It has been almost two years since I first heard of FITS (FAA/Industry Training Standard) which is a training technique being endorsed by the FAA to improve the process of teaching technically advanced aircraft (TAA) by using mission-like scenarios and a student-based grading and evaluation system.  Just as I had just completed building 15 FAA Part 141 approved courses, I thought “here is a new set of training standards that must be standardized across my flight instruction team”.  At first, I tried to get my arms around the program.  What did it mean and why was the FAA not forcing it on its Part 141 approved flight schools?  I reviewed FITS specs from the official FITS website, but I could not initially see how the program conformed to our already Part 141 approved Private and Instrument training programs and there seemed to be no roadmap to help me do it either.  What made the FITS training different and why did it look like I had to reengineer our existing programs to attain FAA-Washington, DC based FITS committee approval instead of being approved by FSDO or the local FAA Regional office?  This article will explore the evolution and application of the FITS program and will look at how it was applied to Garmin 1000 equipped aircraft training.  It will suggest ways for other training organizations to successfully adopt the approach and thus raise the bar for quality of aviation training in general.

FITS is Different from Traditional Training

I found out that my aviation insurance agent was participating on a committee that was looking at the FITS program as a way to enhance safety for light general aviation.  That threw up the flag in my mind because if the insurance industry was looking at it, then the FAA might not have to force it on anybody; it would become a defacto standard by virtue of the insurance underwriters requiring it.  It was time to investigate this further so I could stay in front of an emerging trend. Besides, we were venturing pretty hard into the design of Garmin 1000 training programs for our soon to arrive Diamond DA40s and Cessna Skylane, all featuring the new G1000 integrated glass cockpit.  It then dawned on me that FITS was a perfect fit for a fleet of Technically Advanced Aircraft (TAA) featuring the G1000 cockpit, especially since the program was originally designed for this very purpose. 

As we started to look at the FITS program, we started to see why it was so different from our fifteen traditional task-based training programs already approved by the FAA for our Part 141 training program.  Task based aviation training is geared to the practical test standard (PTS) by iteratively repeating an “I’ll show you and then you show me until you get it right” approach until someone is deemed ready to pass an FAA checkride.  It was based upon a traditional approach to training and in fact had gotten its roots in traditional education.  It had worked for centuries and simply defaulted to use in aviation education starting early in the century and just continued into modern day general aviation training.  With 9/11 and other events, general aviation was focused on survival and people did not have much chance to question training effectiveness except for keeping the accident statistics trends in check. 

If we look at the definition of TAA aircraft, we see that it refers to any aircraft that has an advanced flight management system, or in other words for GA aircraft, an integrated GPS moving map navigation system integrated with an autopilot.  Using this definition, we can see that most light GA aircraft manufactured before the 1990s probably did not qualify.  Sure, some aircraft owner may have installed a LORAN or even an early generation GPS, and the avionic shop may have cobbled together some rudimentary way that it could talk to the CDI and maybe through some toggle switch labeled with a makeshift placard could even couple the glideslope to the autopilot.  Did this kind of system require formal training to operate?  Only if the aircraft was sold or otherwise loaned to a pilot who asked.  Many times pilots simply experimented with the switches until they figured it out or they simply just ignored the functionality.  Were these pilots just lucky or was the technology just not advanced enough to prevent pilots from figuring it out on their own without serious consequences?  To take this example to the next level, would we expect that a pilot would be allowed to climb into a Citation or a Boeing 777 and just take it around the pattern while they figured it out?  Of course not.  Thus became the great divide that evolved between professional aviation and us general aviation training guys.  There is probably not an airline or corporate jet pilot around today that did not fly at least one aircraft in their early flying career that they did not learn to fly until airborne.  Other than learning to fly at a professional training organization such as University programs, this simply was the norm.  This “unimpressive” training situation was allowed to exist (and in many cases still does at some old school flight organizations around the country) until recent advances in cockpit automation was suddenly not only affordable, but thanks to companies like Garmin and Avidyne, was now also practical.  Concern for safety of flight has prevailed and new training has quickly evolved similar to what professional aviators have encountered for years in advanced aircraft.  When that pilot graduated to the next step in their flying career, they were required to go into advanced systems and avionics training and even procedures simulation prior to setting foot in the aircraft itself.  This mindset was driven largely by Part 135 and Part 121 of FAA regulations and to a lesser degree by insurance underwriters, but everyone agreed that it drove the safety statistics and few questioned it.  This is what Flight Safety and similar professional training companies have built their programs around. 

