Commercial Aviation Safety & Training
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
The Halldale Group, organizers of commercial aviation training events, is apparently for sale. At least, that’s what owner Andy Smith has been telling me the past 2-3 years in the wake of the devastating impact of Covid.
Given the current direction, it may be difficult to make a deal for the price they’d like.
My partner, D-L Nelson, and I scour the world’s news and opinion sources, searching for information that could be useful to our audience of commercial aviation safety and training professionals. You might say we’re a human Google/ ChatGPT but with years of specialized, nuanced knowledge that the algorithms haven’t figured out yet.
Commentary by Rick Adams, FRAeS
As a journalist, I am alarmed by the latest attacks on Free Speech in the US. The Administration is blatantly threatening to make illegal written, spoken or graphic messages with which they may disagree.
The effect will be, and already is, chilling.
By Cedric Paillard, CEO, The Airline Pilot Club (APC)
The history of AI is rich with promise – but also lessons in failure, overhype, and underperformance. Early AI efforts often failed to deliver on their lofty promises due to inadequate computing power, narrow rule-based approaches, and a lack of robust data governance. These shortcomings led to the so-called “AI winters” – periods of diminished funding and confidence in AI technologies.
Amelia has been designed with full awareness of this context.
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
After several years as the Chair of a major airline pilot training conference, held annually in the spring in Florida, USA (and attending for more than 20 years as moderator, exhibitor, etc.), I will sadly not participate in the event next year.
One reason is that I cannot, as a foreign national (Swiss), be confident of safe entry into (and out of) the United States. At least not until freedom of speech and due process are re-established.
By Capt. Mark Walton FRAeS
Reprinted by permission from Yaw Aviation
When the FAA introduced the 1,500-hour rule in 2013, it was seen as a major safety enhancement as a direct response to the Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash. The logic seemed simple: more flight hours must mean more experience, and more experience must mean safer pilots. But more than a decade later, we have to ask – has this rule really made us safer?
By Captain John Bent, FRAeS
Historically, commercial aviation has faced various shocks, but none have affected manpower availability as severely as the Covid-19 pandemic.
It will take many years to adjust the fleet to the new realities and return to stable growth. Even after 10 years, the industry will not have fully regained all that it has lost with the pandemic.
This essay looks at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on commercial pilot experience and consequent safety, noting the financial devastation1 faced by airlines and their key employees, and an underlying reduction in pilot proficiency.
General Henry “Hap” Arnold stands as a towering figure in aviation history, his career soaring from the dawn of airpower to the brink of the jet age. His leadership was instrumental in forging the United States Air Force, establishing him as a key proponent of air dominance and national security.
Excerpted from AEROMASTERS, Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot
Technology has led us now, over the last 14 years, to be able to do so much more. We can build better pilots, which was the goal in 2010 when we passed that rule. Build better pilots. Now we can, using other means, and I think we have to now entertain that.
I would like, and I’ve been very public about this, we need to stop talking about hours. That’s not the focus. The battle lines have been drawn for so many years now, and it’s so vitriolic that when one side or the other says anything about anything, they might tell us the sky is blue this afternoon and the other side will go, no, it’s not, because they just are diametrically opposed to anything the other side has to say.
Excerpted from AEROMASTERS, Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot
AEROMASTERS—the Pulitzer Prize-nominated, coffee-table/ narrative trilogy by Dino Garner and Liz Fetter—is now available on Amazon.com. A breathtaking tribute to a century of American fighter pilots. Reviewers call it “A literary and visual masterpiece of American history.”
To order the book: AEROMASTERS: Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot: Dino Garner, Liz Fetter: 9798218486778: Amazon.com: Books
Westin Birch “Bert” Hall was one of the most unforgettable characters from the Lafayette Escadrille.
A small Swiss company has achieved a surprising breakthrough in commercial aviation flight simulation – the world’s first regulatory-qualified mixed-reality (MR) flight simulator. Brunner Elektronik AG, with 30 employees in the Zurich suburb of Hittnau, revealed on 4 June that its NOVASIM MR DA42 FNPT II (Flight and Navigation Procedures Trainer) has been authorised for training credits by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA), based on European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) standards.
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
The European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) took its first solo flight this week, staging the annual European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (EBACE) at Palexpo in Geneva, Switzerland without its longtime partner, the US-based National Business Aviation Association (NBAA).
The split was amicable, Doug Carr told me, as evidenced by his appearance as a speaker in one of the more than 30 presentations across three ‘stages’ embedded around the exhibit floor across 2 ½ days. Carr is NBAA SVP for Safety, Security, Sustainability and International Operations.
“Taking over the show was… challenging,” admitted Holger Krahmer to a media gathering on the eve of the event. Krahmer is Secretary General of the not-for-profit EBAA. He promised “a completely new look and feel, a lot of new ideas, a new concept.”
