Welcome back. So far we've covered the what and the how of CBTA. But if you talk to heads of training or line pilots, there's still a lot of hesitation. Some worry it's too soft, some worry it's too subjective, some worry it's just a paperwork exercise, and a costly one on an industry already subjected to paper thin margins. Today, Cédric and I are going to debunk the myths and explain why CBTA is still so confusing to so many people. Hi, Cédric. Hi Bryan, happy to be with you again. You're getting used to this podcasting thing now.
Right, so I was explaining the other day to - let's call him a veteran pilot - I had him in the simulator, and I was quite enthusiastic with my approach to him. I said, look, he's only got two years left to retirement, so he's very much used to the old way of doing things. And I was explaining, look, hopefully by the you come back in a year's time, we will be, we would have adopted this CBTA philosophy in our training here at Simaero Johannesburg. And , like I said, I was quite enthusiastic about the change, talking about all the good things about it and what he can expect. His response was a bit different to what I was expecting. He said to me, But Bryan, aren't I just here to fly the plane? If I wanted therapy, I'd go to a therapist. Why are you grading my personality? And it sounds all a bit wishy-washy. What do you say ? What do you say about that?
SpeakerYeah, yeah, of course. My very first answer would be to say, I'm not going to give you any kind of therapy and even less evaluate your personality. This is not the goal at all. If you think that, I think this is because you have misunderstood what is CBTA, or nobody has explained to you clearly what it is and what is the goal behind that. So let's take 50 minutes to discuss about it and to understand what it really is.
Personally, I've sometimes had to deal with this kind of situation in my previous training organization, this kind of I would say, reluctant pilot or instructor. The best way I have found to explain it to them is to say: How would you feel if during your check you experience a completely unexpected situation and exercise and I fail you because of this unexpected situation and exercise? And most of the time the answer is that wouldn't be normal. It's not in the program, you have to follow the program. And that's where I say, do you really think a malfunction that you will be accounted for in the program the day it actually happens in actual flight? Well, that's what CBTA is about. And assessing your competency to predict your ability to correctly perform your duties as a pilot and therefore manage any situation. This is clearly the goal. So if you don't want to be failed during an unexpected event during a check, it's not the goal. The goal is to predict your performance in your future job. I think the best solution to this type of behavior of pilot and instructor is simply pedagogy. Human being is very often afraid of what we don't know, what takes us out of our comfort zone, and especially if we don't know the purpose. So I think the best answer to this kind of remark is to say, okay, come with me, let's discuss, I will explain to you, and then after, let's do your judgment.
Speaker 1Yeah, I can understand the concern from this pilot side because he's been involved, been with the airline for many, many years, a couple years left to retirement, and now this change is in. We don't really like change, you know, we want things to stay exactly the same. And he's had success with the old methodology, so there's this inevitable pushback that occurs. But listening to you speak about it there, my explanation of what CBTA is obviously wasn't accurate enough for him to buy into it. So I think that buy-in is important. I think that's also sort of part of what this podcast series is all about, you know, the education, you know, throwing it out to the industry, to the pilots so that they understand what is coming. So it's not this minefield and this complex thing that you're not quite sure. We don't like uncertainty, we want to know what we're going into. Simulator training. I mean, we as pilots prepare for simulator training you know, months in advance. You want to know what's coming, you want to get ready for it, you want to know, hey, where am I flying out of? What's our parking bay? What are the systems that we're looking at this year? And you do all this preparation. And we've encouraged pilots year on year, do the preparation. Don't arrive unprepared. So I can understand when you change the methodology, now there's this sort of uneven ground underneath your feet, and I suppose that's where the anxiety comes from.
Is there a risk, Cédric, that by focusing so much on competencies, we're raising a generation of managers, but not the best handling skill pilots in the world? Before you jump into that, it's part of my briefing. I always say, look, we're going to do a whole bunch of these tasks today, but one of the elements that is so critical is managing an abnormal situation. Just a standard abnormal that pops up on your enunciator panel or your EICAS screen or ECAM, and now you must handle the situation. And there's a multiple amount of things that could affect the outcome of your decision. Who you're flying with on the day, where's your base airfield, what's the weather like at your departure, your alternate, and I suppose that's what a pilot does all the time, but the focus hasn't really been there in legacy training. As we've said, the focus has been on the task and this sort of focus now on management. Are we not going too far towards management and missing out on the handling side? How do we find the balance here?
