AQP?

[CFIT99]

a good AQP program is worth it's weight in Gold, I've gone through 2 AQP and 3 Traditional Indocs.

AQP: here's what you need to know because it's 90% of what you deal with

Traditional: Learn everything even though you use less that 10% of it, because you never know, also remember the amount of oil that goes in the APU exhaust fan impeller blade leveler motor, even though there is no gauge to tell you. If you don't remember during your 3 hour oral you are a sh*ty pilot and will forever be inferior to Dacuj.

 

[Roger Roger]

Because it's super important to know how many lights bulbs illuminate when the emergency exit lighting activates. Or how many rivets hold the wing together.

Whatever faults you could accuse the training program under discussion of having, this is not one of them

 

[form810]

I wanted to try to build one long ago, though I've never done AQP. It's hard to set up under 135, and I think there are only a few companies that have done it? But I'm unsure.



Arguably using statistics from your FOQA program and other parts of your organization to inform what training you do - which, as I understand it - is supposed to be a major part of AQP - seems like a pretty good idea, just saying.


Thread Creep Starts here:

Also, because you asked, there really isn't much of a real-world. There wasn't one to begin with. Even the world we can describe with science has limitations in terms of how we can actually perceive it. If you want a good read that has some ideas (one which I would have read while I was flying, because, contextualized in the cockpit, the first 50% of the book is a really useful way to analyze problems), check out "The Case Against Reality."

https://www.amazon.com/The-Case-Against-Reality/dp/0141983418/ref=asc_df_0141983418/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=598295323420&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8794905676485960034&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9033836&hvtargid=pla-920250401265&psc=1&mcid=475b1039998938dfbe5eb2f1dd835312&gclid=Cj0KCQiAsburBhCIARIsAExmsu6aAv0BsnyD2QxSpU1MLZ-DXi7rKXCpGXhXKbQ-w5KXR37TZqJXgTcaAv14EALw_wcB

It's really good, and provides some tools for how to analyze complex systems. In particular, I was unaware of the "Universal Acid" idea, as a way to do systems analysis, but it definitely matches with life experience. In a flying company, and from a training department or standards department sort of standpoint I think the equivalent of "universal acid", "this policy only makes sense if we could perform it 40,000 times a year and have nobody get in an accident."

They have completely WON!

Marketing has worked!!!... almost perfectly (except for the fact that by engaging in it, we are rapidly destroying the home upon we and it depend for everything).

Instead of getting an individually argued argument, fully formed and defended... I pretty much get just another ad for yet anther consumer product - with a link to buy, easily from the comfort of the barca-lounger I can no longer stand up from 'cause all my musculature has atrophied into a semi-liquid ooze. Still, baby Jeebus is here to save you: Salvation is your's through the miracle of consumerism!

 

[ppragman]

They have completely WON! Marketing has worked!!!... almost perfectly (except for the fact that by engaging in it, we are rapidly destroying the home upon we and it depend for everything).

Instead of getting a individual argument, fully formed and defended... I pretty much get just another ad for yet anther consumer product - with a link to buy, easily from the comfort of the barca-lounger I can no longer stand up from 'cause all my musculature has atrophied into a semi-liquid ooze. Still, baby Jeebus is here to save you: Salvation is here!!!

this is not as clever as you think it is and this serves basically no point. This isn't a rebuttal of my point (that stats is good, math is good, etc), this isn't even a discussion about the book this is just some crazy person ranting about consumerism in a thread that has nothing to do with consumerism. I posted a link to an interesting philosophy book, you decry posting links?

You have no argument here, you're just narrating your bizarre stream of consciousness. This is like reading Ulysses, but, you know, not written by Joyce, not relevant to some overarching narrative, and not relevant to the topic at hand. Which, to be clear, was AQP, and arguably is pretty cool if done well.

