Post COVID skill degrade
 

Must be looking in the wrong place, but can't find anything on this here.

I have been out of the seat since March 20th 2020. Finally have a possibility of being back in the air before this Summer is out.

Just renewed my LPC and am interested in experiences, thoughts articles on degrade/ refresher training as it was clear my muscle / brain memory is not where it was.

Some short haul guys were out for a few months, for some long haul it will be over two years. What are the common problem areas you have experienced?

What i have seen, several times in my career, after being out for 6 to 9 months, was mostly a degradation in SOP skills, but surprisingly not in manual flying ability, that was like riding a bike. Getting my time management and smooth flow of SOPs back to normal was more of an effort.

Now, airlines are very much aware about skill loss, and in my experience usually plan extensive training before one is allowed to fly unsupervised again. And yes, even short haul guys have been sitting on the ground for 2 years now. In my current outfit the return to work schedule for those who have been out so long is pretty much a full OCC, so one or two weeks of ground school and quite a few simulator sessions followed by mandatory line flying under supervision.

Was off line for medical reasons for eighteen months at one point in my career (Long haul)…five or six sims and a couple of line trips for the requal.

Very much agree with Denti’s observation that the handling skills came back fairly quickly but it took a while longer for the SOP flow and time management to recover…

Interesting guys thanks for that. I guess many of us have been in the situation where one of a 2/3/4 man crew was back off an extended break. With other crew looking out for one guy it is all a bit of a non event. When the entire crew have a handful of hours between them in two years things could get interesting quite quickly. Has anyone's airline increased report times for those newly back on line?

For those interested I spent some time researching this against IATA's 9 pilot competencies, measuring their decline, methods used for study and actions taken by airlines. My thesis and academic papers as they get published are available through ResearchGate