Proprietary CBT Program at LIFT

LIFT Academy continues to trailblaze in the flight and maintenance training sphere with its focus on bringing technology to the forefront of training its students and apprentices. This spring, LIFT’s flight operations team received approval on their proprietary computer-based training for their private pilot license (PPL) curriculum. 

While LIFT students previously used off-the-shelf products that had time-limited subscriptions for their ground school curriculum, they’re now able to access the training throughout their time a LIFT, and the curriculum is customized to and aligned with LIFT’s pace of training. 

Creating its own curriculum to match the airline training focus of LIFT Academy has been a goal of its Flight Operations department since the get-go, and in the temporary flight training pause last March and April, the staff and flight instructors wasted no time in planning content, scripting lessons and preparing quizzes for a full PPL curriculum. 

“We have a very talented group of instructors and a small-but-mighty staff who knocked this training development out of the park,” Ed Bagden, Associate Director of Flight Operations and Safety shared. “Ben Jaffee, Jake Rose, Travis Hiner, and Devin McAllister put a lot of work in to make this a professional product that we’re already working on expanding to include instrument and commercial curriculum over the next year.” 

In partnership with the IT department, they’ve used curriculum development software to build a platform for the training that all students will have access to throughout their training experience at LIFT. 

Once the training content and development were complete, they sent the training to the FAA for approval and signoff, confirming it met all regulatory requirements. The FAA has approved the private pilot curriculum, and LIFT has already implemented the CBT for its private students. 

“This, along with our examining authority, enables us to have start-to-finish quality control for our students with our technology, our staff and our curriculum. We have 45 years of airline pilot training experience behind us, and now we’re able to bring those successful techniques to the primary training environment,” Ed added. “We have a vertically integrated training program which will undoubtedly assist students in their transition to the airline.”