Model Flight Standards Inspector Training

The work of the Flight Standards Department is accomplished by a group of highly skilled aviation professionals including Aviation Safety Inspectors (ASI) who accomplish many of the daily technical functions of the CAA as required by ICAO. The ASIs represent the national government and their role is critical to aviation safety.

The periodic reporting of the results of the ICAO Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme has shown that Critical Element 4 (CE-4), technical personnel qualifications and training, has been consistently difficult to implement. In the most recent USOAP report for the period ending December 2015, CE-4 is the least implemented of the eight CEs, with a 47.4 percent of lack of effective implementation worldwide.

These Guidelines for the Hiring and Training of Inspectors of the Flight Standards Directorate will provide a means to promote a minimum level of technical capabilities of technical personnel providing safety oversight worldwide.

As discussed earlier, it is well understood that most CAAs do not have the resources, or perhaps the regular demand, to have their own internal training facility to train CAA employees. The ICAO Document 8335notes that more often, however, such training will need to be obtained through courses offered by the manufacturers, private training facilities, other States or under ICAO auspices. The ICAO Document 8335 also emphasizes that in order to maintain good relationships and avoid possible embarrassment or controversy, it is not desirable for CAA inspectorate personnel to acquire this training from an operator or organisation under their inspectional jurisdiction. Therefore, since many CAAs will rely on external training providers of some sort, it is imperative that established relationships, agreements and/or contracts are in place so that CAA inspectors will have access to timely, uniform and standardized training. Corresponding, the CAA inspector training profiles will need to indicate the course number and provider of courses obtained from outside sources.

The FAA has courses and full curriculums for Flight Standards Inspector Training, and training many foreign nationals each year both in the United States and in-country. In order to assist CAAs in determining which FAA courses would be of benefit to train their own inspectors, the FAA Flight Standards Service has taken its own courses, or filled in with an ICAO TRAINAIR Plus course, to show how FAA meets the training criteria listed in the Guidelines for the Hiring and Training of Inspectors of the Flight Standards Directorate (MS Word)

Last updated: Monday, September 13, 2021