AMST's New Trainer & WATS Cabin Crew Training Insights

Don’t let the timeline fool you. While it was the day prior to the start of WATS 2025, the author was able to dodge carts and set-up crews to file this report on two community developments.

hPFD Trainer

AMST-Aviation (AMST) is unveiling the harmonized Primary Flight Display (hPFD) Trainer at this summit. The trainer supports the hPFD found on newer models of the Airbus A320 family. 

The hPFD Trainer viewed at the AMST booth had a small footprint consisting of: a small desktop computer; monitor and flight controls – physical controls for stick and throttle; and virtual controls for speedbrakes, flaps, and landing gear. These attributes were designed to allow the customer to add a hPFD training capability at a much lower investment compared to including the capacity in more expensive FFSs and FTDs.

Gideon Wellerdieck, technical pilot at AMST, said the hPFD prototype displayed at WATS is intended to gain community feedback on the device’s baseline hardware and software generated by Airbus requirements. It is expected A320 aircrews will be able to finish mandated training on the hPFD Trainer in about 30 minutes by completing three or four scenarios.

Cabin Crew HoT Quick Look

Halldale is increasingly able to influence the civil aviation training community’s dialogue on challenges and opportunities by hosting community heads-of-training meetings during its live training events.

In one case, this 7 April the Cabin Crew Training Leaders / Heads of Training meeting convened with 37 individuals representing an eclectic mix of carriers from around the globe. Community leaders devoted their time to address two topics: Instructor recruiting, training, retention and standardization/calibration; and Energizing and motivating trainees while accounting for generational (from Boomers to Gen Z) and individual differences.

The author had an opportunity to obtain a Cabin Crew HoT session recap from Ian Mitchell, Tanja Malisnik and Michaela Klasner.

The session spokespersons noted this HoT meeting provided a great opportunity for unfettered, face-to-face discussions to occur about issues in the two areas – with the intent to share best practices, lessons learned and like outcomes. Of additional importance, HoT delegates also reiterated their overarching interest was to increase safety at their airlines – through enhanced training.

To those points, this meeting’s dialogue included mention of classroom audits and standards, QA processes, monthly meetings for airline training leaders, mentorship and other positive efforts occurring in their organizations.