US and European standards for commercial air transport flightcrew simulator training are to be standardised under an accord to be signed in London on 5 December .
This will unify training standards, reduce airline-training costs and regulatory bureaucracy, and give simulator manufacturers minimum criteria to work to in designing simulators for all training levels, according to the UK Civil Aviation Authority's head of flight-operations standards, Capt Paddy Carver.
Carver and the US Federal Aviation Administration's director of European, African and Middle Eastern affairs, Patrick Poe, are to sign the document at a Royal Aeronautical Society simulator conference in London, England, on 5 December. This formalises "seven years of work" towards creating a "level playing field" for simulator training throughout Europe and across the Atlantic.
The European Joint Aviation Authorities have already adopted the new code, but it has yet to be implemented. The UK Civil Aviation Authority is the first of the European JAAs to ratify the accord, which legally has to be accepted by each member state. The accord brings simulators into the Joint Aviation Requirements Operations arena for the first time.
Source: Flight International