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So we have the following two tags:

    • Airman Certification is for questions related to obtaining certificates and ratings for all flight crew members, mechanics, repairmen, aircraft dispatchers, and control tower operators. It includes required paperwork and testing, but not training (which would fall under ).

and

  • .
    • Training refers to all aspects of pilot and flight crewmember training.

I propose that we rename flight-training to airman-training, and include training for the additional airmen that are included in the certification tag (taken from the FAA airman certification website). A tag synonym from to would be appropriate as well.

Any other suggestions that help make them more consistent are welcome as well!

EDIT
Thanks to the discussion so far, I am changing my suggestion to to use the term "pilot" instead of "flight" so that it more easily extends to other aviation-related jobs (such as mechanics, air traffic controllers, etc).

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    $\begingroup$ Any objection to pilot-training and pilot-certification instead? Makes it less US-centric and also gender neutral. $\endgroup$
    – egid
    Jan 15, 2014 at 3:55
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    $\begingroup$ @egid I like it! It would require tags for all of the other airmen as well and not just "pilot-*" tags. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 4:10

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First, does "airman certification" really include mechanics, ATC etc.? The FAA's airmen certification page refers to pilots only and mechanics - for example - have a separate page. So I think the current definition of that tag may be incorrect or at least somewhat misleading. And EASA refers mostly to "pilots" and "licenses", as far as I can see, which is probably more 'mainstream' or generic terminology (or as Bret suggests, civilian).

Second, the division between "certification" and "training" feels a bit artificial to me, at least in everyday terms. Are both of them big enough topics to stand on their own? Training certainly is, but certification to me is a more abstract process that covers training, testing and issuing certificates. But I readily admit that I'm looking at things as a private pilot and someone in the ATP world might look at certification in a completely different way.

Anyway, as for what to do with these tags I would follow egid's suggestion of as the main tag because I think it's a good general term that is clearer to more people - including internationally - than . I would make and synonyms. For mechanics and so on I would go with , etc.

As for certification, I think that "testing" might be a more useful topic in general (there's already a tag), and certification as the process of issuing certificates might simply be covered by or whichever agency is involved because it's mostly a bureaucratic process.

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    $\begingroup$ Well, I was looking for a description of the FAA Airman Certification Branch so went to their main page, and then to FAQ's and saw all of those listed. Maybe it isn't the best description, and we can fix that. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 15:13
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    $\begingroup$ In the 121/135 world, there is a rather large distinction between training and testing/certification, and really there is earlier on too. Training for most people is done with an instructor and is a teaching environment, and is very different than being with the FAA in a testing environment. Then there are the whole host of paperwork/certification questions... We could probably lump all of those questions together in a generic "training" category, but I can see people saying "This question isn't really testing, because it is a question about the PTS." or something similar... $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 15:14
  • $\begingroup$ Lastly, what do you think of egid's suggestion in the comments above about "pilot-training" instead of "flight-training"? I think that it extends much better when you start looking at roles other than pilots. What would the "flight-training" equivalent be for air traffic controllers? "air-traffic-controllering-training"? ;-) $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 15:16
  • $\begingroup$ @Lnafziger I know nothing about the 121/135 world, hence my disclaimer :-) But in general I think we shouldn't try to preemptively solve a problem before we have the volume of questions to clearly see how people use the site and think about questions. My feeling is that we haven't got that far yet in the case of training/certification/testing but maybe you see it differently? egid's suggestion is good, the word "pilot" is very clear for all audiences. And as I said I would go for "controller-training" to avoid using either the "atc" abbreviation or a train-length tag :-) $\endgroup$
    – Pondlife
    Jan 15, 2014 at 16:04
  • $\begingroup$ Since you agree with pilot-training, would you mind updating your answer so that we can gauge whether or not others agree by the upvotes? :) $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 19:04
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    $\begingroup$ @Lnafziger Done! $\endgroup$
    – Pondlife
    Jan 15, 2014 at 19:28
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A synonym could perhaps be in order, but I don't see a point in renaming to because most people say flight training. I mean, there's even a "Flight Training" magazine.

If I do a google search for flight training, I get all kinds of links to flight schools. If I search for airman/airmen training, I get a bunch of links to the FAA and Air Force. That seems to indicate to me that the word "airmen" has a strong government connotation, and that's certainly true for myself, at least.

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  • $\begingroup$ I like egid's suggestion of pilot-training and pilot-certification, especially since that would extend well to mechanic-training, atc-training, etc. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 4:12
  • $\begingroup$ @Lnafziger it just feels like we're trying to solve something which isn't a problem. I feel like the tags as-is already reflect the way people think about the subject, but I could be wrong. $\endgroup$
    – Bret Copeland
    Jan 15, 2014 at 4:34
  • $\begingroup$ Well, "pilot-training" also comes up with a ton of results on Google. Which is better? I don't know, but I do know that if I see "pilot-training" in a question that there is a pretty good bet that I can use "flight-engineer-training" or "mechanic-training" and the system "just works". While this isn't a problem yet, I do see some potential pitfalls down the road which I would like to try to avoid, and am striving to build a solid foundation for our new site that won't have as many of these issues to sort out down the road when there are a lot more questions to sort out. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 15, 2014 at 4:52

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