 

Can we safely train TAA aircraft without advanced teaching techniques?

 

What general aviation finally discovered is that the later model aircraft such as the Cirrus, late model Cessnas, Mooneys, Pipers, Beechcraft, and Diamonds, even the ones with traditional “steam-gauge” panels with integrated GPS and Autopilot all required more sophisticated training to operate safely, simply because the autopilots and the GPS systems had too many buttons to learn properly or safely on the fly.  Aviation educators watched in disbelief as customers tried to figure out the new technology during taxi, or even worse after already airborne, during aircraft checkouts and flight reviews. As these systems crept into our cockpits, how could a pilot keep a decent scan going if their heads were buried in the panel trying to figure out some device they had not taken the time to study before hand?  The aircraft manufacturers figured this out pretty early and started requiring “factory training” before a new owner could fly the aircraft over the fence just in order to maintain liability protection.  Having been factory trained as instructor at both Cessna and Diamond aircraft for delivery of their G1000 aircraft, I learned a lot about the system, its operation, and its computer like programming requirements.  I found it a welcome opportunity to ask many questions as an aviation educator so I could bring the official factory answers back to my clients and customers.  How could I effectively build the programs back home for the flight school and the eventual renter pilot checkout programs if I did not thoroughly understand the system and its features? 

As a result of these early training experiences, our flight school implemented a mandatory avionic training program geared to Garmin and King equipped aircraft, especially since many of those aircraft came standard with the King KAP-140 autopilot (and because we felt like it made sense from an insurance perspective).  We found that most pilots accepted this requirement as a prudent investment of their time, especially since we offered some of these programs each and every week at no cost to our customers.  For those that didn’t want to take the time, we reasoned that maybe they should not be in our aircraft, especially since our airport sat directly under a Class B airspace inviting an incursion for the pilot who was experimenting with buttons rather than keeping up situational awareness. 

Why then, would a traditional task-based training approach not work for TAA aircraft?  First of all, we must recognize that flying an advanced aircraft requires a pilot to master the operation of the autopilot and the other electronics onboard before actually flying the aircraft, even if the airframe and engine was nearly identical to ones that they had been flying for years.  This requires a special training effort and in many cases a ground school simply dedicated to teaching systems and avionics, just like the professional pilot training programs. 

Mike Gaffney and Steve Marsh of Empire Aviation Practice FITS
teaching techniques using scenarios and lots of how and why questions.

With so many buttons and functions to teach and learn, could a traditional task-based approach effectively deliver the learning process required in order to actually improve safety trends and statistics?  The answer is the al Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and avionic companies like Garmin, who worked with Cessna, Beech, Mooney, and Diamond, set up dedicated training programs for new pilot owners.  Avidyne, working through University of North Dakota did the same for Cirrus. Each has set up their own FITS accepted courses to certify with a standardized certificate that a pilot has accomplished a prescribed level of accomplishment through a self-rated system using known scenarios, defined at the end of the previous lesson, to practice in living color the range of normal and emergency procedures associated with operating a TAA aircraft panel.  More importantly, the student has the chance to participate as a lesson designer; a stake-holder.  By using prescribed scenarios, this allows the Instructor Pilot to act as a guide and the pilot in training gets to practice procedures that he or she can plan for, study for, and under the watchful eye of the carefully trained and standardized instructor, execute in a controlled manner.  The next most fundamental aspect of the FITS philosophy is that the Pilot in Training must participate and even take a lead role in the evaluation of the performance after it is complete.  At first this sounds like the cart leading the horse, but think about it:  If you can get the student to completely participate in the construction of the flight scenario up front, then it only stands to reason that they can play a lead role in evaluating their feeling of accomplishment in achieving the scenario objectives, right?  This in theory should result in maximum knowledge transfer to the student and hopefully results in the strongest committal of safe operating practices to long term memory.  This is what the FAA and the insurance companies want in the long run, don’t they?  Don’t we? 

