As a leading aviation training organization, operating in multiple countries and jurisdictions for over 45 years, we have faced countless challenges through the years. One of them is to be able to offer our students the best possible tools at any given time.

Today, although the principles of flying remain the same, a pilot faces a very much different environment than its predecessors. Aircraft operation rely more on automation than in the past, the technology behind it keeps accelerating. Just look at one cockpit today and compare it with one of 30 years ago and the differences are extraordinary.

So, what can an organization specialized in Ab Initio training do?

First, we must offer the most advanced training aircraft available, that can introduce from day one, the automation a pilot will require to handle. At Airways Aviation, we use mostly Diamond Aircraft equipped with Garmin G1000 avionics. These aircraft offer avionics with the latest technology, enhancing situational awareness, convenience, and safety. They also utilize automatically controlled propellers with a blade geometry that offers low vibration and noise with high performance. The engines are diesel (Jet A1) powered, offering low consumption and low emissions with high performance.

Side by side with the aircraft, we offer a variety of simulators that allow students not only train aircraft procedures and instrument flights at any time and with any weather, but also train emergencies and situations that could not be trained safely on a real flight. We offer 12 simulators throughout our network, of which 5 are from the French manufacturer ALSIM, a leading company providing cost effective, state of the art training devices.

Another key element on a successful pilot training is the assessment of students. If the assessment is strict, the ones that are not fit or not willing to commit with the training don’t pass that stage and the success rate of the students becomes higher. We are now using globally throughout our academies, ADAPT by Symbiotics, an assessment tool that provides us a proper psychological and psychometric evaluation as well as some technical knowledge, and that enables us to decide with proper insight who do we accept or not for our courses.

During the course, students are given access to a number of cloud-based solutions or apps, that support their training such as PlanEnglish for the communications training, reinforcing the training done in specific communications classrooms with a tool always available at the distance of a fingertip; PadPilot for the ATPL eBooks offering great interactive content with the highest quality; Evionica for the aircraft and ATPL CBT’s (computer based training) complementing PadPilot; AviationExam for preparation of exams, a key element on pilot training. All this is complemented with our own in-house Moodle platform with presentations and manuals created by our highly experienced team of instructors.

An iPad from Apple is provided to the students so they easily utilize all these tools during their ground school phase. Once reaching the flight phase, students are given a Foreflight and JeppView account, allowing them to easily integrate their flight planning and relevant flight information with the aircraft avionics.

All the ground and flight planning is done using FlightLogger, a SaaS cloud solution that is user friendly and connects easily all our training locations, tracking flight production, student’s records,

storing training records, tracking performance and more. And now it also includes live flight tracking with an integration with RadarBox. It also allows us to easily extract information for our maintenance tracking software SAM from ASA, enabling us to implement digital techlogs.

Using all these tools at our disposal, we aim to prepare our Ab Initio cadet pilots in the best possible way, preparing them not only to fly using long proven techniques and teaching but also to face the challenges the 21st century commercial aviation will bring to them with all the new technologies in use. No doubt that the combination of the old knowledge and the new technology we use, prepares our students to excel in their career as professional pilots and stand-out from their peers.

What will technology bring us soon? VR (virtual reality) and/or AR (augmented reality), hybrid and/or electric powerplants, more automation and system management rather than real flying? A lot is already a reality, we wait anxiously to introduce whatever are the best tools at any given time and continue to be a leader in aviation training globally.

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