At the World Aviation Training Symposium, held last week in Orlando, Boeing’s chief test & evaluation pilot for new airplane development, Mike Carriker, said the industry must modernize its educational methods and technology if it hopes to prepare pilots and technicians to “maximize the capabilities of today’s high technology airplanes.”
While aircraft and teaching technology have “evolved exponentially” over the past half century, aviation training has not progressed beyond the rote regurgitation of knowledge and skills that satisfy disassociated evaluation tasks. Few will disagree with his assessment that the industry must now employ modern methods and technology in competency-based training not only to make the global transportation efficient and economical, but “to reestablish the aviation industry as an attractive career option.”
Given our entrenched political, economic, and social polarization, there is little or no chance that the industry will make this needed transition. It matters little that, according to Boeing’s annual Pilot & Technician Outlook, that we must educate a million new pilots and technicians in the next 20 years. In the zero-sum game that is modern life, ideological preeminence is more than the common good.
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