EBT practice guide
From baseline EBT to enhanced EBT. Training from your own evidence.
Baseline EBT runs the published programme for your aircraft generation, set in your own operation. Enhanced EBT, as ICAO Doc 9995 describes it, goes further: the programme itself follows your training data and your safety data. This guide covers what changes, what the rules allow today, what has to be in place and where programmes stall.
The difference
What actually changes. Baseline EBT and enhanced EBT, side by side.
A simplified comparison, in the terms of ICAO Doc 9995. Your authority's rules and your approval define what applies to your operation.
Where the programme comes from
Baseline EBT: The published table of assessment and training topics for your aircraft generation
Enhanced EBT: The same framework, with priorities set from your own evidence
Training topics and how often
Baseline EBT: As published, for every operator of that generation
Enhanced EBT: Weighted towards the risks your own data shows, where your rules provide for it
Scenarios
Baseline EBT: Example scenario elements, set in your routes, aerodromes and procedures
Enhanced EBT: Scenarios designed from your own occurrences and trends
Data that drives it
Baseline EBT: Grading and training data, with safety data used to set the context
Enhanced EBT: Training data and safety data analysed together, cycle after cycle
Who is involved
Baseline EBT: The training department, with input from safety
Enhanced EBT: Training and safety working from one evidence base
What the authority looks at
Baseline EBT: The cycle as approved, concordance and a verified grading system
Enhanced EBT: How evidence becomes a change to the programme, and whether the change worked
Baseline EBT is not a generic programme run blind: under the EU rules it already has to be customised and its scenario elements set in your own operation. Enhanced EBT is the step where your own data shapes the programme itself.
AeroEBT keeps the same competency framework, instructor app and pilot record from baseline to enhanced EBT, so the evidence carries over.
The instructor app in AeroEBTEvidence
Three levels of evidence. Where a change to the programme comes from.
EASA's guidance on customising an EBT programme sorts the evidence into an inner loop, inside your own organisation, and an outer loop, outside it. The same three levels are the raw material of an enhanced programme.
Your EBT programme
Changed only on evidence
Inner loop: your organisation
- Training data
- Grading metrics, training reports and questionnaires, for one pilot or for a group
- Safety data
- What your safety management system finds: occurrence reports, flight data monitoring, audits
Outer loop: outside it
- Authorities
- State safety plans and published priorities
- Manufacturers
- Operational and safety documentation for your aircraft
- Industry
- International EBT data and updates to training topic priorities
In AeroEBT the grades instructors enter are the training data: competency trends by pilot, fleet and rank come from the record itself, not from a separate analysis.
Competency data and concordance in AeroEBTThe rules
What the rules allow today. ICAO describes enhanced EBT. The EU rules provide for baseline EBT.
Enhanced EBT is an ICAO term, and it is not a form of approval in every rule set. Read this section with your competent authority.
ICAO Doc 9995
The Manual of Evidence-based Training describes two implementations: the baseline programme and the enhanced programme, which is developed with the operator's own data.
EU rules: baseline EBT
ORO.FC.231 and ORO.FC.232 provide for baseline EBT. The operator follows the published training topics and frequencies for its aircraft generation, customises the syllabi and sets the example scenario elements in its own operation.
EU rules: enhanced EBT
EASA's notes to its EBT presentation of June 2021 say that enhanced EBT was not yet allowed in the EASA system and that rulemaking task RMT.0599 was to address it. Ask your authority for the position today.
What you can do now
Everything in this guide short of changing the published topics or frequencies: use your training data and your safety data to customise the programme and to build the scenarios. EASA's oversight guidance expects a year of exactly that before a baseline approval.
Prerequisites
Six things have to be true. Before your own data shapes the programme.
Ready to tailor
Baseline EBT runs as approved
Complete cycles delivered and graded, so there is a stable programme to compare any change with.
Concordance is assured
A programme that follows unreliable grades follows noise. Measure agreement between instructors first.
Training data is read, not only stored
Competency trends by fleet, rank and base, looked at every cycle by someone who can act on them.
Safety data reaches training
Occurrence reports, flight data monitoring and audit findings arrive in a form the training department can use.
A written method from finding to scenario
How a finding becomes the threats, errors and competencies to train, described in your manuals.
A loop that checks the result
The next cycle shows whether the competency or the risk moved, and the programme is adjusted again.
