th<\/sup> meeting of the ICAO General Assembly back in 2013, member States determined that CBT was the way forward for today\u2019s aviation world.\u00a0 They adopted PANS on competency \u2013 a dimension of human performance that is used to reliably predict successful performance on the job.\u00a0 Seems like a circular definition?\u00a0 That is because it is.\u00a0 If the RPAS community is soon to feel the full weight of the aviation industry, it had better get used to this sort of stuff.\r\n\r\nAccording to panellists at the RPAS symposium, ICAO wants to apply its air traffic control and capacity management competency-based framework to RPAS, or maybe RPAS and UAS \u2013 it was unclear.\u00a0 The relationship between aviation ATC and drones is equally unclear, but that did not stop ICAO representatives from asserting that CBT developed for ATC should be applied to RPAS.\r\n\r\nPresentations on the meaning of CBT were so broad that it likely could mean anything.\u00a0 It is a negative feedback system where performance is continually evaluated by success.\u00a0 It is simply modular learning.\u00a0 One panellist remarked that his organisation had been doing CBT for 25 years and did not know until now what it is called.\u00a0 Another panellist implied that proponents of other learning styles are daft.\u00a0 CBT is the way forward.\u00a0 But other than being modular and a teaching style tailored to the task being taught, the contours of CBT remained murky.\r\n\r\nThe notion of ICAO\u2019s involvement with the development of CBT for UAV pilots and other operators in the drone space seemed to unravel during a panel on \u2018What will competency-based training look like?\u2019\u00a0 Unfortunately, competencies that are beneficial for international civil aviation might not translate into competencies for UAV piloting. \u00a0Operators of UAS made clear that being a pilot, for instance, or an ATM provider, does not necessarily qualify you to operate a drone.\u00a0 Problems with applying aviation CBT to drones are myriad.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, Facebook\u2019s Aqilla system.\u00a0 It launches and is recovered from traditional airports, but like other RPAS, that is where the analogy to international civil aviation ends.\u00a0 Rather than a traditional linear trajectory, they climb from an airport in a corkscrew pattern to over 60,000 feet, well above the altitude of traditional aircraft.\u00a0 They have a longer mission profile than international flights and operate under different physical environments.\u00a0 These create new challenges for both the aircraft and the operator.\r\n\r\nFrom the perspective of Facebook, this is not just a nascent technology; the uses and environment are totally new.\u00a0 Is there inherent value in transferrable competencies from aviation to this new activity?\u00a0 Only time will tell.\u00a0 What we think might make a great done pilot today might not be what makes a great drone pilot of tomorrow.\u00a0 How would Henry Ford know what it will take to be a good F1 driver?\u00a0 Facebook does not know but would like to work with all civil aviation actors to find out.\u00a0\u00a0 That seems to be the most productive attitude.\r\n\r\nGeneral Atomic Aeronautical Systems noted that many of the competencies translate but not all seemingly relevant competencies make the transition.\u00a0 Pilots of RPAS need to know how to make a flight plan.\u00a0 So do traditional pilots.\u00a0 But, having that on a CV is not determinative of whether a traditional pilot will be a successful drone pilot.\u00a0 After having traditional pilots in a simulator for an hour, it is easy to tell who will make it and who will not.\u00a0 The difference is \u2018spatial presence\u2019 \u2013 a term used by psychologists to describe the ability to acquire awareness of spatial surroundings in video games, like first-person shooter games.\u00a0 Not for nothing do we continue to assert that drone operators are better thought of as gamers than aviators.\u00a0 If this is what drone competency is, how relevant is experience as a pilot?\r\n\r\nUndeterred, fans of aviation CBT came to the rescue.\u00a0 Of course, they also happened to be employed by ICAO.\u00a0 It matters less what the actual thing is that you are trying to do, because ICAO PANS regarding CBT for ATM ask first, \u2018what tasks are you trying to do?\u2019 \u2018What competencies might you need?\u2019\u00a0 That is the starting point for ICAO CBTs.\u00a0 So, in essence, they mean just about anything.\u00a0 ICAO might as well create CBTs for a moon landing.\u00a0 Perhaps that is its intention.\u00a0 (See our recent blog post, referenced above, for more on ICAO involvement in outer space).\r\n\r\nAgain, realism crept into the debate.\u00a0 Customers do not want to pay for trained pilots.\u00a0 They want \u2018operators\u2019 with sufficient competence to do the job and fulfil their needs.\u00a0 Sounds a bit like Michael O\u2019Leary\u2019s take on pilots \u2013 bus drivers in the sky. \u00a0Perhaps the drone industry does have something to learn from manned aviation?","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a recent blog post, we addressed ICAO\u2019s burgeoning involvement in disruptive technologies like drones.\u00a0 One of the dangers of the application of aviation-based rules and regulations to new areas of activity is that an institutional bias creeps into the process.\u00a0 After all, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Regulators, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,32,18,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones-and-uavs","category-international-civil-aviation-organization","category-safety","category-unmanned-aircraft-system-traffic-management","category-utm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}