ABSTRACT
In the earliest days of aviation there were no instructor pilots. The first aviators, such as Orville and Wilbur Wright, Octave Chanute, Otto Lilienthal, and the Norwegian Hans Fleischer Dons* (originally a submarine officer), trained themselves. They were simultaneously test pilots and student pilots, with the inevitable consequence that many died during the process of discovering how to maintain control of their aircraft (including Lilienthal, who died in a glider crash in 1896). Aspiring modern pilots are fortunate to be the beneficiaries of the experiences of these pioneers, along with several succeeding generations of pilots who have also made their contributions to the art and science of aviation training. However, not all advances in aviation training have come from pilots. Researchers (most of them not pilots) in the fields of psychology and education have also helped shape the format, if not the content, of current aviation training. Principles of how humans learn new skills developed in the laboratories have been applied advantageously to pilot training. In this chapter, we will examine some of those principles and how they are applied in an aviation setting, along with the general process of training development.
