Flight training executives are calling for certification authorities to rethink their regulations to allow the industry to reduce its dependence on highly expensive full-flight simulators in favour of cheaper fixed-base devices.
"To reduce our training costs we must reduce our reliance on full-flight simulators," Boeing Commercial Airplanes Training & Flight Services vice-president Sherry Carbary told delegates at the show's Asia Pacific Aviation Training Symposium.
"Given the technology that exists today and that which will be available tomorrow, airlines need to rethink what training should be done by simulator and what can be done more efficiently by fixed training devices and web-based learning systems."
She says that for a change to come about, regulators must re-examine their requirements for flightcrew training. Capt Mike Redrupp, head of training at UK-based training specialist CTC Aviation Services, concurs. "Undoubtedly we have been restrained by regulations in respect to the equipment we can use. The authorities have not kept up with the rapid advances in training technology," he says.
Carbary points to the "motion-cueing seats" used to train military pilots in fixed simulators, for example in the Boeing Apache helicopter. These seats provide cues by giving pilots a "nudge" during a turn, without all the complexity of motion jacks used on full-flight simulators.
Carbary says that with the regulatory authorities not currently considering changes to pilot training regulations, Boeing is working with Airbus and the International Air Transport Association on evidence-based testing programmes to prove that much of the training could be completed on fixed devices.
"The concept that you can deliver as good, if not better training using these devices, is alien to the regulators," says Redrupp.
It is not just the cost savings generated by purchase price differences in the two types of devices, says Carbury. "For example, you don't need all the infrastructure to accommodate a simulator that's 25ft [7.6m] off the ground," she says, adding that fixed devices do not need all the installation time of a motion simulator and are easily transportable.
Source: Flight Daily News
