The role of chief pilots

But what support is available to chief pilots in firstly passing the CASA interview and then developing the skills and systems to fulfil their legal responsibilities? This is a relatively simple question that generally is answered by an uncomfortable silence.

A lot is expected of chief pilots but there are no readymade solutions that a prospective or new chief pilot can turn to. CASA has a useful Chief Pilots’ Guide, but it doesn’t provide the ongoing support or skills that chief pilots need to continue to grow throughout their careers.

Understanding and enforcing the regs is one thing, but where do you get the skills to know when and how to give one pilot a bit more confidence while reining in another who is demonstrating potentially hazardous attitudes? People management, leadership, standard setting and maintenance, systems establishment and monitoring, both broad and deep knowledge of the sector they are operating in, and understanding of the critical role of culture and communication to forming an effective team need to be covered. Add to this the obvious technical knowledge essential to supervising pilots, aircraft operations and maintenance and the skills to respond to a critical incident, and it seems obvious that chief pilots should at least be given an insight into those skills before they have to jump into the deep end.

AAAA worked some years ago with BAE Systems at Tamworth to deliver two successful chief pilots courses that provided a lot of this training, as well as establishing a mentoring and contact network that would stay with pilots long after the course.

AAAA then worked closely with a provider to develop a web-based course that would culminate in two or three days of face-to-face training and assessment.

AAAA pursued CASA approval of the course so that ‘graduates’ could automatically be accepted by CASA as having the skills to be a chief pilot.

The AAAA’s intention was to provide CASA with an opportunity to both improve and simplify the very subjective and sometimes chaotic system for approval of chief pilots, at the same time freeing up their resources to focus on passenger carrying operations.

This was a far superior proposal to the situation where CASA FOIs might require a candidate for an ag operation to prepare a flightplan, conduct a cross country or do a ‘check ride’ – none of which is particularly relevant to ag operations in mostly single seat aircraft – especially where the FOI had minimal, if any, real world experience of actually flying an ag operation. Seldom were the real safety issues of the candidates’ capability of managing safety or people investigated.

Never one to give up, and with new management in place in CASA, AAAA is now positively engaged in making this a reality. The potential outcomes are that CASA benefits by simpler processes and smarter use of scarce resources, industry benefits from better qualified chief pilots, and the chief pilots benefit from actually receiving comprehensive training before they start.

The key issue for the success of such courses, not just for aerial application but for a range of other operations, is CASA recognition of the course for the purpose of issuing a chief pilot approval after successful completion of the course.

The benefits of such an initiative by CASA would also help operators manage contingencies by allowing for the speedy approval of alternative chief pilots should the original chief pilot be indisposed. Having a couple of people in your company who had completed such a course would also help to improve company resilience, teamwork and culture. It would also facilitate a network of chief pilots that could act as a mentoring group capable of providing support to each other and advice on difficult issues that may be beyond a particular chief pilot’s experience.

It’s not often you can identify so many positives for such a relatively simple initiative where everyone comes out of it better off. CASA is to be congratulated for having a fresh look at a still relevant proposal.  Australian Aviation is proud to be the official supporting journal of the Aerial Agricultural Association of Australia. The views in this column are those of the AAAA, and not necessarily Australian Aviation’s.

A lot is expected of chief pilots but there are no ready-made solutions for a prospective or new chief pilot.