ANALYSIS OF DEFICITS CAUSED BY DELAYS BETWEEN PHASES OF NAVAL FLIGHT SCHOOL

Abstract

Student Naval Aviators (SNA) have experienced lengthy delays in between phases of training. These delays may cause many of the skills SNAs develop in naval flight school (NFS) to erode, increasing the likelihood of attrition, decreasing Navy Standard Scores (NSSs), and increasing the number of warm-up events and unsatisfactory (UNSAT) events an SNA incurs. To train an SNA to be technically proficient in their roles requires significant resources which can be wasted by attrition or SNA skill atrophy. Delays in NFS can arise from even small disruptions in the program and tend to compound. In this thesis we use statistical tests and regression models to examine trends in performance metrics as they relate to wait time. We examine the effects due to length of delays of attrition, NSS, warm-up events, and UNSAT events throughout all phases of naval flight school. We find that inconsistent trends exist within specific pipelines where delays between training phases negatively effects performance, specifically with the probability of attrition in the advanced phase of training. We do not however, see prevalent effects of wait time in the other performance metrics.