 

[form810]

this is not as clever as you think it is and this serves basically no point. This isn't a rebuttal of my point (that stats is good, math is good, etc), this isn't even a discussion about the book this is just some crazy person ranting about consumerism in a thread that has nothing to do with consumerism. I posted a link to an interesting philosophy book, you decry posting links?

You have no argument here, you're just narrating your bizarre stream of consciousness. This is like reading Ulysses, but, you know, not written by Joyce, not relevant to some overarching narrative, and not relevant to the topic at hand. Which, to be clear, was AQP, and arguably is pretty cool if done well.

Yes. Your statement that stats and math are good is valid. That part is absolutely correct. As long as the correct stats are actually collected and measured - and the icky parts are not arbitrarily ignored or thrown out by folks with particular vested interests... in order that the PR release looks valid to an under-informed "reporter" who goes on to report it to the even less informed readers who interpret it as actual "news".

Sadly, that is NOT the way managers at for-profit entities actually work. Most of them don't even know stats. Those few who do can't be bothered about actual evidence that stands opposed to their next bonus check. And, given that most of their colleagues have no idea how stats actually work, what opposition are the "craftier" managers going to face against their lies???

Re: your point two: Post a link to a book review. Post a link to a library catalog number. ... Don't post a commercial link to yet another opportunity to BUY, BUY, BUY!!!

Both points stand in defense of my basic argument. Folks these days have become so inured to consumerism that they don't even know when they are enabling MORE OF IT.

 

[ppragman]

Yes. Your statement that stats and math are good is valid. That part is absolutely correct. As long as the correct stats are actually collected and measured - and the icky parts are not arbitrarily ignored or thrown out by folks with particular vested interests. Sadly, that is NOT the way managers at for-profit entities actually work. Most of them don't even know stats. Those that do can't be bothered about actual evidence that stands opposed to their next bonus check. And, given that most of their colleagues have no idea how stats actually work, what opposition are the "craftier" managers going to face against their lies???

Right, and I don't disagree with this too much about that (though I'd be willing to bet that the average airline exec has had at least some training in stats, might not have stuck, but hey, whatever), but arguably the people doing data analysis at the company, or even the people in the training department and FOQA are going to be more a part of AQP than any exec. They'll probably know what an average is, maybe understand what a standard deviation is, and maybe be able to do the bare minimum of predictive analytics. Even if it only amounts to "hey, we see 2 engine failures per year, but 15 runway overruns into the safety area that are close, 20 runway incursions a year that are also close calls, and the rate of unstabilized approaches being salvaged is going up according to the FOQA guys, perhaps that should change what we're training for?" that is going to be better than the "old way" of doing things. We should be data-driven and evidence-based, not the other way around.

I'm not saying it's always done right, but "system safety analytics" or whatever you want to call it (insert appropriate buzz words here), they work! They're effective and largely more enjoyable to flight crews than the old-school way. 121 aviation in this country is comically safe - like, I'd rather be on an airplane than at home in terms of what's riskier if I had a heart attack. Clearly AQP is doing something right.

Whatever faults you could accuse the training program under discussion of having, this is not one of them

I have mixed emotions about learning trivia.

At least for me, the trivia helps me anchor the procedures in my brain, but I'm a numbers guy.

I don't think anyone should have to learn the trivia, god forbid you have to learn it for a checkride, but I also think all the "numbers" (even down to the rivet count if you're that big of a nerd) should be made readily available for those who want to learn it. But I don't think there's some sort of fundamental limit to what you can know about this stuff, I mean, sure, theoretically, there is - but it's not like learning the trivia hurts you if you're interested, and it's not like you'll forget how to run an EP if you learn more about the airplane.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Over here at WN we have AQP (CQT) for recurrent. But initial and upgrade are still PCs. Weird huh?

 

[DE727UPS]

That is weird. The 75/76 was AQP and da bus got it after a few years. Not sure about the 74. MD11 never got it. I found the lack of an oral for the final checkride the biggest change to an initial or upgrade with AQP. Just a written test made up from a question bank that is available to study. Things got easier over the years. Plus, they dumbed down the limitations and memory items.

