Legacy Naval Flight School Pathway vs. an Expedited Naval Helicopter Flight School Approach (COPT-R-and-CORPS)

Abstract

Contractor Operated Primary Training-Rotary (COPT-R), and Copter Only Replacement Pilot Syllabus (CORPS) are flight school pathways recently implemented by the Navy. The goal of COPT-R and CORPS is to produce helicopter pilots whose skill is equal to, if not more effective than, those trained in the Legacy pathway. These pathways have been designed to provide student aviators with expedited access to rotary-wing focused training compared to the Legacy pathway that begins with fixed-wing training. This research assesses the effectiveness of COPT-R, CORPS, and Legacy flight school pathways through a statistical analysis that compares student performance in Advanced Rotary training. Student capabilities are measured by examining scores from 15 shared flight events and conducting a regression analysis of performance metrics. Ultimately, COPT-R and CORPS pathways produce effective rotary-wing pilots who are equal to those in the Legacy pathway. The results indicate that, initially, COPT-R students outperformed Legacy students by at least 20.65%, whereas CORPS students underperformed by at least 11.72%. However, after examination across all 15 events, data for each of the new pathways indicates near convergence with Legacy performance metrics. COPT-R students averaged 2.22% above Legacy and CORPS students averaged 0.79% below Legacy. These findings are significant considering the reduction in time-to-train for both COPT-R and CORPS, which may correspond with reduced training costs.