SpeakerYeah. I totally understand the concern, and you are not the only one to raise this question. My answer is quite simple, and there is no risk on this. On the contrary, it also aims to prevent this kind of deviation. Indeed, as we have indeed, as we are already mentioned, modern aircraft are increasingly complex and automated, which can lead to this kind of deviation. This is what you mentioned. Okay, right now, if you look at the A350, it's doing almost everything, even the coffee. But CBTA takes this into account through the definition of the competencies themselves. Two of these competencies defined as purely technical competencies. Even if it's a combination of knowledge and attitude, they have been defined as technical competencies. And one of them is even dedicated solely to piloting the aircraft and manage the flight manually. So they recognize that out of the set of nine competencies, one of these ones is fully dedicated to fly the aircraft manually. Thus, depending on the pedagological objective of the training, special emphazis can be placed on this competency to verify that the pilot still retains their initial competency of manually piloting the aircraft.
SpeakerWhich is what we say to them as an instructor, fly, navigate, communicate, fly first. So let's not forget that the weighting of each competency is equal. The goal is therefore to see if a pilot is able to mobilize the right competency at the right time. In order to mitigate threats or correct an error. So sometimes it may involve PSD, problem-solving decision and making, sometimes it must involve flight pass management manual. And it is clearly where the competence of a pilot is. To know, and this is why we train them, to know that in this situation I need to mobilize more my management, my situational awareness and my problem-solving decision-making side. Because due to this situation, I'm managing my aircraft, I'm ahead of my aircraft, I'm managing my automation. And sometimes it's the opposite. Okay, now due to the very critical situation, I need to come back to the basics, fly the aircraft. So let's train on this.
While you're speaking there, a light bulb went off in my head. If, it goes back to my scenario I said earlier on dealing with an abnormal, so in the past, we'd think about your standard LOFT flight that you might do in a simulator. Departing from airport A, supposed to arrive at airport B. Let's say you've got airport C in the middle, that's your alternate, and at cruise level, you get an enunciator light or EICAS message comes on, which changes all your original planning. You might not be able to continue to your destination airfield, you might have to turn around, go back to your departure aerodrome, you might have to divert to your alternate, multiple amounts of options, and a huge amount of variables, weather, all sorts of things. So taking into account these competencies, something that we encourage, and I can start to see how this sort of training is probably without us knowing, becoming a little bit more and more aligned. If a captain has to make a decision, and he's flying the plane manually or even on automation, he's probably increasing his workload by , he's increasing his workload enough to prohibit him from probably making the best decision. In order for him to make a the correct decision, he'd be better advised to hand over control to the first officer in this case. He can then sit back, knowing that the first officer's looking after the aircraft and talking to air traffic control, so he can make an actual decision. And in that case, the decision making is the most critical thing. Yeah. We're looking then at decision making, we're not looking at his flight path management and manual flight. So I can start to understand how you can piece all these things in, and just by hearing you speak, I can already start to figure out how this will play out.
SpeakerIt's exactly what you're saying, it's exactly the case. In the end, I can have an outcome. If I take your example with this situation, I say yes. The captain was very good at piloting the aircraft, no problem. But the problem is the passenger is dead. The passenger is dead. So is there any outcome of safety? Yes. Because it due to the bad decision he took, the passenger is dead. So I cannot say I don't care about how he flew the aircraft, but it was not the targeted competency. He was in a situation where there is no reason to take manually the aircraft, the automation was well set, the system is well working. This situation mobilized more problem-solving decision making and situational awareness rather than piloting the aircraft.
Speaker 1And all those competencies, Cédric, are given the same amount of weight for each course. You don't say for a command upgrade, problem solving and decision making is important, and we give more weight to that than flight path management as an example.
SpeakerYeah, this is where we can have a slight difference, meaning that during the session, the weight is the same. But to determine the pedagogical objective and the task we are going to put in front, it's a difference. This is what I explained in the previous episode, saying, okay, depending on my pedagogical objective, I will file these special competencies in order to reach the objective. But as soon as I am in the aircraft, the weight of the competencies are the same. Because if I take the example, maybe the captain can take the right decision, meaning yes, for a command upgrade, it's perfect. You took the good decision, but you don't know why during the very last time, during the final approach on the diversion airfield, it did a huge mistake which compromised the flight safety. And in this case, you cannot say, I know, I cannot blame you because it was not the goal of the session. You cannot say that.
Speaker 1In the previous session, we spoke about the the course building and that, and listening to you speak there now. Command upgrade course, problem solving and decision making will obviously be something that's looked at quite a lot, but then your course build will have a decent amount of options for you to assess that. Whereas flight path management, you know this captain flies relatively well. You don't have to do a hundred exercises to see if he can do an accurate steep turn as well.