 

[jhugz]

At Kalitta we had AQP, but we called it KQP as it wasn't a true system. It was still the hunger games and the training department wasn't really a training department just a checking department. Over at United, AQP is what AQP should be. So it just depends on the company, some do it right, and some are still dumpster fires, just getting the label AQP doesn't fix a broken department.

 

[CFIT99]

That is weird. The 75/76 was AQP and da bus got it after a few years. Not sure about the 74. MD11 never got it. I found the lack of an oral for the final checkride the biggest change to an initial or upgrade with AQP. Just a written test made up from a question bank that is available to study. Things got easier over the years. Plus, they dumbed down the limitations and memory items.

I see it as evolving... giving an answer on limitations during an oral (from a list of limitations) doesn't demonstrate or at least demonstrates very little more knowledge over a test, especially since the material is accessible almost instantly from a tablet on not having to look through a manual.

When going through Bombardier Instructor course, I was lucky enough to go a safety symposium (can't remember who hosted it) but essentially asks why do we train certain things that happen so statistically rarely (i.e. engine loss at V1) vs an intermediate engine loss at Acceleration altitude (power reduction) which happens exponentially more.

Short answer was, it's a training environment created to cultivate airmanship not necessarily to train a specific scenario. I mean how many times have you gone around mid approach versus AT minimums....I haven't gone around at minimums (for whatever reason) in probably 10 years.

I believe AQP address this and works towards an "adaptable" training regiment.

 

[DE727UPS]

Yeah. The early go around at KBFI with a descent on the missed got screwed up a few times. Was covered in CQ later. That was awesome. I even had a CQ ground school slide with my name on it after a divert when I was a brand new Capt. Very proud moment.

 

[Roger Roger]

Yeah. The early go around at KBFI with a descent on the missed got screwed up a few times. Was covered in CQ later. That was awesome. I even had a CQ ground school slide with my name on it after a divert when I was a brand new Capt. Very proud moment.

“Should we go missed its uhhhh….go to 1500 whether that’s up or down”

6 years of flying in there and never had to do it tho.

 

[Maurus]

How do you have one fleet type, that youve had forever, and still F up training program?

I forgetif you came from the regionals or not but....yeah. Some places can be special. At one point in time PSA was a 80% pass rate. Not sure what it is currently. They have been teaching the CL-65 type rating for two decades at this point and still suck.

 

[A300Capt]

That is weird. The 75/76 was AQP and da bus got it after a few years. Not sure about the 74. MD11 never got it. I found the lack of an oral for the final checkride the biggest change to an initial or upgrade with AQP. Just a written test made up from a question bank that is available to study. Things got easier over the years. Plus, they dumbed down the limitations and memory items.

Don….I went through MD11 training back in 2013 and it was AQP. All recurrent after that was AQP. It was my first and only type that was AQP based. No oral and a scenario based checkride seamed really weird to me. I remember asking the checkairman when the oral was? He look at me, smiled and said…”Yea, ummm, we don’t do that anymore”.

It was a breeze compared to my other type/initial checkrides rides which were all oral/ PC based. Heck, my A300 Capt oral was 5 hrs long with the Feds observing due to it being a new fleet type for Brown. My B75/76 Capt type oral was administered by a Fed (2.5 hrs). My initial B727 FE checkride was observed by a Fed. I was beginning to take it all personally…….

 

[DE727UPS]

Thanks for the correction. What about the 74, then? I see guys talking about 6 month sim rides on the forum. Must be the 74 that doesn't have AQP. Or does that not have anything to do with it? I don't remember having to do an oral on the 75/76. F/O in 03 and Capt in 06. Maybe my memory has faded. The 72 F/E program back in the day was no joke. Remember Bob T? We had guys in my class that just enjoyed getting him spooled up by asking a dumb question and his face would turn beet red. That was the hardest oral I remember. Shouldn't be like that and glad things changed over the years in the training dept and with the feds.

