Capt Anton Galea, chief pilot of the Comlux Airbus fleet, and Robert Risso, its post holder crew training, point out that today's pilots need to develop their knowledge of how modern avionics work.

There is a complex array of latest technology that includes:

• TCAS which is now becoming linked to auto flight systems for automatic initiation of recovery procedure.
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning Systems (EGPWS) with a worldwide database to ensure that the aircraft is kept on the intended flight path away from known obstacles in every take off, approach and landing.
Flight Management Systems (FMS) that are able to provide systems display indications, navigation display for lateral and vertical aircraft trajectories and even target aircraft attitudes to fly in the case of unreliable airspeed indications on the Primary Flight Display units.
Complete redundancy in automated flight to ensure landings in RVR values of 75m and with no need for decision heights. This, with Head Up Display Systems (HUDS) and Enhanced Visual Systems (EVS), enable the display of external world in Instrument Visual Conditions giving a virtual real world view together with a real time display of instrument indications on the forward field of view.

Galea says: "There are many other avionic enhancements that can be included but from a selection we can see that while the traditional pilot had to use external indications and his basic instruments to develop a mental model of the outside world, he must now rely a lot more on technology to build this model. This needs to be an identical copy of the real world for flights to remain safe."

Risso says: "The main training objective is to ensure pilots are ever more alert for systems threats and errors and for possible input errors that they can introduce. Top rate training must do much more than fulfil basic legal requirements which have remained unchanged for decades, notwithstanding all the developments that have taken place. There must be a strong emphasis on pilot enrichment programmes that increase the underpinning know-ledge of such systems. These programmes, integrated with scenario driven, evidence based learning concepts on the simulator or other devices, will deepen a pilot's understanding of these systems and create a proactive challenging approach rather than a passive 'wait and see' what is happening one. Through such training the virtual reality pilot's mental model is tested continuously for its authenticity and relationship with the real world outside."

Galea says: "Ultimately the quality of training will decrease the likelihood of errors by first avoiding them, trapping them if they occur and mitigating their effects through effective monitoring."