SpeakerYeah, because as soon as you take a decision as a captain for your course, then after your career, you're still flying your aircraft. So you have to start the descent, contact the ATC, apply the procedure for the descent, and even if it's not basically the targeted competency, because it 's a captain upgrade, so you're supposed to be competent in this competency. In these competencies, you can do mistakes like this. And this is where also the system is very powerful for me because it permit to avoid to enter in the overconfident side and to say, okay, I'm a captain, I don't care about procedure. Believe me, this procedure, you can avoid this and avoid it. Because this is at one moment, this is what can kill you.
Speaker 1It
reminds me of a graph. There was , see if I can get this right. It spoke about your your experience and your conscientiousness, and your experience sort of goes up over time, but your conscientiousness line goes in the opposite direction. You've got a brand new pilot that's starting his type rating, very low experience, but high level of conscientiousness, good attitude, and it starts very high, but over time that starts to go down as well. And where those two lines intersect, you get a little bit of a danger zone. You don't want to become overconfident, particularly if you don't have the experience to back it up. Yeah. And then it becomes very risky. Again, let's look at that. How could we tackle that in the simulator environment? In other words, we observe a bit of overconfidence in the briefing, even the approach to the simulator training could be a little bit sort of too relaxed for the instructor's liking. And then you start to pick up these things in the simulator that maybe you know not reading a checklist properly or reading a checklist, you know, off the top of the head, not actually reading, and just little things that to a non-pilot that probably wouldn't pick up, but you can tell there's just a little bit of overconfidence creeping in. How could competency-based training solve that problem?
SpeakerAnd again, this is where it becomes so powerful because, if I can make the parallel with the EBT because it has been defined in EBT, this is because that we call the ITT, Individual Tailored Training. And when your course is well designed, you have as an instructor at your disposal a set of basic tasks, but you know that these tasks permit to target these specific competencies. And when you have this kind of situation, the bad thing is you know that okay, this is exactly yes, the captain is a little bit, or even sometimes it could be the first officer, is a bit too overconfident. You say, okay, for this procedure I don't care, etc. etc. And this is where you know, as an instructor, you have a set you can say, okay, you're overconfident, no problem. I will input a totally unexpected threat. Which leads to if you want to overcome this, if you want to mitigate this unexpected threat, you need to mobilize the targeting overconfidence, weakness, competence. And by doing this, in the end say, oh and in this case, due to the fact, again, as an instructor, you have experience, you know that it will not necessarily be a mess, but something will be wrong in his management. And this is where you can take it, you can say, Okay, let's debrief. Okay, what happened? Tell me, you facilitate as an instructor, you facilitate what happened. How did you handle the situation? Why? And with this kind of things, you start to decrease a bit the over confidence to say, okay, look at what did happened. This is what will happen tomorrow in flight. When you will have a failure in flight, the failure never say, okay, call you. Okay, Captain, pay attention, you're going to have a failure in two minutes. It never happens.
Speaker 1And I suppose if you can get the crew member to realize that himself and be able to probably in his own debrief maybe admit "I was a little bit overconfident", then it turns out that it was a really successful session, then.
Yeah, and I think there is also a confusion about the word experience. I used to say, okay, the best example I can have is Captain Sullenberger. Say, okay, it's the perfect example. Right now is an example for everybody in aviation. I say, okay, is it experience or is it competence? And also, okay, it's experience. I say no, it's competence based on experience. Because the confusion is in word experience. If you come back to the root of experience, it's a Latin word saying, okay, experience is something you have ever lived. Yes. So, yes, for sure, when you have 10,000 hours, you are experienced because you lived a lot of situations in the cockpit. But as soon as you are in front of a situation that you have never lived before is no longer experience, yes, it's purely competence. But then this is where metacognitive skills come into play. Because based on the experience, you will use your metacognitive skills to say, okay, I have my experience, the situation is different, but I can do this, this, this, and this. And this is the competence.
Speaker 1Yes, experience is one thing, but if you've got experience 10,000 hours being a bush pilot or something, probably doesn't put you in a good position in an airline, to which will be very focused on standard operating procedures and that and handling abnormals. Yeah. All right, no, makes
sense. Let's put ourselves in the instructor seat again or at the instructor station. I'm an instructor, you're an instructor, and I'm we're looking at situational awareness. I give the crew member a two, and you give the crew member a three. As an example, I know that's an old way of marking something, but your view was that the situational awareness was better than what I viewed it. The system sort of breaks down then. How do we at Simero train the instructors to make sure that we are all seeing the same thing?
