The heart of the new Airman Certification Standards is risk management. This essential wisdom was added to the limited PTS focus of skill and knowledge in 2016 to form the complete pilot experience of “know, do and consider” – knowledge, skill, judgment. These factors dynamically determine the safety of every flight. This new flight training initiative was driven directly from the aviation accident data. These numbers reveal over 80% of accidents result from human failings – usually bad judgment and flawed decision-making. Refining and improving judgment is a difficult, ongoing and never-ending challenge. It involves the internal battle within every pilot each time we fly; balancing utility with safety – often what we want against what is possible and sensible.
The primary methodology for training and testing risk management is the creative use of scenarios. Since flight training is necessarily conducted in a very limited environment of geography, weather, and equipment, the instructor (and later DPE) must mentally transport their learner into new and challenging imaginary situations to build and improve the decision-making skills that result in safer outcomes. Thought we train in one small area and climate, we should theoretically experience a broad range of challenges. One additional advantage of this method is the safety benefit of failing in the mental arena rather than a real airplane; no one dies in a table top scenario! The best aviation educators are masters of creative questions and scenarios.
Simulators provide a deeper and more realistic version of scenario training (as well as enabling specific skill/drill procedure training), allowing an imaginative educator to more realistically transport their learner into all kinds of challenging environments. Each new scenario requires a different toolkit of skills, knowledge and judgment to prevail. The additional advantage to simulators is creating these “learning opportunities” without adding the expense and inconvenience inherent in a gas-powered, gravity-challenged devices. When learning occurs in this manner we are all safer!
The use of scenario-based training in general aviation became accepted and popularized though the availability of realistic full-motion simulators for the GA market – largely Redbird. SAFE’s original Executive Director, Doug Stewart, developed the Pilot Proficiency Project with Rich Stowell and created an ingenious catalog of masterfully crafted scenarios deployed on the Redbird Simulator. These original scenarios now number over 30 and are featured every year at Oshkosh in the Pilot Proficiency Center. This SAFE
project was the first nationally recognized use of scenario-based training in aviation, focusing largely on decision-making and risk management. Expanding this further, the SAFE Pilot Training Reform Symposium in Atlanta in 2011 led directly to the FAA/industry partnership that resulted in the ACS.
We are lucky there are so many wonderful tools now available to foster personal improvement in risk management. This has become the accepted industry standard of aviation safety training. These are also valuable for aviation educators to employ as resources in flight training. The FAA Risk Management Handbook is the official source document from which many other documents flow. This is cited frequently in the ACS. The Aeronautical Decision Making chapter in the FAA Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge is also a solid resource for pilots seeking excellence or educators working with learners. The FAA has a dedicated page of CFI scenarios to help jump start your imagination and help you create your own. The EAA Pilot Proficiency website has a comprehensive catalog of scenarios for the Redbird [here]
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