Welcome back to our Simaero special series on CBTA. In episode one, we defined the philosophy. Today we get practical. You cannot just buy a CBTA manual and hope for the best. It requires a system. We call this the three pillars: course design, teaching and learning, and assessment. If you change one but ignore the others, the system fails. Before
we dive into this though, Cédric, I ended the previous episode by mentioning resilience. You and I had a conversation about that in the post-podcast debrief. You were quite adamant that we need to speak about resilience a bit more. Can you elaborate on why?
Speaker 2Yes. Hello, Bryan. So indeed, everyone is talking about resilience in modern aviation, especially when discussing CBTA. First, the concept of resilience discussed here doesn't correspond to the initial historical psychological concept of resilience linked to post-war trauma. It's rather its modern meaning, which can also be illustrated by perseverance, by a fighting spirit that never give s up. So the ability to recover from a difficulty, in order to overcome the next one with the same strength and level. So, what is the connection between resilience and CBTA? Well, it's quite simple. A pilot will only be competent if they are able to demonstrate perseverance throughout the events that may occur during the all flight. One of the major challenges of the CBTA is therefore developing pilot resilience in order to make them competent. This concept is entirely new and doesn't appear in legacy training. So you're probably going to ask me, but how to develop pilot resilience in such context and their competence. The direct link between resilience and competence is no other than confidence. indeed the entire purpose of the training component and new teaching method is to increase the pilot confidence or decrease in case of overconfidence, because we have also to take into account the case of overconfidence. And by improving this confidence, they will be able to react to all situations with the same intensity, the same level of performance, and thus demonstrate the full extent of their competence.
SpeakerYeah, it's nicely explained. I must say I like it when there is a word like resilience. It's easy to understand. It's not a scientific word, and it's something that a pilot can work with. You can talk about resilience in a briefing, and everyone will sort of be on the same page. Thanks for that.
Let's jump into the three pillars, starting with the first one, course design. Now it sounds like course design is a major part of this process. It sounds like you need expertise to be a course designer. Can you elaborate on the first pillar course design?
Speaker 2Yes, for sure. The course design differs in that it focuses on competences and no longer necessary in compliance at time or task as we discussed during the first episode. This doesn't mean compliance no longer has a in the course design. It's part of it, but it's not the main driving element.
SpeakerWhen you say that, do you mean compliance with certain task exercises that goes back to our example of a steep turn and a V1 cut? Is that what you're talking about? Compliance, those need to be in the course?
Speaker 2Yes, exactly, because even if there is officially no framework, for instance, for a type rating, an OSD, it's an OSD, and we need to comply with the OSD of the manufacturer. So we have no choice, whether it's CBTA training or legacy training, even in CBTA. So if the in the OSD, it's okay, you have to necessarily work on this failure during the type rating. Even if we have CBTA, we have to work on it. So we have to take it into account, but we change the mindset in how we take it into account. The CBTA design methodology is based on a specific thing that is called instructional system design. And in the civilian pedagogical engineering side, there are a lot of different instructional system designs,
course design. And the one taken from CBTA what we call the ADDIE model. So the ADDIE model is almost like a full-cycle system with the first A meaning analyze. So we need first to analyze the training needs. What do you need? Then, after based on this first Analysis, design the course. When we have Design the course, we can Develop the associated material needed for instructor, for trainee, etc. When these three pillars have been done, we can Implement it, run the course, and after the end of the course, we need to Evaluate the outcome of the course. And then after the cycle start again, based on the data collected from the course, on the evaluation received, we can fine-tune, restart with analyze, etc. And we can therefore see that this methodology is much more structured and coherent, performance-oriented than simply corresponding to compliance acting or ticking the box task.
SpeakerYeah, because we're trying to achieve a specific output at the end. So in the old days, you know - maybe just explain this for some of the non-pilots out there - you would have a matrix of tasks that needs to be completed over a certain amount of sessions, and we would pick and choose what tasks get achieved in what session. Relatively easy to put together. And once it was done, it was done. I think there are a lot of training organizations that the program was built in the early 90s, it's probably still exactly the same. From what I can hear here, it's sort of ever evolving because if you're evaluating your program, you start again, it just keeps, I suppose, getting better and better and in turn safer and safer.
