Stop Pretending You’re an ATC Controller!

Advanced Simulation Technology inc. (ASTi) is exhibiting at the European Airline Training Symposium (EATS) 2023 from 8-9 November, taking place in Cascais, Portugal. Neil Waterman, Commercial Aviation Director of ASTi, will also be presenting “Simulated ATC Environments: Reducing Instructor Workload Through Next-Generation Technologie: Stop Pretending You’re An ATC Controller!” on day two of the event, 9 November from 1415-1545.

When running a Continuing Qualification Line Oriented Evaluation (CQLOE) training event in a simulator, the entire ATC workload falls on the Instructor, who already has significant tasking focused on evaluating and scoring the crew. Remembering when to make the ATC calls, ensuring correct phraseology is used and monitoring the crew responses as correct, all contribute as a distraction to the main function of the Instructor.

Creating a CQLOE lesson plan for an airline in itself is a significant effort, taking many months. A major portion of this, estimated to be approximately 50% of the entire CQLOE generation effort, is in scripting and refining the ATC calls to the aircraft. Ensuring ATC interactions and phraseology are correct, timed appropriately and, importantly, not overwhelming the instructor, is a challenge, even for the most experienced curriculum development team. Additional effort to support CPDLC messaging to the aircraft is also required. Once the event is planned, additional effort is required to train the instructors, and much of this is focused on role-playing ATC.

The challenges associated with providing realistic ATC for CQLOE events can be overwhelming: time, cost, resources, scale, efficiency, standardization, accuracy and repeatability. Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), automatic speech recognition, hyper realistic text-to-speech, natural language processing, and generative large language models are now being utilized in Simulated ATC Environment (SATCE) systems that entirely eliminate the need for the instructor to role-play ATC. Furthermore, script generation can be mitigated by the use of SATCE. Whereas ATC script generation previously took several months, a SATCE system can generate the transcript of an entire flight in a matter of minutes.

This presentation will briefly review the history of communication technology in flight simulation and focus on the significant advantages and benefits of using SATCE in today’s modern CQLOE training.

Visit booth #216 for a live demonstration of SERA on the WBFT Diamond DA40 Mixed Reality flight simulator. See how AI and Mixed Reality are revolutionizing pilot training. ASTi refuses to believe that simulating high-fidelity ATC and contextually appropriate external air traffic are too problematic for a simple solution.

ASTi is exhibiting at the European Airline Training Symposium (EATS) 2023 from 8-9 November. Visitors can see ASTI’s SERA at the Wright Brothers Flight Technology Booth #216 to learn more.