After two years of intense collaboration, Garuda Indonesia’s Core Instructors have completed their Operator Initial and Recurrent UPRT phases. The dozen instructors, spread amongst the fleet of Airbus A330, Boeing 777 and Boeing 737 aircraft, are now ready to pass on the final phase of the training to other instructors.
UPRT is a long-term engagement and involves a wide range of subject matters. Because it addresses topics that are somewhere in a pilot’s mind (but not regularly applied), they tend to fade. For this reason, pilots should also be given enough time to learn and adopt these concepts, rather than simply demonstrating that they can successfully perform a few maneuvers.
ICAO has also stated that UPRT needs to be a “train-to-proficiency” paradigm, and care must be taken to ensure avoidance of the risk of negative training. While a purely compliance-based program could be delivered quite rapidly, a more optimum way appears to be to spread the training over several “modules”. First, the pilots have the time and ability to grasp basic concepts, and then apply them in a recurrent phase.
Garuda Indonesia has followed exactly this approach, setting a high standard in this manner. Their partner airline, Citilink, has also embarked on the identical program.
During the coming years, Garuda Indonesia will continue to refine the training and integrate the concepts into all other relevant phases of pilot training.