Speaker 2Yes, of course, because once again, we are thinking in terms of competence and not in terms of task. And due to this fact, when you collect data, you collect data about how pilots are able to demonstrate their competence. And due to the fact pilots are human beings and not machine, necessary, you will have different output and different data. And based on this data analysis, you identify in a certain specific population, it can depend on an airline, it can depend on an aircraft type, the strengths of this population, and the weaknesses of this population. And thus, if you want to be an efficient training organization, you have to renew your program based on the weaknesses you have identified in order, again, to improve the competency level of the pilot.
SpeakerYeah, and I'm sure people listening are starting to put the puzzle together in their head. And obviously, the course design, it's not one of the questions that I originally planned on asking you, but let's just talk about that for a second because it's such a key part of this entire philosophy. You're an expert in CBTA, that's why you are here speaking about it. I'm a pilot, I'm an instructor, I've been in the industry a long time.
We spoke about your history into aviation a bit yesterday. Can we just go a little bit deeper into your journey into CBTA? Because I think there might be some other people listening around the world saying, I wouldn't mind being a Subject Matter Expert on this, particularly if it's going to become the big thing we're saying it's going to be. Might be a bit of interest out there. How did you become a Subject Matter Expert on this?
Speaker 2Yes. First, I had the chance to start my career in the French Air Force. And as an instructor in the French Air Force, I had this big chance to have an evolving position. And especially in the instructor side of the French Air Force, you have different qualifications purely from a pedagogical point of view. Meaning that, okay, being an instructor, for sure you need to be first a good pilot, but it's not enough. So that's why I had a lot of training about pure pedagogy. So that helped me first to handle the teaching and learning part that we will discuss later on. Then, after I had the huge chance to join Airbus in 2019, and this was just one year before the official one of the major books was published by ICAO, which is the Pans Training, the 9868 document. And at that time, Airbus was very keen and very involved in this transition to CBTA. And from day one, when I joined Airbus, I was enrolled in this process and this transition, and I had the chance to meet a lot of people from IATA - because IATA, as we said yesterday, is pushing a lot for this - to perform a lot of workshops with others at the very beginning, we were not Subject Matter Experts because it was a new training paradigm, a new training philosophy. So we sat together, we brainstormed together. We went to see ICAO, we discussed with ICAO, we discussed with airlines, we discussed with everybody in order to set up this to try to find practical aspect of this CBTA. And then after, as soon as this famous document, the PANS training came up, again, we did the same thing. How to translate this very theoretical document, but very good document, into practical aspects for airline.
SpeakerSo something I'm picking up there as well, and I'm sure you'll agree with me on this. You actually took the time to go and read that manual and understand what it says. And I think that's where a lot of the misconception is as well, because pilots, we like to fly, we like to be in the aircraft, but reading manuals is not our strong point all the time. So if you want to get involved, you have to actually understand it at the the baseline level and then keep working your way through. We'll jump back into the course design
part. If at Simaero we're designing a course, let's start with the maneuver. Let's say engine failure, after take off, for a single engine go around. Do we design, do we start with the single engine go around or do we start with the competency? So which one comes first here?
Speaker 2Once again, we have to remember that maneuvers are basically tasks and therefore they are only a tool for demonstrating one or more competencies. So, thus, when we design a course, so this is again the D, the first D of the ADDIE methodology, we don't think about maneuvers. And even we don't think about competencies at first from the outset. The first thing we are thinking about is the training we are going to deliver. What is the pedagogical objective of this training? What are, in case of, if applicable, the sub-pedagogical objectives? We need to think first in terms of words, okay, what is the reason for this training? Based on this pedagogical objective, I say, okay, in order to achieve this objective, which competency do I have to develop and demonstrate? And only later on, I say, okay, I know what are the competencies I want to observe, I say, okay, what is the ramp-up? I want to have the most efficient but also a smooth path of competency ramp-up to say, okay, I will not jump directly to situational awareness if I don't know my office. And once this competency ramp up has been done, then after I say, okay, now I have everything in terms of competency, which tool will I use in order to demonstrate and to improve in those competencies? And this is where tasks come into the game.
SpeakerAnd on the course building side, you know, speaking about the competencies and the actual task, you're, let's say, a course builder, you're building the courses for Simaero. How involved would the instructors be or the examiners in that course?
Are they involved in any way? Do they come to you and say, look, we need to move this around or place something else in between this and that exercise? What role does the instructor play there?
