After the Jeju Air passenger plane disaster at Muan International Airport, the government moved to overhaul pilot training standards. It plans to establish new designation criteria for specialized training institutions, a system for cultivating flight personnel, and unify the training framework to align with international standards.
According to the government on the 22nd, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport recently commissioned a research project on a plan to establish designation criteria for specialized training institutions for air transport pilot courses. The Aviation Safety Act separately defines specialized training institutions (Article 48) and training organizations (Article 77), but lacks detailed standards for transport pilot education. The ministry plans to streamline the dual system, unify management standards, and newly set specific items such as facility requirements, instructor qualifications, and the education curriculum.
A Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport official said, "Pilot training conducted at external outsourced training institutions such as Boeing Korea or Airbus Korea also needs to be managed in a standardized form," adding, "We are pursuing institutional improvements to include management standards for those institutions currently designated as aviation training organizations under the operational technical standards."
The ministry sees this institutional overhaul as part of preparing the system for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) safety assessment scheduled for next year. A ministry official said, "We are trying to institutionalize systematic curricula and certification procedures," adding, "The purpose is to supplement the training and certification framework to meet international standards."
Alongside reinforcing the pilot training framework, the ministry is also pushing to institutionalize a just culture in the aviation sector. A just culture is a system in which reports by aviation workers such as pilots and mechanics of unintentional mistakes or structural errors are treated as learning opportunities rather than punishment. A ministry official said, "Punishment-oriented administration has been repeated, leading to concealment of similar cases, and we intend to address that," adding, "We plan to clarify procedures and standards so that immunity is possible when it is not intentional or gross negligence."
This move is not unrelated to the controversy over the effectiveness of pilot training raised after the Muan Airport disaster. The training items related to the situation at the time of the accident were reportedly not part of an annual program, and within the aviation industry, there have been repeated calls to strengthen emergency response training and fatigue management standards. The ministry plans to prevent a recurrence of accidents by pursuing improvements to both pilot education and safety culture systems.
In April, the ministry announced an aviation safety innovation plan and prepared measures to strengthen safety management standards across airlines, pilots, and mechanics. It created airline-specific safety performance indicators to track major accidents such as runway excursions, aircraft-to-aircraft contact, and engine shutdowns, and decided to restrict approval of new routes for airlines with poor performance. It will raise the mechanic proficiency standard from two years to three years and improve pilot fatigue management standards by considering work hours alongside the number of takeoffs and landings.
The industry sees this institutional overhaul as a move to bring external outsourced training institutions into the government's management framework. Kim In-gyu, head of the Flight Education Center at Korea Aerospace University, said, "Airlines have so far combined outsourcing with in-house training, but it appears the government intends to manage outsourced training institutions within the specialized training institution system," adding, "It is highly likely to move toward clarifying instructor and facility requirements and standardizing curricula."
He added, "In the wake of this accident, the supervisory authorities have closely examined the education programs of low-cost carriers (LCCs), and recognition has grown that shortcomings compared with major airlines need to be supplemented," adding, "It may place some burden on LCCs with less capacity to invest in training, but it will likely raise overall safety levels."