Aviation Leadership for Flight Operations Teams Training Course

Course overview

Flight operations teams make time-critical decisions where leadership quality directly affects safety, schedule integrity, crew wellbeing and customer commitments. Duty managers, flight dispatch leaders, crew control supervisors and operations centre managers must coordinate across maintenance control, airports, ground handling, network planning and cockpit crews while responding to disruption. This course addresses the practical leadership gap between knowing operational procedures and leading people through irregular operations, competing priorities, fatigue pressures and safety-critical escalation decisions.

Participants learn to lead operational shifts using structured briefings, decision logs, escalation thresholds and cross-functional coordination routines. The course applies safety leadership principles from ICAO Annex 19 and ICAO Doc 9859 to flight operations management, including just culture, reporting conversations, threat-and-error management and risk-based decision making. Participants practise setting operational intent, delegating under pressure, conducting effective handovers, resolving conflict between safety and commercial demands, and communicating decisions to senior leaders and frontline teams.

Delivery combines instructor-led aviation scenarios, operations-control simulations, facilitated debriefs and peer review of leadership decisions. Each participant works on an aviation flight operations leadership challenge relevant to their role, such as improving disruption response, strengthening shift handovers or increasing safety-report follow-up. They leave with a Flight Operations Leadership Action Plan containing stakeholder responsibilities, escalation criteria, briefing templates, performance measures and a 90-day implementation roadmap.

The course is designed for experienced aviation professionals moving into, or already holding, supervisory and management responsibility in airline, business aviation, airport or outsourced flight operations environments. It is equally valuable for managers who need leaders capable of protecting safety margins while maintaining disciplined, coordinated operational delivery.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct structured operational briefings using intent, risk, resource and escalation prompts
• Apply ICAO safety management principles to leadership decisions in flight operations
• Lead irregular-operations response using a prioritisation matrix and decision log
• Design shift handover routines that transfer operational status, risks and accountabilities
• Use just-culture questioning techniques during safety reporting and performance conversations
• Delegate time-critical tasks with clear authority limits, check-back requirements and deadlines
• Facilitate cross-functional recovery meetings involving crew control, maintenance, airport and network teams
• Produce a 90-day Flight Operations Leadership Action Plan with measures and implementation milestones

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Flight Operations Managers — who set operating priorities and lead safety-critical teams across daily operations
• Operations Control Centre Supervisors — who coordinate real-time responses to delays, diversions and crew disruptions
• Flight Dispatch Managers — who need consistent decision-making, escalation and communication across dispatch shifts
• Crew Control and Crew Scheduling Leaders — who manage crew availability, fatigue constraints and recovery actions
• Duty Managers — who must align airport, maintenance, ground handling and airline teams during operational disruption
• Safety and Quality Managers — who support operational leaders to convert reports, audits and trends into safer practices

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in an airline, airport, business aviation operator, ground handling provider or aviation support function, ideally with responsibility for a shift, team, operational process or safety activity. They should understand basic flight operations terminology such as OCC, dispatch, crew control, NOTAM, irregular operations and safety reporting, and be able to interpret operational procedures and incident summaries. Familiarity with an SMS, occurrence reporting process or shift handover is useful. No prior formal leadership qualification, advanced aviation regulation training, data-analysis software or specialist simulation tool is required.

Training methodology

The programme uses short instructor-led inputs followed by flight operations cases, role plays and facilitated operational debriefs. Participants work with disruption scenarios involving weather, crew legality, technical defects, airport constraints and competing commercial demands. They practise OCC briefings, escalation calls, safety-report conversations and recovery meetings, using decision logs and handover templates. Small groups analyse leadership choices against SMS principles and operational consequences. On the final day, each participant develops and tests a role-specific 90-day Flight Operations Leadership Action Plan with peer and instructor feedback.

Course outline

Day 1: Leading the Flight Operations System

• Flight operations leadership accountabilities across OCC, dispatch, crew control and duty management
• Safety, regularity and commercial performance trade-offs in operational leadership
• Operational intent statements for daily and disruption briefings
• Leadership authority, accountability and decision rights during a shift
• Human factors, workload and fatigue considerations for operational leaders
• Stakeholder mapping across maintenance control, airports, ground handling and network teams
• Leadership self-assessment against flight operations scenarios

Workshop: Participants map a current flight operations process and produce a leadership accountabilities chart showing decisions, interfaces and escalation points.

Day 2: Safety Leadership and Just Culture

• ICAO Annex 19 safety leadership expectations
• ICAO Doc 9859 safety management system leadership roles
• Just culture principles and behavioural accountability
• Safety-report triage and risk-based follow-up decisions
• Threat-and-error management in operational supervision
• Psychological safety in safety-critical reporting conversations
• Turning occurrence trends into team learning actions

Workshop: Participants conduct a just-culture review of a simulated operational occurrence and produce a proportionate follow-up and communication plan.

Day 3: Decision-Making During Irregular Operations

• Irregular-operations prioritisation matrices for safety, legality, passengers and network impact
• Time-bounded decision cycles for weather, diversion and technical disruption events
• Operational decision logs and assumptions tracking
• Escalation thresholds and executive notification criteria
• Crew legality, fatigue risk and recovery constraints
• Resource allocation across aircraft, crews, gates and maintenance capacity
• Communicating uncertainty and changing operational intent

Workshop: Teams manage a live disruption simulation and produce a timed recovery decision log, escalation record and stakeholder update.

Day 4: Leading Teams Across Shifts and Functions

• Structured shift handovers using status, risk, action and owner fields
• Briefing and debriefing techniques for operations control teams
• Delegation using authority limits, check-backs and decision deadlines
• Conflict resolution between safety, customer, crew and commercial priorities
• Cross-functional recovery meetings and action tracking
• Coaching operational staff after errors, near misses and difficult decisions
• Performance conversations using observable operational behaviours

Workshop: Participants run a cross-functional recovery meeting and produce an action tracker with owners, deadlines, risks and escalation triggers.

Day 5: Embedding Better Operational Leadership

• IATA IOSA Standards Manual leadership and operational control touchpoints
• Operational performance measures for safety, reliability and response quality
• Leading indicators for handover quality, reporting follow-up and decision discipline
• Reviewing disruption events through structured operational debriefs
• Stakeholder engagement for implementing leadership improvements
• Building a 90-day Flight Operations Leadership Action Plan
• Peer challenge and commitment planning for workplace application

Workshop: Each participant presents a 90-day Flight Operations Leadership Action Plan and receives peer review on measures, risks, owners and implementation milestones.

Tools & standards covered

ICAO Annex 19: Safety Management, ICAO Doc 9859: Safety Management Manual, IATA IOSA Standards Manual, FAA Advisory Circular 120-51E: Crew Resource Management Training

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions