The ICAEA seminar on Future Developments in Aviation Training and Testing, hosted by CIPE-ANAC, took place very successfully in Buenos Aires on 29th and 30th September. We are all delighted that there has been an ICAEA event in South America for the first time. We should be back on the continent in 2012. To read the seminar report and see the Powerpoint presentations, just click here
The issue of the European Union's intention to extend the recommended three-year period for retesting pilots to four years will be addressed by the next meeting of the ICAO Europe and North Atlantic region Coordination Training Task Force in Paris.
For '3 or 4' and 'Forthcoming aviation events', click here.
Air transport pilots facing the unexpected
The Air and Space Academy, a high-level aviation institution based in Toulouse, organised a two day conference hosted by the French DGAC in Paris on 29th and 30th November, which was attended by almost 200 delegates. The speakers included airline pilots, regulators from EASA, DGAC and the FAA, Airbus and Boeing test and training pilots, pilot training officers from the French Air Force, psychologists, IATA flight training specialists, Nancy Graham, Director of the ICAO Air Navigation Bureau, and the head of the European Astronaut Training Centre. To find out more, click here
15/12/2011 - ICAO / ICAEA Rated Speech Samples Training Aid (RSSTA) Update
The 21 samples generated in the first rating phase of the RSSTA (September 2010 - February 2011) have now been handed over to the IT specialists at ICAO. A BETA version of the RSSTA has been created which is now undergoing testing and refinement before public release. We hope the RSSTA w ill be ready in early 2012.
The second rating phase of the RSSTA (August 2011 - December 2011) is now complete. This involved 20 raters working with an additional 54 speech samples, creating a further 2,646 rating data. Analysis is now underway, and we expect to hand over a second batch of reliable rated speech samples to ICAO in the New Year.
Members of the RSSTA project panel are now working on commentaries to accompany each of the speech samples on the ICAO website. We hope to have some commentaries ready in the second quarter of 2012.
We hope to have more news on the RSSTA soon.
ICAO test endorsement process
Several ICAEA Board members are currently involved in the ICAO test endorsement working group (Philip Shawcross) and advisory committee (Adrian Enright and Sergey Melnichenko) and work is advancing on both the drafting of the test endorsement criteria and a preliminary test service provider questionnaire. The project is on track for piloting the process from May and implementing the full-scale endorsement mechanism from the autumn. click here
UN NGO status
A plenary session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council in New York has confirmed the NGO status of ICAEA . I hope that, once our current heavy agenda is behind us that we will be able to build on this status to provide support, expertise, awareness-raising and teacher training within the bounds of our remit in the developing world. Here is the text of the document transmitted by the UN. click here
