The NBAA’s safety committee wants business pilots to think differently about how they prepare for both initial and recurrent training. “Although the accident rate for business aviation has been very low … a number of accidents have occurred in which pilot training has been identified as a contributing factor,” the committee reported in an August 22 seminar held at the National Transportation Safety Board HQ.
Steve Charbonneau, the committee’s secretary, says that one identified weakness is the gradual shift away from training that provides pilots with learning and toward a process of simple recertification. “The industry needs sound leadership that believes complying with the regulations [on initial and recurrent training] is not enough … just not acceptable,” he told AIN. “The environments in which we operate today are much different from the way we train.”
Charbonneau maintains it is time pilots become more engaged during training sessions and not sit passively waiting to complete the course. “Runway excursion accidents show us we need more exposure to these hazards during training. We train on wet runways, but not, for example, on contaminated ones,” he cautions.
