Trafikstyrelsen

EXAMINER OVERSIGHT

Introduction

According to ARA.FCL.205 the competent authority is responsible for developing an oversight program to monitor the conduct and performance of Examiners.

The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority uses several tools to comply with this regulation:

• Education

• Statistics

• Observed tests, checks and assessments

• Review of received test forms

• Examiners webpage

The use of each tool will be described in depth below.

All lessons learned from irregularities and other parts of the oversight must be used to improve the examiner system via implementation in the examiner seminar and training documentation.

Education

The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority has made an education program for Examiners, covering initial Examiner training, revalidation and renewal training and training to achieve further privileges. All training fulfills the requirements of PART-FCL and associated guidance material and AMCs.

The training includes theoretical training in the form of briefing and seminars and practical training in simulators, OTDs and aircrafts.

For detailed descriptions on all Examiner educations provided by The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority, see procedures regarding education on the Examiners site.

The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority has created a procedure on how to designate Examiners to the conduct of skill tests. This procedure is found under Procedures.

Examiner assessments which are part of the education system are done by Inspectors or by Danish Senior Examiners, who are undergoing a very high level of standardization by the authority (See Senior Examiner Procedure).

Statistics

As a very effective standardization tool, The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority has developed a statistics system. The main purpose of this system is to compare different parameters of the Examiners function against the entire group of Examiners.

The parameters being measured are duration of the different tests and conclusions of the tests.

Results of these statistics are reviewed by the Examiner coordinator or another Inspector, who will determine if any unacceptable deviations exist and if any actions should be taken.

Observed tests, checks and assesments including risk assessments. 

The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority requires that Examiners performing skill tests and Instructor Assessments notify the authority 5 days in advance of these tests, thus giving the authority the possibility to have an Inspector observing the test and to verify that it is held within the requirements set by EASA regulations and national procedures.

These observations are performed if a suspicion is present, that a problem might exist, or they can be performed completely random.

Further more Senior Examiners and Inspectors will make performance evaluation of Examiners and Pilots when they are performing Examiner assessments. These evaluations will be used by the authority to monitor if any negative trends occour or if any weak spots exists. Items discovered in these evaluations will be used in the contents of the Examiner seminar and Examiner briefings, and if any serious items exists, they will be comunicated to all Examiners without delay.

A risk evaluation will be made by the Examiner coordinator to locate any Examiners who might be a potential risk when performing the duties of an Examiner. When ever there is any posibility that an Examiner is in this risk categoy, there will be performed a risk analysis. This analysis can either limit, suspend og revoke an Examiner certificate or it might trigger an Examiner spotcheck.

These observations will be documented in a file and if no irregularities are observed, no other documentation will exists. If irregularities are observed, the chief examiner is notified and documentation will be stored.

A minimum number of spotchecks equal to 3% (March 2021 = 18) of Danish certified Examiners will be performed and an aditional 3% (January 2021 = 6) spotchecks on non-Danish certified Examiners per calendar year.

The Examiner coordinator will monitor flighttestbookings@trafikstyrelsen.dk, incoming feedback/assessment forms, risk evaluation forms and other documentation needed to evaluate when spotchecks are needed. On behalf of this documentation and mentioned requirements the Examiner coordinator will determine what Examiners will receive an oversight.

Oversight documentation will be stored in WorkZone and the Examiner coordinator will verify compliance with procedure.

Review of received test forms.

When test forms are received from Examiners they will be processed by the caseworker team.

This team is specialized in reviewing all forms used by Examiners and to recognize if any deviations exist.

In case of deviations the test forms will be sent to an Inspector, who will decide if any actions are required.

In case of any actions, the Examiner coordinator will be notified, and it will be logged in the WorkZone.

Examiners webpage.

The Examiners webpage is an extremely effective communication tool used by Examiners and the communication between The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority and Examiners.

This webpage contains a lot of functions usable to Examiners.

Updated forms, current regulations, discussion fora, test procedures, calendars containing Examiner seminars and Foreign Examiner Briefings are only some of the functions available on this webpage.

An updated Examiner list is also available on the webpage under the tab Examiners. This list is updated by the Examiner coordinater the last working day every month. 

All functions are compliant with EASA regulations, Flight Examiner Manuals and national regulations.

 

Examiner Seminars not conducted by TS. 

Small non-commercial fractions of the aviation society may be approved to perform Examiner Seminars covering their specific operations. These could be DSVU and DBU where these DTO’s hold the experience and the qualifications to run these Seminars.

Whenever an application for this process is received by TS it must be verified that all elements are in compliance with current regulations.

It must be documented that the following items are incorporated and controlled by the DTO:

  •        Content
  •        Participants
  •        Meeting attendance
  •        Tutors and instructors used for the Seminar
  •        Duration
  •        Frequency
  •        Agenda
  •        Where and when the Seminars are held
  •        Administration
  •        Documentation

These seminars must at the same time meet requirements for content update as all TS held seminars.

Each Seminar held will be attended by TS who will be among the Instructors.

Whenever above bullits are approved by TS a “Training program approval” will be issued.

Larger ATO's or individual Senior Examiners may be approved to perform Examiner seminars. Such approval will be given when the ATO or the Senior Examiners has shown full compliance with the requirements to contents and tutor qualifications has been shown through a training manual.

Further more, to obtain this approval, it must be clearly stated in this training manual, that the ATO or Senior Examiner is working under the management system of TS. This means that the content of the seminar regularly will be adjusted when deemed necesary by TS who reguarily will evaluate seminar content according to the "Seminar content" procedure. 

In case TS evaluates a change of seminar content, the ATO or Senior Examiner will change seminar content according to directions from TS.

All tutors on these seminars must be Danish certified Senior Examiners.

All Examiner seminars and standardisation courses will be oversighted once every three years.

EXAMINER SEMINAR CONTENT

Procedure Examiner seminar contents.

The content of the Examinber seminar must comply with the requirements of the entire Examiner syllabus (AMC1 FCL.1015 Examiner standardization).

The content must cover all general items of the regulation. All other items will be covered in the specific part of the training.

Unless items of great relevance are discovered earlier, the Examiner seminar will only change content every 3 years.

When possible all experience learned must be part of the Examiner seminar.

If this is not possible, ie a specific experience, it must be implemented in specific training or in another way communicated to relevant Examiners.

TS will work closely together with the Senior Examiners, creating the content of the Examiner seminar.

DEROGATIONS

Flexibility provisions examiners

With reference to Article 14 ”Flexibility provisions” (4) The Member State may grant exemptions from substantive requirements in the event of unforeseen urgent operational circumstances or operational needs of a limited period, provided the level of safety is not adversely affected.

The Agency, the Commission and the other member states shall be notified of such exemptions as soon as they become repetitive or where they are granted for periods more than 2 months.

This procedure describes the use of exemptions in subpart K Examiners and must be closely adhered to.

When requirements in the field cannot be met within the scope of the regulation a request must be made to the TS stating the requirements and where these are non-complient with current regulations.

TS will then evaluate if an exemption is an option. The areas that must be evaluated by TS shall include, but is not limited to:

  •         Collecting all relevant documentation and information
  •         Define the area or areas of non-compliance
  •         Define if any risks are involved
  •         If possible risks are involved a risk analysis must be made and it must be documented that any safety risks are negligible or acceptable
  •         It must be determined that this exemption does not provide a competitive advantage to any stake holder
  •         It must be determined if this exemption has any precedent effect and if this would be acceptable
  •         It must be determined that this exemption will be considered non-repetetive and the impact will last shorter than 2 months.

All exemptions must be documented for a period of 5 years.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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