Speaker 2They are still necessary involved in the training. The only one difference between what we can find more often right now it's purely pilot who designs a course. Why? Because again, it's a list of tasks, this is a very specific thing. Right now, due to the clearly the teaching and learning pillar, one important part of the course can be delegated to a pedagogical engineer. There is a lot of pedagogical process behind this. So, and even for which instructor and pilot are not trained for. You are a pilot, you are an instructor, you are a good instructor, you know the basic of teaching and learning, you know how to a trainee, but you have not been trained to be a pedagogical engineer.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So there is this new, I would say, new jump which appears. However, a pedagogical engineer will never know which failure exactly will be the good one in order to tackle the good competencies at the right time. Because they are not pilots, they don't know the aircraft. So, right now in the course design, this is the good balance between pedagogical engineering and experience of a pilot, of a TRI, of an instructor to say, okay, this one, I want this one at this time because I'm can guarantee you that if you do this in this situation, situational awareness, workload management, problem solving will be necessarily demonstrated.
SpeakerYeah,
fully understood. It opens up to my next question. So let's just talk about the instructor for a second. I'm an instructor, I've spent a decent amount of time instructing, and my approach to instruction has been very influenced by my past, my previous airline, what I've learned from my colleagues talking to people at Simaero, various instructors from both Simaero and other airlines. And you develop this sort of toolkit. I've always encouraged young pilots in a debriefing, you know, write down as much as you can, gather as much information you can. At the end of your career, you'll have a nice book of notes that might be useful to you one day. But point being, I've been very influenced by what I've seen. I've also been on the receiving some poor instruction that I haven't adopted. And for me, that poor instruction felt like myself and my fellow crew member at the time, a huge amount of anxiety thrown at us and the instructor sort of keeping really quiet, sort of facing the instructor operating station, not giving us a lot of input. And I've done my best to make sure I definitely don't bring that into the simulator. Point being, I'm very influenced by my own research and by who's instructed me in the past. The word instructor seems to even be being used a bit less and less when we talk about CBTA. Is the instructor still instructing or is the instructor doing something else completely different? I've heard the word coaching thrown around as well. Can we talk about instructing coaching and where it's actually going? Because I'm sure there are some people listening that are going, okay, I'm an instructor, and if my company adopts CBTA, what am I going to be doing in the simulator?
Speaker 2Yes, very good question. In CBTA, instructor certainly still have the role of instructing, but it's also much more than that, and their role is quite comprehensive and important. This may seem strange, as you mentioned, to many people, but today CBTA instructor are also referred to as a coach. It's not just what I say, it's not what you say, it's not what I say. It's coming from directly from ICAO. ICAO itself says it. Indeed, just as pilot competencies have been defined by ICAO, instructor competencies have been defined by ICAO. And as we said yesterday, we have Observable Behaviors for pilot, and I've also defined instructor's Observable Behaviors. And one of them is clearly coach the trainee. So one expected instructor behavior is to coach the trainee. So, what does this mean? I think I would jump a bit aside from aviation. The best way to illustrate it is to draw a parallel with the world of sports.
SpeakerBecause when you coaching here, the first thing I think about is, but you know before you get there, don't lose your train of thought because I want to go back to it. But
I must say I prefer coaching. I prefer that term because that is actually what we are doing. You are working with the crew member to achieve with nowadays with CBTA these competencies at the end, but instructing is almost too harsh. I prefer the word coaching, I must say.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly. Indeed, what is the role of a coach for an athlete? He's not the one who's going to dive into the pool to win the Olympic Games. The coach is side of the pool, but his role is to understand his athlete, where are the strengths of the athlete, the weaknesses, the areas of improvement, in order to be able to work on it and to achieve in the end the best performance, the best possible performance. a coach pushes an athlete to question themselves. The role of a coach is to say, okay, question yourself on this, this, and this. Why? You have to find the solution on your own, because if you find the solution on your own, you will be even better. In this case, for in CBTA, it's exactly the same thing. A dapting to the training, working with them, identifying and understanding their strengths, their areas of improvement, and encouraging them to find on their own the solution to improve and thus become competent. So, in other words, today the instructor must ensure that the trainee becomes the driving force behind their own training. I would say a a famous quote says, Explain, I will remember. Involve me, I will understand.