The FITS program is headed up by Tom Glista – the FAA FITS Program Manager.  He leads a committee of industry training leaders and stake-holders from the ranks of Embry Riddle, Diamond and Cessna aircraft, University of North Dakota and others.  This committee evaluates each and every course submitted for approval and comments back to the FAA about whether a program submitted for FITS approval meets the intent of the program and should be accepted.  Otherwise, the team suggests what specific issues must be addressed in order to bring the program into compliance with the FITS tenets set by the committee and the FAA.  Neither the committee nor Tom Glista’s FAA team has been granted specific enforcement authority over the programs once accepted other than to allow or disallow a course that is accepted to bare the official FITS logo or to use the local FSDO to encourage compliance.  Not much carrot for rewarding the organizations who invest the resources to modify their existing courses or write new ones then submit the program for review through several iterations waiting up to 2 months for a final go ahead on a single course TCO and syllabus.  This is bound to change one way or another.  If safety is compromised on a flight due to inadequate preparation of a pilot to use the technology, then changes will come.  After all, this is how most of our rule books in aviation have been written over the past 100 years.

Traditional Training in TAA Aircraft

Now we can see why it is so difficult to wrap a basic Private Pilot training curriculum into a FITS template.  We were taught to fly by a traditionally trained flight instructor who took us out to the practice area and beat us over the head practicing stalls and slow flight until we were ready to return to the airport.  The next flight we would go do it again and maybe do a few landings.  We would repeat this until we were told we were ready to solo.  No wonder so many pilots quit flight training right around first solo.  They never have really been incorporated into the training process by their flight instructors and many of their early flights have no real purpose other than to practice something that seems scary and has no overall objective related to their goals.  This makes it difficult for them to see the big picture.  They lose motivation because they see they have to get through this stage of elemental tasks before they will be allowed to do something useful.

If we were to use the FITS approach from the very beginning, what would be different?  For one thing, each and every flight, right from the initiation of training would be custom designed as a scenario, just like a mission.  This means the objective of each and every flight is to plan and execute a flight scenario that has meaning and incorporates the tenets of fundamental flight that we wanted to impart all along while promoting multitasking and the application of aeronautical decision making and risk management skills.  One might then ask, how can you incorporate slow flight, stalls, and ground reference maneuvers into a scenario template?  That becomes the trick to a thorough understanding of FITS on the part of the instructor.  We can not completely get away from the elemental form of practicing these critical aspects of flight that the FAA will test using a proficiency standard in order to determine if our student is ready for certification.  The important part is to wrap multiple aspects of these procedures into flight scenarios which includes them while the pilot is being led through (and eventually leads the instructor in an ideal world) through.  This results in several important things happening that are critical to the effective education of complex and multifaceted tasks like safely conducting a flight.  The student is involved in the process and understands the big picture right from the start of each flight.  They now feel their training is being conducted in an organized and orderly fashion and can tell at all times where they are along the roadmap leading to their end goal: Certification.  Second, the student is taught from the start to multitask and to understand how the bad things in aviation occur when people fail to apply good judgment and aeronautical decision making.  This should result in not only safer pilots, but an improvement in the statistics of upcoming pilots who stick with the program beyond the first solo.  These pilots will then become good instructors because their law of primacy will be to teach from a mission or scenario standpoint and the idea propagates.

FITS Teaching Techniques require scenarios to be designed and planned
by the student prior to starting the aircraft engine.

