Officer and Pilot Selection System in Turkish Air Force

In contrast to expectations, with the pace of developing technology, the human factor has become one of the most important elements in the organizations. Especially, in complex systems, like aviation, the human factor is even more critical. The fact that the cause of 80% of flight accidents in the last 40 years is related to human factor underlines the importance of human factor in this area. According to the current laws, the aim of the Turkish Air Force Academy (TAFA) is to produce pilot candidate officers. In other words, all officers are aimed to be trained as pilots. Therefore, the officer selection system and pilot selection system is organized in an integrated way. In order to accomplish this critical mission, Turkish Air Force that has always been conscious of the importance of human factor has already developed a complex and multi-staged selection system for Turkish Air Force Academy. The first step of the system is national university entrance test. The election system also includes medical check-up, physical fitness test, various ability and personality tests, three different interviews. The candidates, who succeed to pass these stages, fly a propeller-training plane for 11 hours. At the end of this training, the successful candidates take basic military training. The candidates achieve to pass all the stages successfully can be a student in the Academy. In this paper, the details of this integrated selection system are introduced and the recent improvements in the system are explained.