Area9 Lyceum Blog

Retraining Will Be Crucial in Aviation’s ‘New Normal’ 

As the global airline industry comes back from the pandemic, staffing could become a challenge—particularly if the ramp-up in flight capacity happens quickly. The goal across every airline will be to align rehiring with the pace of the rebound, so as people are rehired, they are also retrained quickly. Reassigning and reskilling, as well as training in new safety and operational protocols, will require adaptive learning to get people up to speed efficiently and effectively.

For years, the aviation industry has used AQP to train pilots and flight instructors, with exceptional results: even though air traffic has increased, the number of accidents continues to decrease. But just as the industry continues to innovate and evolve, so too must the tools and methods of training, in order to keep pilots, crews, and passengers safe in the skies.

When an airline needs to train, you know it’s no small undertaking. From flight operations, to airport and network operations, a large airline has to train thousands of employees. The obvious choice for training on this scale is to utilize online training.

In the age of social media, when companies can be held accountable at the click of a button, employees’ relationship with the public needs to be courteous and professional at all times.

Unconscious incompetence is one of the most prevalent and damaging problems facing the aviation workforce. Ever heard the saying, “You don’t know that you don’t know”? In a nutshell, that’s what unconscious incompetence is, and its effects on job performance are pervasive.

Pilots and flight instructors have different objectives for different jobs and require different content to be trained effectively. While traditional e-learning programs may struggle to handle different needs, Area9’s biological model makes it easy to train for different skill and experience levels, as well as for different but related roles.

Safety in the sky depends on your pilots updating their skills and refreshing their training periodically. 

Aviation industry training depends on data collection to demonstrate that training happened and that it was successful. While AQP does collect data on participants, it typically relies on a pass/fail metric that does not differentiate between a trainee who demonstrates mastery and one who barely passes.

Which is preferable? Training that treats every pilot the same, regardless of knowledge and experience level? Or one that personalizes the learning and adjusts to each pilot based on what they need? 

Onboarding a commercial pilot takes a long time: at least 2 months training with the airline. While time spent onboarding new pilots is crucial from a safety and compliance perspective, it also means fewer qualified pilots available to fly at any given time — and that’s a problem.

Despite advancements in technology, traditional challenges in pilot training persist:

The implementation of the Advanced Qualification Program (AQP) in 1990 changed aviation industry training for the better. With its emphasis on company-specific, innovative, and flexible training, and its data collection capacity for auditing purposes, AQP is a more creative and effective approach to aviation industry training than more traditional methods. And the results show that it works: there are fewer fatal airline accidents now than in the past — 2017 was a benchmark year for airliner safety.