Evidence of meeting #124 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Kelowna—Lake Country, Lib.
Thank you all for coming.
I realize you have a limited amount of time and we're here to talk about the problems, but I think we all appreciate that being in aviation is a fantastic career. I certainly enjoyed my time in aviation.
I want to spend some time talking to Dr. Kearns about her experience in competency-based training. Other than reducing some of the barriers to entry, once we get them in there, we need to train them more efficiently—which probably would translate into things going a little more quickly—and utilize all the tools at our disposal to produce a more competent product at the end of the training cycle.
Could you drill into this a little more and maybe talk about where we are now with CPL and PPL and what you think we could do better in terms of competency-based training?
Prof. Suzanne Kearns
I think what's important to understand from a foundational perspective is that our licensing and training models are based on probably the World War II era's understanding of educational theory and methodology. It's very much an hours-based approach. It's sometimes also called a “prescriptive” approach, meaning that the regulator makes a list and says that you need to spend 50 hours doing this, and then 15 hours doing this type of flying....
The challenge, now that we've learned more about adult education and also just training in general, is that sometimes students will have mastered something and then are forced to do it for 10 hours more because the regulation requires them to—so there's this inefficiency built into the system—whereas if we could have instruction that's more tailored to that individual's needs, they could say, “Okay, I've already become competent in this skill set and now I can apply those hours to something that I'm actually weak in and need that time in.”
I believe it was in 2009 that a panel was formed as the international Flight Crew Licensing and Training Panel. They started looking at this issue because they recognized that on a global scale, our global capacity to produce pilots was not going to be able to meet our global need for pilots. We can project that many years in advance, because airlines are placing orders for the airlines of the future, so we have a way of projecting how many pilots we're going to need.
Simply, we do not have the global capacity to do that, so they wanted to look at innovative ways, including competency-based training. We did not create it in aviation. It's very popular in the medical profession. There's quite a wide body of research to look at.
What it means, basically, is that we look at a professional pilot and we write down the knowledge, the skills and the attitude they need to do their job. This creates competency statements that are formed into profession-specific frameworks. ICAO has these competency frameworks through all the major aviation professions.
Competency-based training uses those competency statements to determine when a student is finished training. Instead of someone being done when they've reached 50 hours, they're done when they can actually competently demonstrate the knowledge, the skills and the attitude.
Again, shifting the focus away from hours and towards actual competence allows for a variety of advantages: more efficient training and a smaller footprint, and training that's much more targeted towards the actual skill set of the job. Historically, someone would say that you've finished your classroom training, but when you start your job, some senior guy walks down and says, “Hey, now forget everything you've learned in training, because I'm going to teach you how it's really done.” Well, that is a bad system. We should be able to align the training with the actual real-world needs that people require.
That competency framework created the multi-crew pilot licence, which is a licensing framework that's very popular in the Asia-Pacific region. That allows pilots to be trained from nothing to become a first officer in 18 months. There's a very heavy use of flight simulation devices. They teach them from day one to be an airline pilot.
Kelowna—Lake Country, Lib.
Thanks for that.
I've done a wide variety of training as a student and as an instructor. At what point, though, can you wind that back in the training process? Flying is very dynamic, and you're not always going to be exposed to everything that you'll ever see, even if it's in the training syllabus—or not.
What portion of the very early stages of training could we apply that to? I see it being used widely in advanced stages of flying training, because you'll have all basics under your belt. How far back could we wind that into the early stages?
Prof. Suzanne Kearns
The multi-group pilot licence program provides evidence that this can apply to the very earliest stages of training with no previous aviation experience. What it looks like is that we have a heavier use of flight simulation technologies to create very mission-specific training right from the very beginning.
From day one, instead of a memorization-based piece, you tell the students to prepare. They read the books ahead of time. Then, when they're there, they're in the simulator and working through very simple simulations that are very mission-specific. It's always targeted to a real-world objective. It builds up in complexity from that point forward.
Fundamentally, if you look at ground school right now, we teach them air law and then navigation and then general knowledge. They're very segregated. The research suggests that the reason we teach it that way is that it's easier to teach it that way. All the research suggests that the more segregated the content is, the longer it takes those learners to go into the real world and put that back together again.
There are all of these inefficiencies that we can tighten up to create a shorter training footprint. As well, students tend to like it a lot more.
Kelowna—Lake Country, Lib.
Do you have any idea of how much shorter that training footprint would be in the earlier stages of, say, PPL or CPL?
Prof. Suzanne Kearns
I can only put it in the context of the model that's been proven in other parts of the world with the multi-crew pilot licence: going from no aviation experience to being a first officer in 18 months. I don't think a multi-crew pilot licence would apply here in Canada, but I think we can learn a lot of those lessons and apply them within our licensing structure to make it less focused on hours and more focused on the development of competencies.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for joining us this morning.
I'll direct my questions to specific people, but the other witnesses should feel free to respond as well.
Mr. Adamus, I'll start with you.
In your opening remarks, you said that if salaries were better, there would likely be more pilots. You said that salaries have decreased by about 20% since deregulation. Assuming that salaries are restored to their pre-deregulation levels, would recruiting pilots in Canada still be an issue, given our flying time regulations, which are quite different from the regulations in the United States, for example?
Capt Dan Adamus
To put that on the table, I'll start by saying we're 20% behind what's currently paid on average to pilots in the United States. It's not since deregulation.
When a young person is looking at a career, there's no doubt money is a big part of that. If we were to increase the salaries, there is no doubt in my mind that a lot more young people would look into this industry. They would be able to look beyond some of the challenges that Mark has mentioned, which are all very valid, and they would be able to justify it. They'd be making this amount of money, so they can bite the bullet a little more. I think salaries play a big part in this.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
I understand your comments, but in a labour shortage situation, the student pilots or the pilots who are looking for a job still have the upper hand in the negotiations. They probably have a number of job offers.
