Competency for aviation professionals

“Expert pilots spend more time avoiding problems in advance than dealing with real problems,” Amalberti, 1996.

The concept of competency as defined by ICAO

The concept of competency is defined by ICAO. From 2020, the latest definition is: “The Competency is a dimension of human performance that is used to reliably predict successful performance on the job. A competency is manifested and observed through behaviours that mobilize the relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes to carry out activities or tasks under specified conditions.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

For information, some documents (e.g. EASA, Flight Examiner Manual or ICAO Doc995 EBT) provide the previous ICAO definition (source – ICAO Doc9868, Second Edition, 2016): “A combination of skills, knowledge and attitudes required to perform a task to the prescribed standard.”. Even if these definitions are a little different, they are not contradictory. See also the glossary.

Let’s go further with some notions mentioned in the latest definition and see how ICAO defined them!

1 – Competency

“Competencies are defined for each aviation function/profession/role and applied to the individual”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“Competencies are formulated in a way that ensures they can be trained for, observed and assessed consistently in a wide wariety of work contexts for a given aviation profession or role”, ICAO Doc 9868.

Pilot competencies and related observable behaviour are described within an ICAO competency framework. For pilots, there are 9 fundamental competencies that can be separated into two categories: technical and non-technical skills/competencies.

2 – Human performance

“Human performance is a human capabilities and limitations which have an impact on the safety and efficiency of aeronautical operations.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“A performance standard is a criterion or a set of criteria which makes it possible to clearly differentiate between acceptable and unaccpetable performance”, ICAO Doc 9941.

“Performance criteria. Simple, evaluative statements on the required outcome of the competency element and a description of the criteria used to measure whether the required level of performance has been achieved.”, ICAO Doc 9995.

Acceptable performances, sometime called Flight test tolerance are generally given in Skill test or profeciency check documents. Manoeuvres, procedures, items are assesses thanks to a Pass or fail matrix.

3 – Observed behaviours (OB)

“Observable behaviour (OB). A single role-related behaviour that can be observed and may or may not be measurable.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“Behaviour. The way a person responds, either overtly or covertly, to a specific set of conditions, and which is capable of being measured.”. ICAO Doc 9995.

4 – knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA)

“In order to display certain observable behaviours and demonstrate the achievement of performance criteria, aviation professionals call on relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) appropriate to a specific role and context. This ability will vary depending on the level of experience and expertise of the aviation professional.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“Knowledge is specific information required to enable a learner to develop and apply the skills and attitudes to recall facts, identify concepts, apply rules or principles, solve problems, and think creatively in the context of work. Knowledge is an outcome of the learning process, whether learning occurs in formal or informal settings. There are different types of knowledge: declarative (e.g. facts and raw data), procedural (e.g. categorized/ contextualized and application of conditional if-then rules), strategic (e.g. synthesis, inference to guide resource allocation for decision making, problem solving and behavioural action), and adaptive (e.g. generalization, innovation and invention).”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“Skills is an ability to perform an activity or action. It is often divided into three types: motor, cognitive and metacognitive skills. A motor skill is an intentional movement, involving a motor or muscular component, that must be learned and voluntarily produced to proficiently perform a goal-oriented task. A cognitive skill is any mental skill used in the process of acquiring knowledge, such as reasoning, perception and intuition. A metacognitive skill relates to the ability of learners to monitor and direct their own learning processes (“thinking about thinking”); for example, planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“Attitude is a persistent internal mental state or disposition that influences an individual’s choice of personal action toward some object, person or event and that can be learned. Attitudes have affective components, cognitive aspects and behavioural consequences. To demonstrate the “right” attitude, a learner needs to “know how to be” in a given context.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“A person’s attitude, toward a given situation or problem is often exhibited through that person’s choices or preferences”, ICAO Doc 9941.

“Attitudes represent an important area of research in social psychology. […] Attitudes are important because they influence the way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we behave. However, there is no unambiguous definition of attitude.”, Girandola & Fointiat, 2016.

5 – Activities or tasks

“A task is the smallest unit of work specified by a supervisor. A task will always have a measurable or observable output. […] A task must always be defined using an action verb.”, ICAO Doc 9941.

“A task […] require the application of the relevant set of competencies.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“To develop the training, it is necessary to determine which tasks and subtasks the trainee will perform and the required KSA to do so.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

The term “Activities” is not clearly defined by ICAO. According to ergonomist, an activity generally refers to how the task is actually carried out while the term task refers to what is prescribed (e.g. procedure in the Flight Manual is a precribed task while how it is carried out is the activity). Finally, for a single task precribed in the Flight Manual (e.g. perform starting up procedure), the way the task is actually carried out may vary according to the situation (e.g. Single vs Multi pilot…)

6 – Conditions

“Conditions. Anything that may qualify a specific environment in which performance will be demonstrated.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

“a challenge is to achieve transfer of KSA across contexts and operational situations”, ICAO Doc 9868.

The term “conditions” refers to contexts and operational conditions in which performance are demonstrated and consequently KSA are “visible”. Conditions are supposed to be defined in the training objective. “A clear statement that is comprised of three parts, i.e. the desired performance or what the trainee is expected to be able to do at the end of training (or at the end of particular stages of training), the performance standard that must be attained to confirm the trainee’s level of competence, and the conditions under which the trainee will demonstrate competence.”, ICAO Doc 9868.

7 – Role and degree of performance.

“Aviation professionals apply a set of competencies in a given role throuhout their career […] and will demonstrate the same set of competencies but with different degrees of performance.” , ICAO Doc 9868.

Competency framework are supposed to be completed by a general description of each competency level. Generally provided in 4 or 5 steps from unsatisfactory to excellent or Basic to Mastery or Not acceptable to Standard Plus according to the scale.

Mind Map of competency for aviation professionals

To go further with the concept of competency:

ICAO Doc 9941, Competency Development Guide, CBTA methodology, 2011, First Edition.

ICAO doc 9868, Procedures for air navigation services, Training, 2020, Third Edition.

ICAO Doc 9995, Manual of Evidence-Based Training, 2013, First Edition.

EASA Flight Examiner Manual, Module 1 – General, 2023.

---