What’s the cost of not Training?

Training is really the foundation of  success and achievement. The better the training, the more you can expect to accomplish in a safe and successful way. You will begin an endeavour at a higher level of proficiency and not have to endure the mistakes that others did, to get to that point. 

Training is the basis for safe delivery of a service and becomes more important as the complexity and potential danger of the services increase. 

I’ll use myself as an example. I have a complex aircraft multi-instrument pilot rating. It took significant training over a period of years to feel comfortable flying these planes. Some of the best training experiences I received were the day-long immersion sessions at Flight Safety. 

Flight Safety offered special training that you couldn’t get by flying a plane solo. This is because Flight Safety used simulators to create adverse conditions and stressful situations. Flight safety knew your experience and the type of plane you were flying.

The day-long training started with a classroom overview of your particular aircraft and progressed through the day in the flight simulator. Each simulator session was more and more challenging with different problems added to the mix. At the push of a button, the simulator could create adverse weather and mechanical conditions separately or all occurring at the same time.  Each problem added additional stress, but in a safe environment, much like the our ESA lab intensive. By the end of the day, I was ready and comfortable to deal with adverse weather conditions like clouds, rain, wind, and adverse mechanical situations like radio and landing gear failure. 

Would I have wanted to learn how to handle any of those situations without previous training ? No way, but someone before me did. That’s how the training was created and developed. 

Did I ever think I would need that training ? Not really, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way and risk it all for lack of training which was available to me. 

Was the training expensive ? Yes it was. 

Was the training worthwhile ? More than I could have imagined. Over the years, I have owned six aircraft and never expected anything to go wrong, but I did plan for it.  I did have complete radio failure twice in Los Angeles airspace, landing gear failure once, lost an engine once, had a lightning storm develop around me, and even experienced a side window pop out of the plane at 20,000 feet in a pressurized twin.      

All of these events were potentially catastrophic, but my training allowed me to feel relaxed, comfortable and confident to successfully deal with the situation at hand. 

There is no substitute for good training before a problem occurs, your reputation will depend on it.