Regulators Prepare for Controller Training Rule Changes

EASA and EUROCONTROL jointly organised an Air Traffic Controller Competency-based Training and Assessment (CBTA) Workshop for National Competent Authorities (NCAs) to help them understand the amendment to the European ATCO Licensing Regulation (EU) 2015/340. 

As from 1 January 2029, the amendment introduces CBTA requirements for initial training and operational air traffic services (ATS) units and ATCO training organisations (TOs).

At the workshop, held at EUROCONTROL’s Aviation Learning Centre, NCA participants discussed the challenges and opportunities of managing the regulatory oversight of this change, with perspectives on its impacts from CANSO, the GATE Training Organisation, the EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, the Belgian Supervisory Authority, and the Irish Aviation Authority.

The workshop concluded that implementing CBTA represents a significant change to ATCO training and is likely to provide systemic benefits at network level. Early exchanges between TOs and NCAs are necessary to ensure timely implementation of the regulatory amendments, and NCAs play a role in managing their resources and approval schedules by ensuring early communication to TOs on expected timelines for submissions and any additional documentation required.

EASA underlined that exploiting the flexibility and adaptability of the CBTA approach is key to unlocking efficiency gains in the ATCO training pipeline. Participants also agreed that a more structured dialogue needs to take place across NCAs towards a harmonised landscape of CBTA implementation at EU level.

To support these conclusions, EASA and EUROCONTROL declared their readiness to support NCA and stakeholder initiatives and structured dialogue across NCAs, develop a generic introductory online course for inspectors and stakeholders covering the basic CBTA principles, move forward with the EASA Data4Training initiative, and consider developing a specific inspector training course for CBTA implementation.

As a next step, both organisations agreed to work towards integrating these conclusions into European network-level activities that will address the ATCO workforce challenge.