SpeakerThat's an excellent question. First, I would say it depends on the robustness again of the course design. Why? As mentioned earlier, you're going to say I'm insisting a lot on the course design, but as mentioned earlier, if the course design is not robust and clear, instructor won't have a point of comparison for observation and therefore an objective evaluation. This is a fundamental element. So necessary, you will have this kind of situations. It's a two, it's a tree, yes, we observe the same thing, but due to the fact we don't have the same point of comparison, then after it's only based on personal experience. Then, of course, if you want to be objective, it requires strict and rigorous standardization for all instructors. This standardization most of the time takes place in two phases. The first one is that we call the initial standardization. It's a course merging theoretical training and practical training where we teach how to conduct a CB TA session, how to perform an objective assessment according to C BTA principle, etc. etc. But let's not be naive it's utopian to believe that as soon as you're going to leave this course you say okay right now I'm CBTA instructor I'm the best CBTA instructor . It's totally false. Being CBTA instructor it's a daily job but first it's a daily job of an instructor to be a good instructor because an instructor who never questioned himself is not a good instructor for me. And for CBTA instructor it's the same thing. You're going to leave this initial standardization course and then after is the day to take job to say okay I question myself based on what? Based on the behavior of my student. Based on the situation I'm facing as a CBTA instructor. So this is the basic thing. And to help them to even I would say progress, improve in their way of being a CBTA instructor, we have the second phase which is a kind of recurrent training for instructor which is called the ICAP so Instructor Concordance Assurance Program which is a very simple and very basic exercise done with a certain population of instructors when you show them types of scenario. Most of the time it's a recorded scenario in simulator or in flight whatever. And the goal here is just to debate between themselves okay what do I observe? Oh I observe this oh I observe this and then after use this scenario to recalibrate everybody to say okay you see what you have observed it's a judgmental observation. Look at what is done look at what are the observations ah yes it's a bit judgmental. And for the other ah yes you okay it was objective and thanks to this recurrent exercises more and more you are going to calibrate to target your instructor population on the same objective.
Speaker 1Yeah I like that idea of you know having a look at what each individual instructor sees because no doubt we're all going to notice different things. A little bit like a young pilot at the beginning of his career he'll fly with a captain that might be particularly good at dealing with the passengers very good passenger announcements you might fly with someone else that's you know flies really well and you know take all those little individual things to to build up your tool set. Inevitably in an instructor meeting you do end up with the odd argument that happens because you've all got different ideas on how to achieve the specific task but that's key because we're not looking at the task so when you're looking at the competencies I can see how alignment might happen a little bit easier. My question I was going to ask you and I've changed my mind it was: Is standardization across the instructor pool harder to achieve in CBTA than in legacy training? But listening to what you said to me it sounds like it would be easier because of the focused attention towards the competencies as opposed to having 50 or 60 tasks that you're all trying to get alignment on.
SpeakerBecause now we're actually trying to get alignment on non-competencies not a whole bunch of maneuvers. I would say yes and no, in an ideal world you're totally true and this is my perspective this is clearly what I would like to push in our organization and all other clients we can have but I would be lying if I told you yes it will happen all time long. Why? Implementing CBTA is not always smooth sailing it takes time , it requires investment and especially from the instructor meaning that first you need to be convinced of the benefit of this system. If you are facing a population of instructors not convinced by this, this is the point where CBTA standardization will become harder than legacy standardization. As far as this job of involving instructor, convince them, you have done the hardest job and in this case it becomes easier to work on finite number of competencies again rather than try to standardize them on on a several numbers of task.
Okay let's go one step further. I flew my previous airline had two fleets there was a CRJ fleet and a Dash 8 fleet and the instruction that you received between the different fleets was different that different instructor pool different ideas and over time it gets wider and wider so with CBTA would it be easier to have instructor standardization through the entire airline as opposed to what's happening at each individual fleet?
SpeakerBecause I know that's a problem throughout the world but CBTA maybe it solves that problem as well? Definitely, because again if we think in terms of pillars, teaching and learning what's the difference about teaching and learning on a CRJ or an Airbus A320 or a B737? Briefing methodology, debriefing methodology, session conduct is the same. This is the first thing and the second one is the assessment. This is an assessment method, assessment method is exactly the same whatever the aircraft. The only one thing that we change between these aircraft, is the behavior I'm supposed to observe during the session because the automations are different, the control laws of the aircraft are different, the management of the failure is different because on some very modern aircraft the aircraft is able to manage the failure on its own and your job is just to check if everything has been done correctly by the aircraft and on some other aircraft you have to do the things by yourself. But it's just again this is just a guidance a behavior you're supposed to observe but the associated competencies are the same and the way to conduct the session is exactly the same.
