Definition
ICAO formalized the original eight core competencies in Doc 9995 (the Manual of Evidence-based Training, first published in 2013), with a ninth — Application of Knowledge — added in the 2020 update to the EBT/CBTA framework. The current set, used identically in IATA's CBTA framework and EASA's competency-based regulations, is:
1. Application of Procedures and Compliance with Regulations 2. Communication 3. Aircraft Flight Path Management — Manual Control 4. Aircraft Flight Path Management — Automation 5. Leadership and Teamwork 6. Problem Solving and Decision Making 7. Situation Awareness and Management of Information 8. Workload Management 9. Application of Knowledge
Each competency is defined by a description, a set of observable behaviors (OBs) that demonstrate it in operation, and the contexts in which it is to be assessed. The competencies are not separable in practice — a single event in flight typically involves several at once — but they are scored individually so the diagnostic signal stays clean. A trainee who executes a procedure correctly but fails to brief their PM has demonstrated Application of Procedures while failing Communication, and the grade reflects that.
The distinction between core competencies and the prior generation of "knowledge, skills, attitudes" (KSA) is non-trivial. KSA is taxonomic — it categorizes what the pilot knows, can do, and feels. Core competencies are operational — they describe what the pilot does, observable to a third party, in a specific context. The shift from KSA grading to competency-and-OB grading is the central methodology change of CBTA, and the reason CBTA produces data that predicts line performance better than the legacy approach.
For MPL (Multi-Pilot Licence) courses under EASA Part-FCL Appendix 5, the competency framework is the entire basis of the licence — there are no manoeuvre hour minimums in the traditional sense, only competency demonstration requirements. For Type Rating courses delivered under APS-MCC and competency-based type training, the same framework applies. CPL and ATPL theoretical knowledge structures have begun moving in the same direction with the Learning Objectives revision EASA introduced through Annex IX to the AR.
Why It Matters for Flight Schools
The reason core competencies matter operationally is that they are the unit of program management. A school running a CPL/IR/MEP course on an integrated competency-based syllabus tracks every student's progression on each of the nine competencies, lesson by lesson, debrief by debrief. The chief instructor or Head of Training can see at a glance which competencies are underperforming across the cohort, which instructor consistently grades differently from peers on a given competency, and which curriculum components correlate with weak competency outcomes downstream.
This is also where most schools fail in their CBTA implementation. Competency frameworks that are written into the Operations Manual but not embedded into daily lesson grading produce no data. Lessons graded against bespoke checklists that don't map to the framework produce data that can't aggregate. The whole point of competencies — comparable, aggregatable grading across instructors, students, and courses — is lost.
How Aviatize Handles This
Aviatize stores the school's competency framework as a versioned, configurable object — supporting the ICAO/IATA nine, EASA's variant, FAA ACS task elements, or any school-specific elaboration. Each lesson plan maps its activities to the competencies (and underlying observable behaviors) it is designed to develop, so post-lesson grading happens against the same framework lesson after lesson.
Programme reporting then aggregates competency outcomes across every dimension that matters — by student (a personal competency profile that flags weak areas needing remediation), by instructor (calibration outliers and bias detection), by course phase (where in the syllabus each competency tends to be weak), and by graduating cohort (a summary the chief instructor can present to the regulator or to airline customers as objective evidence of training quality).