Australian Aviation College Planning for Growth

What has changed the airlines’ outlook on training, particularly in the last ten years, according to Robson, is the aircraft and the sheer cost of flying training. Modern airliner flight decks bear little resemblance to their counterparts of even fifteen years ago; round dials have given way to glass cockpits; computerised flight controls and flight management systems require new operating procedures; and three and four man crews have given way, for the most part, to two man crews with a great deal depending on the relationship and level of coordination between captain and first officer. Pilots today are as much systems managers as airmen. The airline pilot’s working environment- both physical and psychological- has changed almost beyond all recognition.

The importance of crew coordination, says David Robson, is greater than ever. Pilots must respect checklist procedures. They must respect ‘challenge and response’ procedures. Above all, they must be trained to mesh harmoniously as a team, and this is one of the AAC’s major training objectives.

As one can imagine training is not cheap. Most airlines cannot afford to put a trainee into the right hand seat of an empty airliner to carry out type conversion, though some still do this to teach approaches, takeoffs and landings and to experience simulated emergencies. Simulators have added a new dimension: it is possible now to train a Boeing 737 first officer without him actually flying such an aircraft until the day he makes his first revenue earning flight. But simulator time is not cheap and cannot be wasted on the breaking of previously learned and deeply ingrained bad habits. And nor is a scheduled passenger flight the best time to discover that an expensively trained new recruit has attitude problems not highlighted in the simulator which affect crew coordination and compromise safety.

It was factors like these which forced airlines to look very closely at their training requirements once they started recruiting pilots in significant numbers during the 1980s. This, in turn, inspired companies like British Aerospace to open its Flying College at Prestwick, Scotland. It also inspired Hawker de Havilland in Australia to look closely at requirements for pilot training in the fastest growing regional market in the world, and subsequently to enter the marketitself. What Hawker de Havilland identified, says David Robson, was a growing market in South EastAsia for pilots trained to such a standard that they could beinductedinto an airline, commence multicrew or type conversion training immediately and integrate straight into the crew environment of an airliner with the minimum of fuss, expense and physical or financial risk to either airline, or passengers.

In 1989 Hawker de Havilland bought the Australian Flying College, a long established South Australian institution based at Parafield, Adelaide’s GA aerodrome. The keys to the College’s continuing success under Hawker de Havilland, says Robson, were a determination not to reinvent the wheel by starting a new school from scratch; an advantageous location; and an early commitment to the project which broughtin turn an equal commitment from prospective customers. The Australian Aviation College had a first class reputation and, equally importantly, full Civil Aviation Authority accreditation and endorsement. Adelaide also offered a considerable amount of aviation infrastructure, excellent flying weather, and easy access to the city’s international airport. This last is important because the airportis the gateway to the College for overseas students and also because those students can learn to negotiate controlled airspace of different kinds in a way which would have been impossible in the congested airspace around Sydney or Melbourne.

By the beginning of March 1992, with over 200 cadets trained for eight airline customers, including 80 for Qantas, and three flight grading courses completed for the RAAF, the AAC had grown to a capacity of 180 cadets. For a time, the College was the only private establishment used for the ab initio training of Qantas pilots and flight screening of RAAF pilots- a considerable achievement. On March 6, however, the ADF signed a three year agreement with the BAe/Ansett Flying College in Tamworth for the RAAF and RAN’s flight screening and the Army and PNG Defence Force’s basic flying training needs. This agreement will be up for renegotiation in 1995 (refer p66 May 92AA).

The College’s other airline customers have included Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines, Merpati, Solomon Islands Airways, Air Mauritius, Air Niugini, and Olympic Airways, which says much for its acceptance in the region’s airline community. With a 16 student course graduating on average every six weeks, the College is now turning out some 130 airline pilots a year.

However, further expansion beyond the current capacity of 180 students a year will place an additional burden on airspace which Parafield shares jointly with Adelaide International Airport and RAAF Edinburgh. The College is now looking at establishing a satellite operation at a well equipped rural airfield nearby which, if the College expands further, would provide . an uncluttered environment for students in the early stages of their flying training. As an aside, establishments like the Australian Aviation College have also revolutionised the previously limited employment market for ex-military and civil instructors. Whereas many ex-military instructors might not have looked at civil instruction as a career, the College and other establishments of its kind around the world have created a stable market for properly qualified instructors with a genuine career path and appropriate rewards for experience and qualifications. At Parafield, for example, one of the flying instructors is a former Commanding Officer of the RAAF’s Central Flying School; two are former RAAF test pilots; and 80% are Grade 1 QFis with over 750 instructional hours to their credit. There is a wealth of wisdom, airmanship and experience available to the students which might otherwise have been lost to the aviation world. Drawing it all together has not been cheap though the expense is justified in view of the College’s aims.