 

[A300Capt]

Thanks for the correction. What about the 74, then? I see guys talking about 6 month sim rides on the forum. Must be the 74 that doesn't have AQP. Or does that not have anything to do with it? I don't remember having to do an oral on the 75/76. F/O in 03 and Capt in 06. Maybe my memory has faded. The 72 F/E program back in the day was no joke. Remember Bob T? We had guys in my class that just enjoyed getting him spooled up by asking a dumb question and his face would turn beet red. That was the hardest oral I remember. Shouldn't be like that and glad things changed over the years in the training dept and with the feds.

I believe all fleets are AQP and have been for a while. The 74 and MD fleets went to recurrent every 6 months mostly due to keeping everyone current on landings. The MD wasn’t particularly forgiving and potentially disastrous in the landing phase if you were only able to maintain the minimum 3 landings every 90 days. I flew the B75/76 from 89’-2000’, upgraded to Capt in 94’ so never saw AQP on that fleet. We did, towards the end of my Boeing flying adopt SVT (single visit training) which was quasi scenario based which eventually morphed into AQP.

 

[Screaming_Emu]

My last 3 PCs I've been told "this will be your last PC, AQP is right around the corner."

We had it at my regional, but Air Beachball is still struggling to get it started. I liked it at ASA because you trained to proficiency the things you don't do on a regular basis (stalls, steep turns, V1 cuts) and then the checking was done on more realistic scenarios that are based on what the pilot group has been struggling with based on safety reporting.

My opinion is that AQP is better because very rarely do planes crash simply because somebody stuffed up a V1 cut or lacks the stick and rudder skills to do a steep turn. Accidents are mostly caused by an error chain with threats that weren't addressed correctly that lead them down a bad path.

While we aren't in AQP yet, I will give my place credit as I just did my RLOFT last month and there was a lot of AQP like discussion and I actually feel like I came away with something.

 

[form810]

Right, and I don't disagree with this too much about that (though I'd be willing to bet that the average airline exec has had at least some training in stats, might not have stuck, but hey, whatever), but arguably the people doing data analysis at the company, or even the people in the training department and FOQA are going to be more a part of AQP than any exec. They'll probably know what an average is, maybe understand what a standard deviation is, and maybe be able to do the bare minimum of predictive analytics. Even if it only amounts to "hey, we see 2 engine failures per year, but 15 runway overruns into the safety area that are close, 20 runway incursions a year that are also close calls, and the rate of unstabilized approaches being salvaged is going up according to the FOQA guys, perhaps that should change what we're training for?" that is going to be better than the "old way" of doing things. We should be data-driven and evidence-based, not the other way around.

I'm not saying it's always done right, but "system safety analytics" or whatever you want to call it (insert appropriate buzz words here), they work! They're effective and largely more enjoyable to flight crews than the old-school way. 121 aviation in this country is comically safe - like, I'd rather be on an airplane than at home in terms of what's riskier if I had a heart attack. Clearly AQP is doing something right.


I have mixed emotions about learning trivia.

At least for me, the trivia helps me anchor the procedures in my brain, but I'm a numbers guy.

I don't think anyone should have to learn the trivia, god forbid you have to learn it for a checkride, but I also think all the "numbers" (even down to the rivet count if you're that big of a nerd) should be made readily available for those who want to learn it. But I don't think there's some sort of fundamental limit to what you can know about this stuff, I mean, sure, theoretically, there is - but it's not like learning the trivia hurts you if you're interested, and it's not like you'll forget how to run an EP if you learn more about the airplane.

There are a lot of assumptions here, as there usually are with all of us in almost everything.

1. What is trivia? To you it may be one thing. To me it may be something different. To @Boris Badenov, it would almost certainly be a third thing.