Winning over the Industry with FITS

The question remains:  Does FITS work and will people use it once they see it works?  Will customers do it willingly, even if it costs them more?  Initially with all other facts equal and aside the many pilots who would do it because it made sense, this depends upon whether the FAA threatens to enact legislative rulemaking requiring the FITS-based endorsement or any kind of endorsement for Technically Advanced Aircraft operation.  After all, they did this for tailwheel, complex, high performance, and high altitude aircraft as well as any aircraft having a turbine engine.  The program would also gain respect once people see it works and it does promote safe operations of general aviation aircraft.  It also would grow teeth if the insurance industry backs the teaching method after coming to the conclusion that accident statistics improve by requiring thorough training prior to endorsing coverage on operation of these aircraft by its insured pilots and owners.  They have been doing this in the jet world for years.  All of these things are departures from what were common expectations in the early days of aviation training when only excess speed and ability to react was the thing one had to train and prepare for.  This separated the professional pilots from the rest.  This no longer is the case and as GA training organizations starts bringing these airplanes into their aging fleets of vintage 70s and 80s training aircraft, they will either recognize it or their insurance companies will premium them out of business.  With new technology comes the responsibility to master it.  We are now flying aircraft that I call “hands folded in lap” aircraft.  We ”program” the aircraft prior to engine start, then once in flight, we activate the autopilot to follow the electronic flight plan like a script of a computer program.  Our job is to make sure it stays on the script and to be ready to address deviations when required by weather changes, ATC, emergency or system failure, if and when that happens.  Part of our requirement as operators is to use the technology to our advantage when it is to our favor.  In order to do that we must understand our systems down to a deeper level than 70s vintage aircraft, so a new training requirement was born that more closely addressed its needs.

From the industry side, training companies, university training programs, and aircraft and system manufacturers promote a more total learning experience, if it means that they can arguably prevent an accident.  From the training and delivery side, the answer to this question is in the interpretation of the FITS program and then getting the instructors to use the program without falling back to old training habits.  This sounds like a management issue, a curriculum issue, and a standardization issue, all rolled into one.  It is not an easy one to crack either.  This is why Skyline Aeronautics in St. Louis chose to get FAA Part 141 Training School course approval from the local FSDO and then go to the FITS team in Washington for FITS approval.  By Part 141 regulations, a pilot in training has to follow a prescribed program to the letter and then take an approved end of course exam or “Graduation Checkride” in order to receive graduation distinction and credit.  This would come with an industry recognized and hopefully respected FITS logo on that document.  Now, this training program has teeth and meaning.  Soon aviation insurance underwriters will officially recognize the program with premium discounts, favorable pricing, and ultimately lower rates for pilots and owners.  Now watch competitive training companies jump on the bandwagon. Funny how America works, isn’t it?

 

FITS involves a new way of thinking on the part of the Instructor Pilot

Practice makes perfect

Other than the FITS accepted program I originally designed for our Garmin 1000 equipped TAA aircraft in St. Louis, I have just completed my second program designed to “certify” flight instructors to teach a FITS course using FITS techniques.  The first was at Cessna earlier this year and the second was at Diamond Aircraft just recently.  All of these programs were accepted by the FITS Technical Team under the direction of the FITS Program office at the FAA.  My observations are that a great deal of collaboration must go into getting the program to conform to its intent of being scenario based and student centric.  Let me explain.  If you take a flight instructor who was taught to fly using the task (PTS) oriented training approach (which basically includes almost all of us in the US and Canada), you have to really work through two major steps to accomplish a true standardization of the instructor.  The first is that that instructor must completely buy into the philosophy of teaching through the use of scenarios and must consciously work the process in each and every lesson regardless of whether the curriculum calls for it or not.  This means a basic relearning of teaching concepts which go against the laws of primacy for when they originally learned.  The second is that they must be standardized to deliver the programs using the FITS tenets and then be continually evaluated and coached so that they can continue to evolve as professional educators using this approach which is designed to enhance safety and promote effective multitasking in a technology enabled cockpit. This standardization, such as what I just encountered with the team at Diamond Aircraft, involves predetermined scenario templates that the instructor needs to practice until the evaluator deems them FITS proficient.

