them all.

Now the items to be trained will be based on industry based problematic areas (last few years basic manual IFR flying to counter LOIF) where deficiencies have been identified as well as those discovered by data mining through all the FOQA data within the company. There are still some standard boxes that have to be ticked every training event though.

Inferring from other disciplines it probably amounts to -- as Denti has mentioned -- putting an emphasis in training on those aspects of the broad range of pilot skills where evidence suggests that the most prevailing and/or hazardous problems lie at the moment (which are probably not the same today as they were in the past sixty years).