Emerging Challenges – How Pilot Students Remained Resilient During the Pandemic?

Abstract

Due to the low volume of passenger services between March 2020 and May 2022, manpower demand was dwindled by airlines and simultaneously shape undesirable or appalling moods among flight students due to the unpredictable timeline of business recovery. To realize the psychological impact and understand how they coped with the challenges generated by COVID-19, this follow-up study surveyed flight schools in the United States (U.S.) and compared respondents’ perception of health protocols, flight training, human factors, psychological issues, and safety culture to that of Chinese respondents. Cronbach’s alpha, Spearman correlation coefficients, and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney t-test were used to coin instrument consistency, data validity, and correlation among questions before testing perceptional differences. The result discovered that “Stress” “Pressure”, and “Fatigue” were the three dominant Human Factors, where “Stress” and “Uncertainty” were the two top psychological issues affecting U.S. respondents during the pandemic time. Moreover, U.S. flight schools were less supportive to wear a face mask in the cockpit but showed a stronger motivation to seek mental/psychological health support and were more willing to adapt to new safety and health standards. China’s flight schools encountered more disrupted scheduled flight training and check-rides and decreased flight skills due to the stricter health protocols, but flight schools tried as diligently as possible to offer refresher courses during the pandemic.