For the same pay, do the conditions for pilots in Canada drive pilots to work for foreign competitors?
Ms. Kearns, go ahead.
Prof. Suzanne Kearns
To reinforce it, Canada has an excellent infrastructure for flight education. Many countries do not. The Asia-Pacific region's growth in aviation is projected to be twice ours in North America over the next 20 years, yet many countries in that region of the world don't have the flight training capacity. We're seeing them offer three times the salaries of what we're paying our airline pilots here in North America, so we are seeing this movement of Canadian pilots into that part of the world.
As a quick plug, the carrot at the end of a person's career obviously matters, but I want to reinforce to the committee that I am past president of a group called the University Aviation Association. We represent about 150 colleges and universities that have aviation programs. On average, we see about a 50% attrition rate within our programs.
These bright young students love aviation, but they usually do not have the financial resources to complete that education. I think if we could tip or even equal that balance to support the beginning of the pipeline, there would be many advantages to that.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
I'm probably one of the oldest people at this table. When we started our careers, I and a number of people in my generation were completely dedicated to the company we were working for. We imagined that we would work for the company our entire lives. However, this is no longer the reality for millennials today. While the salary will always be important, it may not be their main criterion. They consider quality of life and work-life balance to be very important.
Has the industry managed to adapt the working conditions to the desires of millennials?
Capt Dan Adamus
No, they haven't. I totally agree with you. I'm 56 years old and I'm in my 34th year with my airline. We probably won't see new aviators today being with the same airline for 34 years. They want choice and they want to be able to move around. That's why one of the things I was suggesting is that pay be based on experience and time: It's so you can move around without having to start all over again.
I know that Porter Airlines has done a very good job in constructing their pairings, the group of flights the pilots take on each day or couple of days. A lot of them will have overnights or just one-day pairings; females enjoy flying Porter so they can be home each night.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Mr. Adamus, I come from the education sector, where are all teachers are paid according to their education and experience. On paper, the system seems wonderful. However, if I lose my job at the age of 58 after gaining 25 years of experience, no other school will want to hire me specifically as a result of my education and experience. I would ask for too high a salary in comparison with a young person who has left school and who is starting at the bottom.
There's no magic solution in the current system or in the one that you're proposing. Could we find some middle ground?
Ms. Kearns, you seem to have a solution.
Prof. Suzanne Kearns
I think it's important to reinforce that there are more planes and pilots in general aviation in Canada than in the airline sector. General aviation includes remote operations and smaller operators. There's actually a larger group of pilots in that sector than in the airlines. A lot of those sectors, including flight instruction, have a lot more capacity to meet lifestyle needs of people who have small families or different things.
I think a challenge is that all pilots want to fly bigger and better. They all desire to work for airlines, and so the challenge is to make those other roles attractive. Also, I think it means reinforcing the idea that it's not just pilots. As with my career, there are many non-traditional aviation careers that allow you to still function in the industry that you're passionate about, and you can be removed from flying for certain phases of your life.
Liberal
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you, Chair.
When I started flying, my instructor warned me about something called AIDS, aviation-induced divorce syndrome. It's funny to say that, because I started flying just after getting married and I got my licence just before getting divorced, so he was absolutely correct about that.
In 2015 there was an incident you're all familiar with, the Germanwings crash. A pilot had about seven years of training and was about to lose his medical certificate and therefore his career. What can we do to mitigate the risks for young pilots, young students? Do you have thoughts on that?
That's for everybody.
National Chair, Canadian Federal Pilots Association
I don't know if you can deal with that Germanwings situation, really, but just in general, if it were easier for a person to pay for their training, if there were a tax break or something like that to help you get through that early stage, that would probably be of some benefit.
Capt Dan Adamus
Although I'm not 100% sure, I'm very confident that the Germanwings incident would not have happened in Canada, because there's an obligation on the medical examiner in Canada to report such an individual to Transport Canada. That was not the case over in Europe. I do believe that it's quite different.
Also, our pilots' association has a pilot assistance program. It's a very robust program that allows any pilot who has any concern with what's going on in their life, whether there are mental health issues, whether there are marital problems, whether there are financial or substance abuse issues. The program allows the individual to come forward in confidence to discuss the issue. If it's deemed to be something that would affect their medical, they are taken offline, but they are given the medical help that's needed. We have an almost 90% success rate in getting these pilots back to work after they go through their treatment.
As I said, we have a very robust program that does address that very issue.
Liberal
Prof. Suzanne Kearns
There's a wide body of research on aviation mental health. Basically, they'll give surveys to pilots in the general population with questions like “Do I sometimes experience stress?” or “Do I sometimes have anxiety?” Those findings suggest that within the pilot population, there's a tendency to deny any mental health issues.
I think that it stems back to the very earliest days of flight training, when pilots knew that if they lost their medical certificates, they would lose their careers. That made it much more difficult for them to seek help or even acknowledge that weakness.
I think there's a lot to be done to support mental health issues among the aviation population, and pilots specifically, to avoid those kinds of issues in total.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I appreciate that, except that I tend not to be stressed by anything because when I was learning to fly, they taught me how to keep everybody calm in the face of certain death. It's a good way of grounding yourself, as it were.
When Air Canada absorbed Canadian Airlines, how did the seniority transfer?
Capt Dan Adamus
That was done through an independent arbitrator, and I was not involved in that dealing.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
It's a good illustration of the lack of crossover of experience from one airline to another, because as I recall, a Canadian Airlines pilot with 25 years of experience got something like three years of credit at Air Canada.
Do you have a view about that? It was long ago.