The training philosophy at Parafield is based on the attributes required of an airline first officer who has the potential to make captain. The College has a fleet of 32 aircraft, including a Cessna Citation on long term lease, and 85 staff, giving an outstanding student/staff ratio. The training itself consists of two elements, both integrated but capable of being approached on a stand-alone basis.

The Ab Initio course lasts 52 weeks and takes the cadet from his first flight up to the awarding of a multi engine CPUCIR rating. The post graduate phaseis called the Airline Bridging Course and lasts 10 weeks. This introduces the pilot to multi crew procedures in an airline environment and, at the specific request of individual customers (such as Qantas), can include an element of what the College calls ALOFT, or Airborne Line Oriented Flying Training, in the Citation.

The Ab Initio Course is intensive. It needs to be in order to turn a young man or woman who may never have been in the cockpit of an aircraft before into a commercial pilot in one year. The course is divided into four distinct phases. The six week introductory phase consists of246 separate ground school lectures. The Basic/ UFR Navigation Phase lasts 14 weeks with 264 lectures, five hours on the simulator and 99 flying hours in the Socata Tobago. This is the equivalent of an Unrestricted Private Pilots Licence course and includes advanced handling, control and unusual attitude recovery as well as an introduction to navigation, night flying and IFR flying.

The Intermediate Phase is the longest, at 18 weeks with 70 flying hours in the Socata Trinidad, an increase in simulator hours to 10 and a massive increase in lecture hours to 480. During this phase the student consolidates he or she has learned before about flying, aeronautics and self discipline. The student also learns night and IFR flying in both controlled and uncontrolled airspace, and also carries out the aerobatic element of his flying training in a Mudry Cap 10. It might be considered by some that 15 hours of aerobatics is an indulgence for somebody who will end up flying an airliner, but thisis not so. Students graduate with both aerobatic and tailwheel endorsements on their licences and a priceless store of self confidence and airmanship. They know the limits of at least one aircraft’s flight envelope and have demonstrated to themselves that they can hit those limits and recover successfully. No simulator can create the same pride and self confidence a student feels in doing it ‘for real’ and getting it right.

The Course concludes with the Twin Engine Phase, a 14 week comprising 86 lectures, 40 flying hours in a Beech Duchess and 15 simulator hours. This final phase brings students up to Australian CPUCIR standard with over 50 hours as captain or first officer in both the simulator and a twin engined aircraft.

The simulators are generic rather than specific to type, and the most basic are really cockpit procedures trainers (CPT). The College has one ATC610 single engined CPT and two AST300 twin engined CPTS on which much of the basic instruction on multi crew procedures is carried out. More advanced types are however in the pipeline.

The ground training element of the course does not only include formal academic instruction: there is a disciplinary (more accurately, a self disciplinary) element as well- students are expected to be punctual and properly turned out; they are required to be efficient and well organised; and they adhere throughout to their parent organisation’s procedures and standing orders. An airline ‘feel’ is maintained so that students enter their working environment attuned to the mentality and standards which they will be expected to maintain during their careers.

The course tries to balance academic and instructional pressure with a pleasant off duty atmosphere. Students live in air conditioned four bedroom apartments, each with their own bedroom/ study. The students themselves run the bar and social activities, which gives them experience in administration and fosters a sense of responsibility. The college’s intention is to promote a standard of responsible behaviour which is maintained by peer pressure, leavened by the inevitable rivalry between students from different airlines. The atmosphere is considerably lightened, of course, by regular celebrations of graduations, first solos and the like.

One advantage of the College’s campus style arrangement is the chance it gives students to develop socially and personally. Unlike the service environment where a high ‘chop rate’ is acceptable, civil aviation places different demands on aircrew. A high ‘chop rate’ is not welcome because it drives the cost of training upwards; careful selection and recruitment ensures a low failure rate, but at the college students suffering from personal problems such as loneliness or temporary loss of confidence are surrounded by fellow students and staff who can provide the necessary support and counselling and assist the struggler over the obstaclesin his or her way. And in later years, as pilots advance in age and authority, the ‘freemasonry’ of shared training experiences may well prove important in the harmonious integration of regional airline activities or in the resolution of regional and global airline issues.

Adelaide has been likened to Edinburgh in Scotland but doesn’t suffer the Scottish city’s dismal weather. The weather at Parafield is consistently good, and South Australia’s weather and mixed terrain (desert in the north, sea and hilly country to the south east) provide enough variety to create perfect conditions for pilot training.

For most airlines, particularly those with their own multi crew and type conversion training programmes, the College’s Initio course is sufficient. They can then prepare the AAC graduate for line operations in their own way, knowing that they are working with properly prepared human material.