Regarding this FITS instructor training, I recently worked with Brent Eddington, the lead FITS Trainer from Empire Aviation in London, Ontario who heads up a program of FITS training focused on preparing new owners of Garmin 1000 equipped aircraft to accept delivery of their new aircraft and then safely fly them away from the factory.  We spent days rehearsing FITS training scenarios for the Diamond Star Garmin 1000 “Train the Trainer” program.  Both of us come from an extensive education background and we conducted our weeklong program in a FITS like scenario oriented format including all of the exercises required to properly prepare a pilot to safely operate their new aircraft.  This exercise required putting away our professional and competitive egos and conducting series of role plays, conducting scenario based training in the classroom, in front of procedural trainers, and in the aircraft itself.  Brent brought in their Chief Flight Instructor and their Assistant Chief Flight Instructor to participate in the various role plays throughout the week.  We then sat through extensive self appraisals, not only of our technical knowledge of the subject area we taught, but also our ability to adhere and employ the FITS program to achieve the scenario objective of that ground or flight lesson.  Why would professionally trained instructors who fully embrace the FITS methodology need to spend such an exhaustive amount of time practicing it to certify each other?  The answer is that it is so easy to slip back into traditional teaching practices that tend to enable the student rather than to teach them to multitask and problem solve. 

This is only the beginning as within 12 months Diamond will be delivering their Garmin 1000 equipped Twinstar aircraft; a composite replacement for the 30 year old Piper Seminole as a twin engine trainer.  This is where the factory training process will really be put to the test.  Not only will they have people showing up to receive their new aircraft who have never flown a glass cockpit aircraft, but they also may not even have a multiengine certification and the factory training center only has a limited time and budget in order to safely prepare these pilots.  We better have our act together by then because soon after will come the Very Light Jets equipped with the same cockpit automation systems, suddenly increasing speed by a factor of 2 of the fastest thing we have now.  In our opinion, there is no time to sit and debate the finer details of the FITS program and give it lip service.  We must perfect it and then share our experiences with other professional instructors in a collaborative fashion and make sure that our own flight instructors embrace it.  If we don’t then the directives will be coming from the insurance companies who must underwrite the aircraft and the people who fly them. 

So, has it worked for us and the others who have actually implemented it into their training culture like Cessna, Diamond and UND?  This is the final variable that people are watching to see.  Middle Tennessee State University is experimenting with a FITS accepted program that combines Private Pilot and Instrument Pilot training into a series of coordinated scenarios leading to certification.  This may be the wave of the future, if it works as people believe it will.  Why wouldn’t it work?  The student is taught from the very first lesson to plan, multitask, and make good decisions based upon practiced scenarios approximating situations they will see in the real world of aviation.

In order to implement this program, we have standardized our instructor pilots who show the willingness to first earn a FITS endorsement and Part 141 graduation certificate for themselves.  This is important.  You cannot convince an instructor to implement a program which they themselves have not first had to attend on their own and have no buy-in to change their behavior.  This being said, our staff of young professional instructors eagerly signed up for the training and each and every one have attended the intense nine hours of ground school that is a minimum for the Garmin 1000 program offered for our leaseback rental fleet.  They then also took the required minimum three scenarios and ended with a Graduation ride and Chief Instructor standardization.  We then follow a process of continual improvement to make sure that the instructors not only keep up with changes in the technology, but they keep up with changes in the FITS methodology, as well.  This is accomplished through mandatory training and once a month safety meetings designed for instructor standardization.

Right now, the FITS approach seems to be the best way that we can effectively prepare pilots to fly these aircraft as the technology continues to race ahead of our ability to keep up with outdated training techniques that were designed and perfected in a simpler day and time.  So, are we ready for FITS based scenario centric training like this?  Are you?