Experience competence or syllabus?: Influences on flight hours at licensing of commercial pilots

Competency-based training is a training philosophy that has become well established in many countries around the world, predominately in the vocational education and training sector. In some of these countries, the concept has been extended to include aviation flight training. This is the case in Australia, which introduced the requirement for competency-based training in aviation in 1999 through the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. This article gives a brief outline of the current status of flight training in Australian aviation and also highlights some of the difficulties facing flight training organizations in introducing a competency-based training system into a tightly regulated aviation industry, in particular the conflict between the philosophy behind competency-based training and the reality of meeting regulatory minimums and airline syllabus requirements.