2. Who cares about trivia, really? Trivia be damned! Right now we have a crisis of fundamentals. We have many "pilots" who literally don't know aerodynamics, and many more who know a little bit about aerodynamics, but only by rote for a test.

3. Sadly, the profound -which is almost always a simple statement or formula that explains the complex- comes from measuring and integrating and understanding the vastness of details. It is all too often that those details are viewed by the unengaged and uniformed as, yup... trivial.

 

[///AMG]

2. Who cares about trivia, really? Trivia be damned! Right now we have a crisis of fundamentals. We have many "pilots" who literally don't know aerodynamics, and many more who know a little bit about aerodynamics, but only by rote for a test.

My opinion, take that for 2C, is that this all depends on the student, and their mentality. You see the whole spectrum. The generally unmotivated, minimum effort folks, all the way through "you're ready to do anything". I instructed a couple guys today that were the latter. They still exist. I think the low level outliers occupy the imagination more than the majority of folks who really do care. I really don't think much has changed. We're just in a cycle right now where some opportunistic numb nuts happen to see a financial opportunity. Most of them won't make it through initial training. If I was taught one thing in navy school that has been true my entire career, it is that attitude is everything. Some will slip through the cracks of civilian training, but most won't.

 

[ppragman]

There are a lot of assumptions here, as there usually are with all of us in almost everything.

1. What is trivia? To you it may be one thing. To me it may be something different. To @Boris Badenov, it would almost certainly be a third thing.

2. Who cares about trivia, really? Trivia be damned! Right now we have a crisis of fundamentals. We have many "pilots" who literally don't know aerodynamics, and many more who know a little bit about aerodynamics, but only by rote for a test.

3. Sadly, the profound -which is almost always a simple statement or formula that explains the complex- comes from measuring and integrating and understanding the vastness of details. It is all too often that those details are viewed by the unengaged and uniformed as, yup... trivial.

there, that's what trivia is.

for what constitutes "importance" or "value" - you could, actually, you know, use math to figure out what was "important" to know, because knowing it (and not being able to look it up) was important enough that failure to do so would kill the average dude or dudette flying... which, to circle back, is what AQP is supposed to be doing.

If you asked me what I thought constitutes "trivia" I'd define it by what is "not."

Trivia is things that failure to know does not fall into the following categories:
1. Not knowing it can result in death or injury.
2. Not knowing it can cause you to damage the airplane.
3. Not knowing it is *likely* to result in a violation or significant legal trouble.
4. Not knowing it is going to cause significant costs to the operator of the airplane.

Trivia would be like knowing the pressure of the oxygen bottle even though you have no gauge that displays it, you're not responsible for filling it, and you cannot change it.

Trivia would be like knowing that the engine driven fuel pump is 850PSI (or 1000PSI or 20PSI, the number doesn't matter) nominally or something when you have no gauge, or even if you do have a gauge depending on some contexts. Whereas knowing the unmarked temperatures on a gauge might be helpful if you could conceivably use it.

Trivia would be like, "knowing the exact stall speed of the airplane in knots" - you probably don't actually need to know that because it's going to change based on weight, AoA, etc. Furthermore, you can feel it anyway, and for more modern airplanes, there's like 25 ways the shaker can activate or an actual visual depiction of the appropriate angle of attack to fly and stall protection. I've memorized it for many airplanes, and you should be aware of generally where it's at, but if you say 70KIAS and it's 72KIAS, who cares? I can't fly that precisely anyway. Conversely, knowing the maximum operating weight and how to calculate it? Useful and important, even though it's a number.

Trivia would be like knowing the voltages on the various buses in the electrical system when you have no possible way to measure that in flight, or the maximum floor loading in the cabin.

Trivia is better defined by what it's not.

Is not knowing it going to kill you? No. Ok, will you break anything if you don't know it? No. Ok, will you get in trouble if you don't know it or otherwise embarrass yourself? No. Ok, is it going to cost a lot of money if you don't know this un-marked thing and you operate with disregard to it? No. Then it's trivia.