Cengiz Turkoglu

Senior Lecturer & Quality Manager, Cranfield University

Cengiz worked as a certifying staff in different airlines and maintenance organisations both in Turkey and in the UK from 1991 to 2002. He then held roles in Safety and Quality Departments in SR Technics UK Ltd and Flightline, a UK charter airline. Before he joined City University London as a Senior Lecturer and Wake QA as a part-time IOSA auditor in 2008, he was the nominated post holder for ‘Continuing Airworthiness’ in Flightline. Over the last 14 years, Cengiz had the opportunity to take part in IOSA audits of over 50 different airlines in North and South America, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Europe. In September 2015, he joined the ‘Cranfield Safety and Accident Investigation Centre’ and became the Course Director MSc Airworthiness in 2017. Since July 2019, he has been holding the position of ‘Quality Manager’ at the Cranfield University’s National Flying Laboratory Centre, which is a SPO Authorised Saab340B operator.

Cengiz has been a member of the UK Flight Safety Committee since 2010 and joined the ‘Executive Board’ as the Vice Chairman in 2015. Since 2021, he remained in the Executive Board as a non-executive member. Cengiz also has been representing the International Federation of Airworthiness (IFA) in European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Collaborative Analysis Groups for Commercial Air Transport and the Human Factors since their inception in 2016.

Cengiz currently holds BEng (Hons) Degree in Aircraft Engineering from Kingston University and MSc Air Transport Management from City University London. He chose the topic of ‘Risk Culture in Commercial Air Transport’ for his PhD research, which he is currently continuing at Cranfield University.

Cengiz has presented over 40 international conferences and symposiums since 2009.

Transforming Recurrent Training Sessions into Interactive Engagements to Gather Safety Intelligence

Almost all organisations in commercial air transport industry transformed their recurrent training into online training packages during the pandemic. While online training was inevitable because of the challenges faced due to the pandemic, many organisations continue to expect their frontline employees to complete a self-paced ‘computer-based training’ (CBT) package without any human interaction. During a recent exchange with senior managers in a large airline, they argued that they spent considerable amount of resource to create videos and content to develop such a CBT package for the individuals to sit in front of computer and go through the training on their own. The belief/argument that human beings learn on their own just by watching CBT packages is completely flawed. There is no doubt the CBT can add value in a supplementary way and some individuals can benefit from CBT much more than others but for many, human interaction is a pre-requisite for learning and development, and this is overlooked by many organisations.

Potential Solution:
At least a ‘one-day (ideally face to face in class or potentially in a virtual classroom) recurrent training’ should be the minimum standard for all operational professionals such as pilots, ATCOs, engineers etc. During such a training day, most of the sessions can be delivered to transfer new knowledge (updates to the procedures, lessons learned from internal and external accidents/serious incidents etc.) but workshop (e.g. a 2-hour interactive session) can/should be included to capture employees’ lived experiences about how they dealt with complex situations they faced and how/by whom the decisions were made and if those decisions were riskbased or not etc. While such a workshop can enable individuals to learn from each other during the training session, the real benefit can be achieved (particularly in large organisations) if these lived experiences are captured (shared confidentially or even anonymously) by a SenseMaker engagement, which enables the individuals analyse their own stories themselves (not by safety data analysts in safety departments). This can be a powerful safety intelligence to be fed into SMS of the organisation to better understand the operational risks the organisation is facing and manage them more proactively.