This document is Volume 1 of the FAA-sponsored Windshear Training Aid, developed by a consortium including Boeing, United Airlines, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed-California, Aviation Weather Associates, and Helliwell, Inc. It contains three parts: an Overview for Management, a Pilot Windshear Guide, and an Example Windshear Training Program, and it serves as the “front door” to the larger Training Aid package, which also includes a Substantiating Data volume (Volume 2) and two instructional videos. The management overview lays out why the program exists: windshear had contributed to at least thirty-two U.S. carrier accidents or incidents over the prior twenty-two years, causing more than 600 fatalities, and existing pilot training on the subject was judged inadequate.
The Overview for Management frames the response around two pillars — training crews to recognize and avoid weather conditions that produce windshear, and training them in cockpit recognition and recovery techniques for encounters that aren’t avoided — while stressing that avoidance remains the single most effective defense, since no fully reliable detection technology yet exists. It repeats the core lessons also detailed in Volume 2, such as the short 5-to-15-second recognition window and the small, low-altitude footprint of microburst events, framed here for a management audience deciding whether to invest in training and policy changes.
The Pilot Windshear Guide translates this into a home-study resource covering windshear weather and a model of flight crew actions, while the Example Training Program section lays out a full ground and simulator curriculum: a suggested syllabus pairing the Pilot Guide with self-test questions, two instructional videos, and classroom weather-evaluation exercises, supplemented by appendices covering video scripts, simulator syllabi, crew coordination callouts, and a sample windshear bulletin.
Password: flightcrewguide.com