Captain Lee Collins, CEO, National Flight Training Alliance (NFTA)
3rd in a Series of Conversations with Commercial Aviation Safety and Training Leaders
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
Four years ago, you were enjoying retirement. Now you’re back in the whirlwind of Washington politics with a start-up organization focused on pilot training. How did that come about?
Four Takeaways from WATS 2025
by Rick Adams, FRAeS
I’ve lost track of how many WATS conferences I’ve attended over the past 27 years… most of them certainly. There’s a comfortable consistency to the events. With perhaps the exception of the first post-Covid year and the 25th Anniversary.
But what I look forward to is the new players – the first-time speakers, the first-time exhibitors. It’s all fresh to them, and they bring a different energy than the veteran attendees.
Tanja Schmidt, Director of Training, IATA
2nd in a Series of Conversations
with Commercial Aviation Safety and Training Leaders
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
Tanja Schmidt began her role with the International Air Transport Association (https://iata.org) in September 2024, inheriting a department which manages hundreds of training courses across dozens of airline-related categories: airline management, operations, air navigation, cargo, dangerous goods, environment, ticketing, finance, law and regulation, safety, security, tourism, even courses for civil aviation authorities. To deliver the courses around the globe, the Geneva, Switzerland- and Montréal, Canada-headquartered IATA leans on hundreds of industry partners with specific subject expertise.
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
When we traveled to St. Petersburg several years ago – at the invitation of a friend – I was afraid, as we arrived at airport customs, that they would not let me into the country. When I crossed the red line and entered Russia, I was then afraid they wouldn’t let me out.
I had much the same feeling last week enroute to the US.
From aspiring cadets to astronauts and simulators to digital twins, Lufthansa Aviation Training has breadth and vision.
RICK ADAMS, FRAeS
Lufthansa Aviation Training is much more than routine type-rating and recurrent courses and sim scenarios. Post-Covid, their offerings include an ab initio academy, upset prevention and recovery training, the first EASA-approved ATO, training of military, helicopter and business aircraft pilots, even astronauts, a foray into eVTOL, ‘fear of flying’ courses, and application of lessons learned for hospital personnel and business managers.
Swiss Air-Ambulance, AXIS & LAT Bring CL650 Training to Europe
By RICK ADAMS, FRAeS
Under certain circumstances, Rega will repatriate you from anywhere in the world so you can return to Switzerland for medical treatment, which rates among the best healthcare in the world. The first option, when you call, is to determine if you can be adequately cared for in a nearby hospital. The next choice would be transport home on a commercial aircraft, perhaps accompanied by a Rega doctor and nurse. But if you’re flat on your back like Johan, as a last resort, they’ll dispatch a jet and appropriate medical team.
An RAeS Briefing Paper
A proposed predictive safety approach for Advanced Air Mobility be conducting innovative ‘pre-mortem’ investigations of forecasted accidents with a global lens to collate critical safety lessons and recommend actions now to prevent them from happening in the future.
I was privileged to be the lead editor for this months-long project by an Aerosociety task force of subject experts.
Four decades ago, the first flight simulator to feature eye-tracking technology was developed by Singer-Link and Singer Link-Miles for the UK Harrier.
Read the detailed account of the ESPRIT system – Eye-Slaved Projected Raster InseT – by Ralph Norman Haber in Scientific American.
An Exclusive Conversation with the FAA’s AI Guru, Dr. Trung Pham
By Rick Adams, FRAeS
“I joined the FAA in June 2022, Had a six-month honeymoon period. And then around February 2023, I was called by REDAC [the Research, Engineering, and Development Advisory Committee – which provides advice and recommendations to the FAA Administrator on the needs, objectives, plans, approaches, content, and accomplishments of the aviation research portfolio]. The REDAC asked me what happened to the Roadmap that they recommended.”
Veteran journalists and corporate communicators Rick Adams, FRAeS and D-L Nelson have announced the ‘Voices’ consultancy, which will provide thought leadership mentoring to select companies and organizations who wish to amplify their voice in the business marketplace.
VOICES will provide communications strategy, messaging, media / presentation coaching, writing / editing and other services to help navigate the evolving landscape of traditional and social media.
This spring, I exchanged a series of messages with Mario Ackerman, Brunner’s enthusiastic sales manager, inviting me to a “not to be missed” event, to be held at the Lufthansa Training Center (LAT).
I was skeptical. There’s so much hype in the market about ‘revolutionary’ products, most of which aren’t. And Brunner volunteered no details.
Yet I was intrigued. So I hopped on a train from Geneva to Zurich Airport, where Mario retrieved me and drove to LAT, a spacious facility which houses full-flight simulators for Airbus and Boeing types, a couple of helicopter models, and assorted other training devices for pilots, cabin crew and ab initio cadets.