Free «Training in the Aviation Industry» Essay Sample

Aviation technology has evolved over many years becoming better and better in order to reach perfection. Aviation by definition is the science and operation of flying airplanes, helicopters or gliders. Under the main umbrella of aviation technology, there are three main subgroups of aviation. The subgroups are; military aviation, commercial aviation and general aviation. Military aviation entails all flights that are carried out by the military personnel. The commercial aviation is flying done for commercial benefits or by charter airlines. On the general aviation category, flying is done for crop dusting, flying for fun as a sport or even private flying.

For the above flights to be successful, all the pilots must be competent. Pilots are flight personnel who are in charge of an airplane and, thus, are responsible for the whole flight crew and for all the passengers. Aviation technology’s first and foremost concern is safety. Despite some successful efforts in the sphere and statistics showing that the number of air disasters has reduced, some substantial concerns still remain unattended. Among them is the quality of pilots’ training.

The exemplary training in the United States has ensured rare risks in the aviation fraternity. Commercial flights are safer than even road transport. The chance of an aviation hitch is so small that there is only one chance out of three million for a fatality to occur. This tally was being made during a long period of time. About thirty years ago safety margins were lower, with the risk of an accident occurrence in every 140 miles of flight,. In present day, this has improved remarkably to a longer flight distance of 1.4 billion miles, which makes it a tenfold improvement in terms of safety (Salas & Maurino, 2010).

Aviation technology education in the European countries, the United States of America and in Canada is of a higher quality as compared to the same training that is offered in Africa. The major part of African aviation and the majority of flights are under a ban imposed by the European Union on the grounds of safety. Students of aviation from the European countries are placed on grounds of competition for jobs against the students who get their aviation training in Africa.

African resources are not enough to provide the best training. The majority of equipment available are of surprisingly poor condition and do not satisfy the international standards. These poor conditions of the aviation technology in Africa can be evident in the number of air crafts in more than twenty countries that are in the EU Air Safety List (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2010).The most dangerous period in a flight is during the take off and during landing. These two occasions need the full concentration of the cockpit attendants. Good training can ensure safer take offs as well as landings. The take-off and landing phase accounts for over three quarters of all aerospace accidents. It is shocking since these are exceedingly short phase in the flight. One of the major culprits of this fatality is the human factor.

The greatest danger in aviation is the human factor, the competence of a pilot will determine whether the flight will be safe or not. Adequate training will give confidence to the personnel and, thus, ensure safety in the aerospace. Students from Canada, as well as from the USA, get jobs even after the limited training program passing, on the contrary to their African counterparts. This happens because the standards of training in the west are deeper, well researched and give the students an opportunity to get more knowledge and skills in aviation technology (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2010).

Studies have shown that approximately 70% of all accidents occur because of human errors. The errors that occur are mainly divided into two types; the technical flight skill error and the non-technical flight skill errors. In African countries the chance of both errors occurring is higher, compared to the Canadian and American flights. These risks can be connected to the poor training that the attendants receive.

The conditions in Africa are more deteriorating, since well-trained personnel number is small. Thus, much pressure is put on the few employees. With all this pressure and poor pay they lack motivation in their jobs. Since the workers in the airplane work for long hours, they get fatigued. A combination of the fatigue as well as poor conditions of the airplane and poor handling spell bigger calamities and, thus, the chance of an accident is escalated. Human fatigue is something biological and cannot be evaded. The only way to handle this situation is consistent monitoring that will help to give warnings when the personnel are showing signs of reduced concentration and alertness. The fatigue management has been in the study for some time now and in a way the method of managing this disaster has been identified.

There exist technologies that predict the occurrence of severe fatigue, technologies that help in delivering education on fatigue management and inventions that will help people to be more alert and free from fatigue for an extended duration of time, hence, reducing the chance of an accident (Salas & Maurino, 2010). All said and done is decidedly essential for putting preventive measures rather than waiting for a disaster to come and than hurry dealing with it. It is a common saying that prevention is better than cure. Poor training should not be offered since the flights can spell a calamity to many lives. If safety is not assured, life may be lost.

In my opinion, placing of bans on the poor performing countries in terms of flying safety is a step in the right direction. The European Union (EU) ban on many African flights is an excellent example of the way forward to ensure that chances of accident are reduced to the minimum level possible. The countries that are on the ban will put much more effort so that the ban could be lifted. The process of doing this will help in improving their standards and, hence, safety on the aerospace will be assured (Rodrigues and Cusick, 2010).

Overworking of the pilots should be minimized. This will help in managing the chance of fatigue to pilots and improving their output capabilities. When people are active and alert, their performance will be at the best level possible. A combination of fatigue and poor training will lead to increased chances of accidents, thus, putting many lives on stake.

On another front, African countries’ governments should put comprehensive measures in order to ensure that all the training conducted on aviation technology is satisfactory and conforms to international standards. Having internal measures that enhance the training system and involving the international community in aviation technology will, in the long run, help in reducing the chances of the aerospace calamities.

Finally, the level of aviation training in the European countries, Canada and the United States draws no comparison with training in the African countries. Despite the African countries as a whole offering an exceptional climatic condition and, thus, ample time for flying, the condition of the training is of a lower standard. To change this, more efforts must be taken to enhance flying safety standards to better heights.