We mean Pilot Competency Cards.

“What is a ‘Pilot Competency Card’?” we hear you ask?

It is a card that is designed to help you with your competencies, but in a new way.

Tell me more?

The Pilot competencies are useful things, but along with their lists of observable behaviours, they are also things which sometimes seem to be written in pompous IATA English, more theoretical than practical. Especially if you’re new to them.

To really get to grips with them you have to know how to a) actually put into practice what the OBs are asking of you and b) understand them so you can self-evaluate how you actually used them.

Let me give you an example.

Hmm, ok, great, I’ll definitely do that next time I identify a deviation…

Later that day, the Captain does something funny during sim training and Bob just watches on, clueless about what to do…

The competencies and the OBs are like recipes. Recipes that say “cook the chicken” but don’t actually explain how you go about cooking it. Do you roast it? Grill it? Boil it? And how do you know when it is done? Does it taste better with a nice sauce on top?

Pilot Competency Cards.

These are designed to help.

• You can print them off, carry them with you and use them to brief yourself, or de-brief yourself now and then
• You can leave them (subtlely) in the bag of a co-pilot who particularly sucked at that competency
• You can just have them as a brief reminder

PILOT COMPETENCY CARD: Communications