A4.B.2 Overview

#Why EBT exists

The development of Evidence-based Training (EBT) arose from an industry-wide consensus that in order to reduce the aircraft hull loss and fatal accident rates, a strategic review of recurrent and type-rating training for airline pilots was necessary. The existing airline pilot training requirements in national regulations are largely based on the evidence of hull losses from early generation jets, and on a simple view that, in order to mitigate a risk, simply repeating an event in a training program was sufficient.

At the same time, aircraft design and reliability improved substantially, leading to a situation where many accidents occurred in aircraft that were operating without malfunction. Controlled flight into terrain is a good example of this principle, resulting in a hull loss where inadequate situation awareness is almost always a contributing factor.

It is impossible to foresee all plausible accident scenarios, especially in today's aviation system where its complexity and high reliability mean that the next accident may be something completely unexpected. EBT addresses this by moving from pure scenario-based training, to prioritizing the development and assessment of key competencies, leading to a better training outcome. The scenarios recommended in EBT are simply a vehicle and a means to assess and develop competence. Mastering a finite number of competencies should allow a pilot to manage situations in flight that are unforeseen by the aviation industry and for which the pilot has not been specifically trained.

#The data sources behind EBT

The availability of useful data covering both flight operations and training activity has improved substantially over the last 20 years. Data sources such as flight data analysis, flight observation in normal operations (e.g. LOSA) and air safety reports give a detailed insight into the threats, errors and risks encountered in flight operations and their relation to unwanted consequences. An enhanced analysis of training results demonstrates important differences of training needs between different manoeuvres and aircraft generations. Availability of such data has both established the need for the EBT effort and supported the definition of the resulting training concept and curriculum.

The aim of this program is to develop and evaluate the identified competencies required to operate safely, effectively and efficiently in a commercial air transport environment whilst addressing the most relevant threats.

#Aircraft generations

The following table describes the different generations of aircraft through examples of each. EBT can accommodate all generations of aircraft. The aircraft an EBT programme actually trains depends on the operator's fleet; the table below sets out the universe.

#Background

The evidence-based training project is a safety improvement initiative. The international Standards and national regulations for airline pilot training are largely based on the evidence of accidents involving jet aircraft of the early generations, apparently in the belief that simply repeating pilot exposure to "worst case" events in training was considered sufficient.

The availability of data covering both flight operations and training activity has improved substantially over the last 20 years. Sources such as flight data analysis, flight observations (e.g. LOSA programs) and air safety reports give a detailed insight into the threats, errors and undesired aircraft states encountered in modern airline flight operations as well as their relationship to unwanted consequences. It was considered logical to review current training practices in light of evidence from these data sources.

#Connections

• A4.B.1 EBT Introduction. The history brief this overview extends with the data-driven case.
• A4.B.3 Human Factors Model. Reproduces the Performance-Influences model that the EBT instructor uses to think about the competencies surfaced by the data analysis.
• EBT. The methodology this reference is the operational handbook for.
• Core competencies. The framework EBT recurrent training assesses crew performance against; the technical / non-technical legacy split is replaced by a single competency vocabulary.
• Controlled flight into terrain. The example accident class the overview cites for the reliability-era situation-awareness deficit.
• LOSA. The line operations safety audit programme; one of the data sources underpinning the EBT analysis.
• Threat and error management. The frame the data sources operationalise.
• ICAO-9995. The standards-body publication whose per-generation appendices encode the manoeuvre and scenario detail this overview references.