Recommendation Date
Recipient Name
Gliding New Zealand
Text
On 27 September 2023 the Commission recommended that Gliding New Zealand review how gliding club instructors are trained, and clubs are audited, and then take corrective action to ensure that all new instructors are consistently trained to the standards set out in the Manual of Approved Procedures (MOAP)
Reply Text
On 13 October 2023, the President of GNZ responded to recommendation (011/23). Their response addressed two parts of the recommendation separately. The first part of their response related to Gliding New Zealand review how gliding club instructors are trained:
Gliding New Zealand is pleased to report that this recommendation was accepted and implemented. More than just review how gliding club instructors are trained GNZ undertook a comprehensive update and rewrite of the instructor training programme (ITP) and submitted this to the CAA for acceptance on 1st June 2021. A further period of extensive collaboration and engagement with the CAA was then undertaken before final acceptance of the updated ITP was received from the CAA on 19th October 2022. A summary of this fully reviewed and updated programme can be found at the link below.
https://gliding.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ITP-Summary.pdf
Since acceptance, a GNZ team led by the Operations Team has been rolling out the updated ITP to club instructors around the country via a series of seminars to ensure a consistent approach to training using the new system is being adopted.
In addition, it should be noted that there has also been a new publication on the traps of ridge flying, "10 Traps", which was written and issued as a direct response to this accident. This document has been added to the Pilot Training Program to sharpen awareness around the potential hazards of ridge flying and is available to both pilots and instructors.
The second part of the President of GNZ response related to how GNZ audits its affiliated clubs:
Gliding New Zealand advises that this recommendation is Under Consideration.
Club audits are currently conducted by GNZ Regional Operations Officers (ROO’s) following a templated format. ROO’s are volunteers and club audits in their present format can take an entire weekend for one club. Presently there are three ROO’s covering 19 clubs spread across the length of New Zealand. To extend these audits to detect gaps in an instructor’s knowledge would involve the systematic assessment of every instructor by the auditor, which is simply not practical, hence the auditor does rely on the club CFI to attest to each instructor’s knowledge, capability and to provide evidence of competency via records of assessment, Form OPS 07 and Form OPS 09.
To step up another level in auditing would require funding. GNZ notes that CASA in Australia funds their recreational aviation organisations to carry out their duties, recognising that by doing so they are saving CASA significant amounts of money in comparison to what it would cost CASA to do this themselves. GNZ suggest that the CAA instead of charging Part 149 recreational aviation organisations (which reduces their budgets available for use on safety measures such as audits) CAA should follow overseas best practice and fund these organisations to carry out audits and thus improve safety.
Gliding New Zealand is pleased to report that this recommendation was accepted and implemented. More than just review how gliding club instructors are trained GNZ undertook a comprehensive update and rewrite of the instructor training programme (ITP) and submitted this to the CAA for acceptance on 1st June 2021. A further period of extensive collaboration and engagement with the CAA was then undertaken before final acceptance of the updated ITP was received from the CAA on 19th October 2022. A summary of this fully reviewed and updated programme can be found at the link below.
https://gliding.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ITP-Summary.pdf
Since acceptance, a GNZ team led by the Operations Team has been rolling out the updated ITP to club instructors around the country via a series of seminars to ensure a consistent approach to training using the new system is being adopted.
In addition, it should be noted that there has also been a new publication on the traps of ridge flying, "10 Traps", which was written and issued as a direct response to this accident. This document has been added to the Pilot Training Program to sharpen awareness around the potential hazards of ridge flying and is available to both pilots and instructors.
The second part of the President of GNZ response related to how GNZ audits its affiliated clubs:
Gliding New Zealand advises that this recommendation is Under Consideration.
Club audits are currently conducted by GNZ Regional Operations Officers (ROO’s) following a templated format. ROO’s are volunteers and club audits in their present format can take an entire weekend for one club. Presently there are three ROO’s covering 19 clubs spread across the length of New Zealand. To extend these audits to detect gaps in an instructor’s knowledge would involve the systematic assessment of every instructor by the auditor, which is simply not practical, hence the auditor does rely on the club CFI to attest to each instructor’s knowledge, capability and to provide evidence of competency via records of assessment, Form OPS 07 and Form OPS 09.
To step up another level in auditing would require funding. GNZ notes that CASA in Australia funds their recreational aviation organisations to carry out their duties, recognising that by doing so they are saving CASA significant amounts of money in comparison to what it would cost CASA to do this themselves. GNZ suggest that the CAA instead of charging Part 149 recreational aviation organisations (which reduces their budgets available for use on safety measures such as audits) CAA should follow overseas best practice and fund these organisations to carry out audits and thus improve safety.
Related Investigation(s)