Instructor

I can still clearly remember a conversation with one of my first flight students (1980). He was a good student who went through his private pilot training and passed his practical tests with relative ease. On the day he became a private pilot, I asked him what he planned to do with his new certificate. “I am flying my family to Disney World,” he proudly reported. That gave me a serious pause. To fly from our airport in Tennessee to central Florida, this newly minted private pilot would face challenges that were never really addressed in our training syllabus. Even though this new pilot had been a great student, was he really ready to face the “real world"?

I started asking the question: In addition to basic pilot skills, could we also teach how to deal with the pressures that appear so often in accident reports? You never experience “get-there-itis” on a Saturday afternoon flight lesson with your CFI. But you do feel that pressure when you have a prepaid, non-refundable vacation planned for the family.

That concept of teaching pilots in a way that would better prepare them for what they could ultimately face became fascinating to me. Through research I’ve learned that scenarios do not replace basic piloting skills (some call this stick-and-rudder skills). No matter what else happens, pilots must always be able to land in a crosswind, recover from an unusual attitude, and navigate from point to point. In the beginning, advocates of scenario-based flight training probably did not do a great job of explaining what scenario training is and what it is not, because there was the perception that “pro-scenarios” was equal to “anti-maneuvers” or against basic piloting skills. That is simply not true, but unfortunately that perception still is held in some places.

Good flight instructors have always incorporated real-world scenarios into their flight training. So what is different about scenario-based flight training from what has already been done? The difference is that scenario-based training increases the realism of the situation and incorporates real-world consequences that pilots face into the lesson. I break this down into scenarios that take place “inside” the lesson and those that take place “outside” the lesson.

Inside-the-lesson scenarios are the type that good flight instructors have always incorporated. During a flight lesson, a CFI presents an unexpected but hypothetical situation to the student—such as deteriorating weather or engine roughness—and expects the student to respond to the situation. These are basic skills, and there will never be a time when a pilot should be without them.

But this is a training situation, not a “real-world situation.” In the real world, there would have been a reason to have been making this flight in the first place—like taking the family to Disney World. In the real world, not reaching the original destination will result in some serious pressures that were not present in the training environment.

Outside-the-lesson scenarios are used to simulate this additional pressure because they give the flight a reason to have happened in the first place. Pilots must also practice saying no to pressing ahead, even when that decision will be difficult, inconvenient, and unpopular. Helping pilots make the safe decision, in spite of the fact that it would be an unpopular decision, is the goal of scenario-based flight training.

Research into scenario training has produced some important results. One of those results is that the FAA now recognizes and uses scenario-based methods. The FAA can’t dictate how pilots are trained, but the FAA does dictate how pilots are tested. During the new practical exam that is administered to an applicant for a pilot certificate, “The examiner shall evaluate the applicant’s ability throughout the practical test to use good aeronautical decision-making procedures in order to evaluate risks. The examiner shall accomplish this requirement by developing a scenario that incorporates as many tasks as possible to evaluate the applicant’s risk management in making safe aeronautical decisions.” The PTS also instructs examiners to, “develop a written plan of action for each practical test. The plan of action will include a scenario that allows the evaluation of as many required areas of operation and tasks as possible without disruption.”

Using scenarios to test pilots is a relatively new idea for general aviation, but the FAA did not make this change without good science to back up its decision. That data came from scenario-based peer-review research. The initiative was called the FAA Industry Training Standards (FITS). FITS was a voluntary program intended to help flight instructors incorporate real-world scenarios into their teaching. FITS was also a “proof of concept” project to see if, in fact, blending scenarios with basic flying skills would yield improved results. After 10 years and hundreds of flight students, the facts are in—teaching people to fly by combining basic flying skills with scenarios does not diminish a pilot's stick-and-rudder skills, but does improve their aeronautical decision making, their ability to assess risk, and their single-pilot resource management.

Scenario-based pilot training teaches pilots to make difficult decisions when it really matters while maintaining basic stick-and-rudder skills. Complete training means being able to both be an expert manipulator of flight controls and an expert manipulator of pressure situations.