Sunday, December 30, 2012

Aircraft Engineer Assessment

To become a aircraft engineer will almost guarantee you to earn a decent income. Many people may not exposed to this and may miss the opportunities. A person may join a training school and get the basic license within 4 years. The training will involve classroom (2400 hours), On job training (2 years), continuous examinations and assessments. This posting is about the assessments.

The applicants for the EASA examinations, either the A or B categories need to be assessed based on the followings:
- the learning objectives and the passing level. A typical learning objectives can be as... at the end of the program/class/ workshop etc, the participant would be able to .....action word ( list, demonstrate, explain etc) under ........ (specific condition) with .... specific performance (example 75% passing mark, do the task within 5 minutes etc).

At the conclusion, the trainee should know what he did well, what he did poorly and how he can improve.

A good assessment will have the following characteristics...
- clear objective.
- flexible approach
- acceptable
- comprehensive, covering the required areas.
- organised and thoughtful.

The following are examples of the areas of assessment for aircraft engineer.

- What are the success factors for the job?. The questions may be direct. Let say, for a task to change the wheel, the success factors can be... the tools, knowledge on how to access the wear limit and tyre conditions, the safety precautions and others. Then the assessor has to ask and check if the trainees know these factors.

- Reference and standard.
In the case of the tyre, where are the limit references. How many retreads are allowed?. If the reference is made to the maintenance manual, the trainees should know the elements of the manual, the effective pages etc.

Airworthiness Authority - EASA AMC Part 66 and 145

One of the task an approved 147 school has to do is to keep track with the changing regulations. Luckily, the focus is on Part 66 and 147. I enclose the my summary to the Annex to Decision 2012/004/R, focusing on Annex 4- "Acceptable Means of Compliance/Guidance Material to Part-66" and 5- Part 147.
Link to EASA - HERE   

The other important decision is the Regulation EU1149/2011 and Decision 2012/004R

A. PART 66 - These are the noted changes...
a. Changes in the time limit for knowledge and experiences requirements -
- previously, the limit to complete and pass the modules was 5 years. Now the limit encompass the knowledge examinations and experience is limited to 10 years. The proof of passing the examinations and the recent experiences are still required.
- The recent experiences is defined as... at least 1 year of recent experience, and recent means.. 50% (6 months) of your experience must be within the last 1 year and the rest must be within 7 years. The other "non-recent" can be within 10 years limit.  

b. Procedures of examinations failures.
If an applicants fails his/her examination, the waiting periods are given below.
- after first attempt - 90 days waiting
- after second attempt- 90 days waiting period.
- after third attempt and still fail, 1 year waiting period.