Speaker 1Yeah the Dash I pilot is gonna be monitoring... Looking at the same thing to the the CRJ pilot and ultimately come to the same. And again, we have the perfect example even within the same I would say aircraft manufacturer. Managing an engine failure on an aircraft and on other aircraft it does not necessarily mobilize the same competence and the same expected level. Yes. Managing an engine failure on a modern aircraft it's in terms of flight pass management could seem quite easy.
SpeakerWhy?
Speaker 1Because even in autopilot the autopilot is correcting the yaw effect, is correcting everything so in this case we come back: what we expect from a pilot? A management , a decision etc. etc. Compared to , I would say, a more basic aircraft where priority is fly the aircraft first, and in this case for the same basic failure expected competencies are not the same. Right
let's move on to the airlines. We spoke about the airlines at the beginning and the razor thin margins that they have to deal with many of them feel rather paralyzed at the moment because they think they have to change everything overnight is there a step-by-step approach to CBTA maturity? Yes, definitely. It depends first and foremost on my type of organization. Am I an airline? Am I a training organization in sense of ATO? Or am I both? From there anything is possible depending on the wishes of the current philosophy already implemented and where do you want to go. For instance for EBT, so remember it's the application of CBTA in traditional recurrent training and checking the transition is at the same time simple and complex.
SpeakerComplex why? Because it can be a long journey and also because of the regulatory framework which is relatively strict. But in the same time simple because this same regulatory framework give you the different steps that you have to follow. Yes and for instance in EASA, switching from legacy recurrent training and checking to what we call full EBT the good name is Baseline EBT it's almost, I say almost because there is a very slight possibility, but almost impossible they force you to do a transition with mixed EBT before. So this is a stable approach. And even, this is EASA, but even at IATA level they highly recommend to switch from legacy to mixed EBT and then after to baseline EBT. Regarding CBTA since the regulatory framework is not currently defined it is up to the organization to implement it as they wish, at their own pace. We can certainly consider initial providing information or standardization to instructors just for the instructors to be aware of okay what are the competencies, what does it seem etc. etc. Give them the time to ingest this new concept before jumping to the course design and do a full implementation. But last example if okay I am an airline I'm already baseline approved meaning that I am quite advanced in this kind of implementation and can say okay my next step is just to implement the same thing in my ATO.
Speaker 1So in this case you can adapt it you can jump directly to the full CBTA implementation because you are ready to that.
So this is of course our core business at Simaero, airlines have a difficult job as it is, on-time performance, service bulletins, things going on around the world, closed airspace , you traveled to Johannesburg now to do this podcast and no doubt you the route that you took here was probably I don't know sometimes ago to the east sometimes to the west of Africa all the way around airlines are dealing with these things on a on a daily basis. A shift in training philosophy can be seen as a massive burden to those airlines. Can Simaero assist your airline with the solution with real tangible results? That's clearly our goal, we want to support all our clients who wish to make this transition and change. We can offer a whole range of services I would say tailored to the needs of the airline and I insist on this, this is clearly tailored to the needs of the airline or the training organization depending on their current transition status.
SpeakerFor example we can perfectly support an organization from scratch meaning moving from 100% legacy training up to complete EBT implementation for the AOC part and in parallel implementation of the CBTA part in the ATO. But we can also support just as I mentioned previously the transition to CBTA meaning that okay "hi I'm currently baseline I just want some help to implement the course design part of the CBTA mind training organization". So the only question here is where they are currently and what they need. Our approach is not to offer package solution but rather to work on partnership tailored to the real need.
Speaker 1Yeah package solution would be just too generic for something like this and then it's almost the easy way out. Here's the package take it, it's up to you. We actually want to work with the airline partner as you say and an airline success is our success. The airlines need us for the training we need the airlines to exist we need the pilots to actually train. Cédric very very nicely done there you broke it down beautifully and just from my side I've been with Simaero for many years now and I'm so excited about this direction that we're going we're taking CBTA training very very seriously it's going to play a big role in our company going forward so get in touch with us we're a phone call away an email away and no doubt you can contact any of us and we'll steer you in the right direction . We've got some very knowledgeable people in the company like yourself that are focusing on this subject and that is your focus. You're focusing on this and this alone and that what's going to be key. It seems the confusion often comes from trying to apply old thinking to a new framework the goal isn't to make training softer but to make it more rigorous regarding the human factors that actually cause accidents in the next episode we're going to leave the classroom and jump into the simulator we'll discuss what CBTA actually feels like from the crew and instructor perspective. I'm Bryan Roseveare with Cédric Coffignal join us in the next episode.
SpeakerThank you Bryan.