Flight Training

Flight training is based on the building blocks principle; it demands a lot from students and its intensity increases at a high rate, yet special consideration is given to the adherence of an optimal learning curve and monitoring of an individual student’s progress.

Students first familiarize with all matters they will need to learn in a classroom and doing self-study, utilising state-of the- art computer-based training materials. The most important matters are rehearsed in a simulator before taking off on respective actual training missions.

After each simulator sortie a student is given detailed feedback, and an assessment form is completed. The procedure is the same after each actual training sortie. The student’s contribution to the analysis of events that took place during the sortie and his performance have a central role in this assessment. The objective of this sortie reconstruction is not to build pressure on the student; instead, it is carried out in order to make learning even more efficacious by providing analytical, honest and open feedback.

Students are also expected to prepare for forthcoming sorties and familiarise with the current training objective on their own initiative. They are informed about the sorties in the next day’s programme on the previous day, which enables them to do all sortie preparations per instructions given to them. Sortie assignments and crewing details are e-mailed to all students at the close of each working day.

During sortie briefing the flight instructor checks that a student had prepared for the coming flight in accordance with the applicable instructions. Briefings are conducted using computer-based tools that are prepared in advance, and students assume an active role during briefings. A separate mission planning system is also used for mission briefings.

Training sorties are executed in accordance with the flight training syllabi. The aim is to create a positive atmosphere and an optimum learning situation is conducive to the full attainment of sortie objectives.

Particular emphasis is put on debriefings, in which the primary objective is to reconstruct the sortie and the essential learning events in a reliable manner. The aircraft’s performance data, position information, weapons employment, radio communications and HUD displays are merged in a debriefing system and thereby made available for debriefing purposes.

Good debriefing and sortie evaluation in which technical aids are utilised are essential elements of the learning process that a student is undergoing and they enhance his growing towards maturity in airmanship in an extremely demanding learning environment.

A maximum of two sorties per day is assigned to each student. This allows them time for thorough sortie preparation, efficacious sortie execution, and comprehensive sortie reconstruction.