With EATS coming up in November in beautiful Cascais, Portugal, I thought it would be a great time to update you on my “extracurricular activities.” In this blog, I want to talk about the who, what, why and how of European Aircrew Training Policy Group (ATPG) and my involvement.
The European Aircrew Training Policy Group also known as ATPG is made up of 12 Full Members and several Associate Members, all representing the training industry or affected parties. This group was formed at the behest of EASA over 10 years ago to serve as an intermediate between the Agency and training organizations and providers. The Full Membership is divided into groups, with of course ATO’s (large and small), airlines, OEMs like Airbus and Boeing, Training Device Manufacturers like MPS, and others. By having this diverse group of highly qualified individuals, supported by the major organizations involved in flight training, most issues affecting training come to bear, ranging from KSA-100 questions for initial training through Type Rating and CBTA issues for airlines, and everything in-between. Initially chaired by Peter Moxham, the ATPG now is led by Captain Veronica Zunic and myself as Co-Chairs.
Throughout the years, the mission of ATPG has been to identify and provide solutions to items which affect training. These are by definition non-regulatory in nature, as ATPG is not an official Rule Making Task (RMT) but serves as an advisory body only. Significant items achieved by the ATPG in the past are the APS-MCC, later followed by the eAPS-MCC, white papers on language issues and many other items.
Recently, due to the reorganization of the EASA reporting structure through the Stakeholder Advisory Board (SAB) and its communities, ATPG has realigned itself as the “think-tank” of the IAAPS, which stands for the International Association of Aviation Personnel Schools. Through this tie-up, ATPG will now serve in an official function to advise the SAB and EASA of important training issues at hand.
One other role the ATPG has is hosting the Halldale Heads of Training meetings, now preceding every Halldale Training Conference. After WATS in May and APATS in September, the EATS Heads of Training meeting is next on the calendar in November. This will take place the evening prior to the opening of EATS. In close collaboration with Halldale, the conference chair of EATS, Jacques Drappier, and the ATPG members, this meeting will follow a standard protocol, with items addressed being brought up through industry. There will be ten tables, discussing items regarding CBTA, VR/XR, Regulatory items, New Technology and, interesting for this round, one table discussing what makes a good Head of Training. Moderators have been carefully selected to ensure discussions are fruitful and lead to solutions which will be addressed by ATPG and others in the coming period.
This is how we can ensure that training issues become visible. Whether it is instructor standardization, CBTA implementation issues or language standardization, Halldale and the ATPG want to hear from you so we can address them. Therefore, Jacques, Veronica and I look forward to seeing you at the Heads of Training meeting this November and discussing with you how we can do even better than we are already doing!
Feel free to reach out to me personally about the ATPG or to anyone on my team to understand how MPS can add value to your training by providing you with smarter simulators. I hope to see you in November!