AeroEBT measures concordance from the grades instructors already enter, against your fleet baseline.
Concordance in AeroEBTRoadmap
A realistic sequence. Five phases from baseline EBT to enhanced EBT.
The order matters more than the dates. Each phase produces the evidence the next one needs.
Stabilise
Run baseline EBT for complete cycles, with concordance assured and the grading system verified.
Connect
Bring safety data and training data into one view: the same fleets, events and periods on both sides.
Prioritise
Turn findings into training needs: which threats, errors and competencies each one points at, and how strongly.
Design
Build and validate the scenarios, check coverage across the cycle and agree the changes with your authority.
Measure
Fly the cycle, compare the result with the finding that started it, and adjust.
AeroEBT follows a change through the whole ORCA cycle, from the observation in the simulator to the report and the calibration, so the next cycle shows whether it worked.
The ORCA cycle in AeroEBTPitfalls
Where programmes stall. Four ways tailoring goes wrong.
Tailoring on noisy grades
Without assured concordance the programme chases differences between instructors, not competency trends.
Safety data that never arrives
Findings stay in the safety department, in a format training cannot use, and the programme stays generic.
Changes nobody can trace
A scenario changed for a good reason that is written nowhere cannot be explained to the authority, or undone.
Training for last year's event
One memorable occurrence reshapes the cycle while the trend data points somewhere else.
In the EBT Scenario Builder a scenario is traceable from the safety finding to the grade, so every scenario can answer why it is in the programme.
Scenarios from your safety data, in AeroEBTWith AeroEBT
From your SMS to the simulator. One evidence base for safety and training.
AeroEBT takes the occurrences, flight data trends and audit findings your safety management system already holds and translates them into the EBT scenario design method: each finding becomes the threats, errors and competencies a scenario has to elicit. The EBT Scenario Builder turns that into instructor scripts from your aircraft catalogue, the scenario is flown and graded in the instructor app, and the next cycle shows whether the risk moved.
- Safety data in: occurrence reports, flight data trends, LOSA and audit findings
- Each finding mapped to threats, errors, observable behaviours and competencies
- Coverage checked across the scenario, the group and the cycle as it is written
- One pilot record and one instructor app, from baseline EBT onwards
Questions operators ask
What is enhanced EBT?
Enhanced EBT is the form of evidence-based training in which the operator's own data shapes the programme. ICAO Doc 9995 describes two implementations: baseline EBT, which follows the published programme for the aircraft generation, and enhanced EBT, which is developed with the operator's training data and safety data. The competencies and the grading stay the same. What changes is where the programme's priorities come from.
Is enhanced EBT allowed under the EU rules?
The EU rules provide for baseline EBT, in ORO.FC.231 and ORO.FC.232. EASA's notes to its EBT presentation of June 2021 state that enhanced EBT, as described in ICAO Doc 9995, was not yet allowed in the EASA system and that rulemaking task RMT.0599 was to address it. Rules change: ask your competent authority what applies to your operation today.
What can we do before enhanced EBT is open to us?
Most of the work. Under baseline EBT you already customise the syllabi from your training data and set the example scenario elements in your own operation with your safety data. EASA's oversight guidance asks an operator to show a year of that before a baseline approval. An operator that does it well has the data, the method and the people an enhanced programme needs.
How is enhanced EBT different from customising a baseline programme?
Customisation works inside the published programme: you choose and set the example scenario elements and adapt the syllabi to your fleets and pilots, while the training topics and their frequencies stay as published. Enhanced EBT lets your own evidence set the priorities of the programme itself.
Which data do we need?
Three levels, in EASA's terms. Inside your organisation: training data (grading metrics, training reports, questionnaires) and the findings of your safety management system. Outside it: evidence from authorities, manufacturers and international EBT data.
Do instructors work differently?
No. The competencies, the observable behaviours and the grading are the same in baseline and enhanced EBT. What changes is the scenario in front of them and the reason it is there.
Which documents is this guide based on?
ICAO Doc 9995, Manual of Evidence-based Training. Regulation (EU) 2020/2036, with ORO.FC.231 and ORO.FC.232 and their AMC and GM. The EASA EBT Manual. EASA's oversight guidance for the transition to baseline EBT, version 1.3 of 2025. The notes to the EASA EBT presentation of June 2021. This guide is a summary for planning: it does not replace them, or your authority's approval.
Plan the step beyond baseline EBT.
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