SpeakerYeah, for sure. If we stick with your analogy of coaching in sports, how critical is a good coach in sports? I mean, I'm a South African, so rugby mad, we've got the best rugby coach we've ever had, the results that we're seeing on the rugby field that there's no surprise that we're getting the best results we've ever had. But you can go, you look at football, Alex Ferguson. A coach can make or break a team. Certainly can make or break an individual if you take individual sport like tennis or Something. So if we are gonna go down this coaching route, we've got to make sure that the coaching, that the crew members, is on point. Yeah, you can have a good coach that's great, you don't want a bad coach because it's going to affect you terribly. So let's move on to a little bit of a controversial part.
If it's called CBTA, and the A stands for assessment. Now, how do we assess communication or leadership? They sound a bit like personality traits. And are we trying to assess this personality? Is it a personality contest? What happens if I'm friends with one the crew members? I know he's a nice guy, so automatically he gets my tick box, he wins the personality contest against the guy sitting next to who I don't know.
Speaker 2Yeah. I will answer the question by giving you a question: Tell me what is assessment according to you.
SpeakerSo trying to assess the crew member against a specific standard that is set and any deviation from that. So in my mind, you've got a a standard that is laid out, and how did the crew member deviate, either positively or negatively from that standard? That's how I think about it.
Speaker 2Yes. Okay, and how the standard is defined.
SpeakerWell, the standard is defined in my head, I suppose. And that goes back to my original question about what I've learned in the past. Yeah, I've had an instructor that was absolutely pedantic about landing on the center line early in my career, and it had a positive impact on my flying for my whole career because it's something I always concentrated on. And I'd be in the simulator and a pilot would land to the left or right to the center line. And, when I would debrief on this, almost shocked that I've never been told this before, didn't think it was such a big deal. The ERJ 145 is not the widest aircraft in the world, so why can't I land to the side? But it's my standard that I have that I'm sort of transferring to the crew members. Yeah.
Speaker 2And yes, this is exactly where subjectivity starts. When the instructor has to refer to his own experience to define his standard and his expectation. To come back to my question: what is assessment? The answer is quite simple. Assessment is defined by a comparison between why I'm currently observing
and what I want to observe. Meaning, in other words, what I observe compared to my expectation. And this is where we begin the mandatory interconnection between the three pillars. Why, if my course design doesn't clearly define my expectation for the target competency for a specific thing, I won't have an objective point of comparison. So what would be my basis? My basis will be my own experience. But my experience, as you mentioned in your previous example, my experience is not yours. So as an instructor, because maybe sometimes one day I've been shocked by an event, I say, okay, no, you have to learn especially, pay attention, it's purely on the run-rate center line. Say, okay, my expectation is this one. So you will assess according, even if you assess according to certain competencies, but competencies linked to your expectation, maintaining run-rate center line, etc. etc. And in the end, for sure, the collected data will be subjective because it's based on your experience. So that's why this interconnection between pillars is so important because this is thanks to the course design that you will have the objective expectation. Your role as an instructor is not to guess on your own what I'm supposed to observe for this task or for this exercise. This is a standard that's supposed to be defined for everybody for the same session, for you and for me, or for another instructor tomorrow. If I go in the simulator for the same session on the same aircraft, your expectation has to be the same as mine. So it has to be defined earlier.
SpeakerYeah, defined earlier in the process, made very clear to everyone what that standard is, and then you're working with the same toolkit, instructor to instructor. Exactly. Which is more scalable, it's more consistent, it can be consistent through simulator centers, it can be consistent through different airlines. Makes a lot of sense.
Observable Behaviors. Can you give me a concrete example of an observable behavior for a specific competency?
Speaker 2Yes. So we began to answer this question in our first postcast. Observable Behavior is an inseparable combination of what we said yesterday, knowledge, skills, and attitude. And it is these same behaviors that allow me to demonstrate my competency. We cannot objectively know what is the weight of each of these KSA elements in an observable behavior. It's not possible, but again, it's not the goal. Okay? I observe or do not observe. This is factual. This is factual and objective. Whatever the weight of the knowledge, whatever the skills, whatever the skill, whatever the attitude. I know that I have observed. I'm an instructor, okay, it's a guideline, I have to observe this or this. So the instructor role becomes to identify why it wasn't observed, finding the root cause of this omission, but fundamentally this observation remains factual and effective. So to come back on your question, a concrete example of Observable Behavior will be the following. In the situational awareness competency, one of the Observable Behavior is monitor and assess the aircraft's energy state and its anticipated flight path. Therefore, if a trainee demonstrates their ability to manage their aircraft energy state, especially during approach, for instance, and demonstrates also the capacity to anticipate the aircraft trajectory based on the aircraft energy state, in the end, they say, okay, you have demonstrated part of the situational awareness I'm expecting from you. And sometimes this is why, again, this is a point we will discuss later on instructor standardization is so important. Because if you ask to a lot of instructors, okay, energy state, what is it? A lot of them are going to say it's piloting skills. No, energy state, energy management is not piloting your aircraft, is be aware of what your aircraft is doing.