Hawker de Havilland discovered, however, that some airlines would like to be able to take students direct from the College into type conversion on wide bodied aircraft; others want also to ensure that students have received multi crew training prior to entering conversion. In certain cases, pilots trained to a high standard elsewhere (ie ex-military or GA pilots) would need considerable multi crew training before beginning conversion: try to imagine a veteran F/A-18 flight commander becoming a junior first officer, or an independently minded GA pilot sharing the controls of his aircraft with somebody telling him what to do, how and when to do it. This re-education process could cost the airline quite a bit. Hawker de Havilland therefore introduced the Airline Bridging Course.

This course can be taken once the Ab Initio Course is complete, or as a stand alone element for previously trained pilots. It lasts for 10 weeks and consists of 84 hours of lectures, up to 30 multi crew flying hours in the College’s Cessna Citation and 60 multi crew simulator hours, 30 of which are as captain.

The importance of multi crew training cannot be emphasised enough, says David Robson. The consequences of a breakdown in crew coordination, particularly in a modern airliner with a high systems management and monitoring workload, can be fatal. The airlines and regulatory authorities recognised this almost at the moment the first glass cockpit ‘electric jets’ entered service and the better airline pilot training courses have drilled this aspect of professional airmanship into students for a number of years now.

What makes the Australian Aviation College so unique, therefore, is the airborne element of the Airline Bridging Course. Using the Citation, the college exposes students to jet procedures and performance and also to the flight deck of the largest aircraft they will have flown up to that point. This builds up the student’s confidence in himself, but also that of the airline in the student’s student’sability. This last is crucially important: in a number of cases students will end upflying for airlines in places where, as a junior second officer, they will not be allowed to fly takeoffs and landings under certain conditions. Having finished an intensive 62 week course at Parafield (including the Airline Bridging Course), students may find themselves lucky to carry out one landing a month once they join the Boeing 747 or 767 fleets of their parent airlines. It is important to have ‘hands on’ experience of something which feels a little like a proper airliner.

Aviation, emphasises David Robson, is a “people business”. The human factor is isallimportant because the consequences of human error can be devastating. The basic features of people management are common to good flying schools everywhere: the nurturing of skills and self confidence; the pursuit of wisdom (as a pilot would understand the term); and the obsession with standards.

There are a number of documented instances where a breakdown in crew coordination and communication resulted in a crash. In some cases this resulted from too steep or shallow an ‘authority gradient’ across the cockpit- perhaps with a very junior captain and senior first officer, or a senior and autocratic captain with a very junior and uncertain first officer:

Cooperation is important, as is the learning of responsibility: students must learn how to respect and accept the authority of a superior, but also when to trust their own skill andjudgement, and on occasion to stick to their principles. Students of both sexes and widely differing backgrounds train alongside each other and learn to recognise and respect in each other the skills, professionalism and application which they themselves are developing. Aviation in general must benefit from such an approach, especially as College graduates achieve rank and stature within their own airlines and become role models for future generations of young aviators.

The Australian Aviation College tries to offer something else as well: Robson calls it “cultural sensitivity”. Thanks to a little careful thought at the planning stage of the new Cadet’s Mess, for example, the kitchens cater quite happily for the dietary needs of Hindu, Muslim and Christian students. Aviation specific English language teaching and radio phraseology is also part of the curriculum for those who need it; no student need be disadvantaged by his non English oral or written language skills, either during training or later on when he (or she) is climbing the ladder of responsibility and reward.

The ethos of the college is meritocratic: self respect and self confidence are vital parts of a pilot’s makeup; not only are these qualities nurtured in the student but also a respect for others and above all a respect for aeroplanes. Ego is de-emphasised and professionalism highlighted. This is the approach which best serves the airline industry and should provide the student with professional reward, personal satisfaction, and the best chance of living to a ripe old age.

Hawker de Havilland has also looked at the market for rotary wing flying training. The demand in Australia and overseas (particularly Japan) for IFR qualified pilots capable of handling large transport or passenger/executiveNIP helicopters is not being met at present by the supply of suitably qualified GA and ex-military pilots. The likeliest school would serve the top end rather than the GAmarket which isalready well served in Australia by the existing rotary wing training community.

There would be considerable differences between a rotary wing and an airline pilots’ school, however. The rotary wing market is more fragmented – there are more ‘one man bands’ and fewer Qantas sized operators capable of sending 20 cadets ayear to such a school. Also, the ethos is different: unlike the multi-crew airline environment, rotary wing operations tend to be single crew with a quite different approach to workload management. If the demand for such pilots is greater than a certain level per year, then there could be said to be a market for a dedicated professional rotary wing flying training school: that level must be established accurately if an economic student throughput is to be attained. These factors, among others, are undoubtedly exercising Hawker de Havilland and a decision on whether or not to enter this market is expected by the third quarter of 1992.