Keeping Flight Instructors Standardised Is Harder Than Setting the Standard, Australian Training Chief Argues

Harrison Stanhope, chief operating officer of Australia's Basair Aviation College, presented in the ATO stream at APATS 2026 on why instructor standardisation is easier to build than to sustain. He says organisations can standardise content, sequence, agreed language and standards, but should not script every word an educator says or strip out professional judgement. His four foundations are regulatory alignment, sequence and syllabus, embedded instructional design, and a shared professional language. To show the scale involved, he cites CASA's Part 142 commercial pilot syllabus: seven exams, 150 hours of total experience, 21 competencies, 79 elements and 441 performance criteria. Feedback, he argues, is the hardest area to standardise, and inconsistent feedback can leave students trained to different levels. He recommends agreeing terminology and how feedback and assessment are measured, with instructor-level and course-level failure data included, and suggests that standardisation be a shared responsibility in the way safety is. His closing point is that maintaining and improving standardisation matters more than setting its foundations.