SpeakerA little bit like if you are just staying with this analogy and trying to bring it into the pilots here, if you're on a final approach and you're looking at your TCAS system and you've got a good sort of overview of what the traffic looks like on final approach. Could we say that a good observable behavior characteristics is taking into account more I think ATC is gonna slip me in behind this aircraft. I better start slowing down now, as opposed to someone else who's just cracking on at a decent speed that hasn't got this big picture yet and gets himself in trouble and ends up having to orbit or something like that. Because we see this all the time with flying. Yeah, and to some pilots, it's totally natural. They can see the picture, they understand what ATC is going to do, and they make the change before it happens. You can even demonstrate this in a very simple way in the flight deck by knowing what frequency you're going to change to next. You know, if you are, as an example, moving from you know Cape Town East to Cape Town West, 1247. I know the next frequency I'm gonna need is one, two, five decimal one. So it's in the box there, ready to go. You're always one step ahead of the aircraft.
Speaker 2Exactly. And this is why this new training system and this new training paradigm is so powerful. Because what you are mentioning is the perfect example, what we used to we used to have for decades. But the problem is right now, most of the time, there are two solutions. Either you say, okay, you are done piloting your aircraft, or for good instructor to try to link this behavior to what you mentioned yesterday, airmanship. But the problem is, okay, today I don't have
the tool to officially fail a pilot there are lack of situational awareness, because okay, it's situational awareness is not part of the theoretical assessment. Right now you have the tool to say, okay, you failed your type rating because you are not situation aware. And because you don't manage, you don't anticipate. And anticipation is one of the main elements of the situational awareness, but right now you have the right to fetch somebody because he didn't anticipate.
SpeakerSituational awareness is such an important big big topic, and you're totally right. So I you can't go and put a cross by situational awareness at the moment, and a type rating gets failed. You'd have to have tasks that were failed or not completed, which are those tasks are probably well, they definitely are carrying way less importance than situational awareness.
Speaker 2Yeah, and again, this this is where course design becomes important. Because if you think if you no longer think in terms of tasks, but in terms of competency and pedagogical objective, it's very simple. Meaning that during the course, during a type rating course, you will observe all competencies, the nine ones. But what is the most important? Okay, you will have communication. Are you sure communication is what we call a special emphasis for type rating? No, because for type rating, the goal is to learn a new aircraft, be efficient on your new aircraft, so you will focus on application of procedures, these kind of things. But now for common course, is it application of procedure the most important thing? No, for common course, you are looking for leadership to work, problem decision, problem solving, decision making, situational awareness. So based on this, you say, okay, the goal of my common course is to work on this. So I will create a scenario which focuses exactly on this one. So again, it clearly depends on the objective you want to set up.
SpeakerYeah, that's very interesting. So from course to course, we're actually looking at different Observable Behaviors, different competencies for certain things. Yeah, type rating, totally different from command upgrade course or even an airline assessment or something like that.
Speaker 2So even during a type rating, you will be in a position to observe leadership teamwork because you are going to manage unforeseen situations. So as soon as, even as a first officer, when you are managing an unforeseen situation, you are supposed to demonstrate part of the leadership teamwork, etc., etc. But this is not the point on which you're going to focus. If there is an outcome of safety, for sure, you cannot say, okay, it's not the goal. I will forgot the leadership and teamwork. But this is not a point on which you're going to insist a lot. But in the opposite thing, in common course, for sure, this is the point on which you are going to focus.
SpeakerYeah, that's very interesting. Very, very interesting. It's a positive, a very positive thing. And I think that the the benefit out of, we mentioned the two different courses there, type rating and uh command upgrade, you'll now get the full benefit out of the course that you're actually doing because the focus is in the right direction.
So CBTA, Cédric, is a full package deal. The next episode we're going to tackle the elephant in the room confusion. Why do so many smart aviation professionals struggle with this transition? We'll look at the myths regarding subjectivity and safety standards. I'm Bryan Roseveare, joined by Cédric Coffignal. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1Thank you, Bryan.