Innovation Takes Center Stage on the WATS 2025 Exhibition Floor

A long but rewarding WATS Day 1 also included my walkabout of the exhibition conference floor – and allowed me to gain some important one-on-one contacts with diverse segments of the commercial aviation community.

AviTMS to supply its TMS to AeroTrainingX

A great way to “dot the i” at the end of Day 1 was when Carlo de Cocq Managing director, AviTMS agreed to supply his company’s Training Management System (TMS) to Stuart Embrey, Managing director at the Australian-based company AeroTrainingX.

A contract signing event witnessed at the Halldale booth was a teaching point in one way, in that the author learned the TMS was a custom-built, tailor-made product consisting of a TMS, LMS and QMS solution (three-in-one!).

Embrey noted that as part of his company’s early growth requirements he had a need for an on-line LMS that the firm could offer to its MRO clients and individuals looking to upscale themselves. 

“I have been working with LMS for about 15 years. I did extensive research including through the T-C-Alliance and it was exactly what we needed – either customer facing or client facing. We had a year testing it through the alliance portal and now we’re getting our own version of it! One of the important decision makers for me was the QMS piece.”

The TMS is specifically designed for the aviation sector, AviTMS’s de Cocq noted. “We have been doing so since 2007, he said and added, “The common ground of our global customers is aviation training, but that can be airlines, MROs, small and large training organizations, and others. We also have a high customization factor. Therefore, it is suitable for all types of training organizations.”

Envoy Taps CESI for Immersive Training Solution

The FAA is deliberately and incrementally providing authority for US-based commercial aviation training enterprises to integrate advanced learning technologies in their programs.

Another step down this path was noted this 31 March when FAA approved Envoy Air Inc. (Envoy)’s revision to its Embraer 175/170 Advanced Qualification Program (AQP), inclusive of the Cole Engineering Services, Inc. (CESI) Commercial Aviation Augmented Reality Toolkit (CAART) immersive environment training capability. A CESI booth visit and discussion with executives from the S&T company and Envoy provided the author, and by extension CAT readers, with some important ROIs and lessons learned about integrating learning technologies into aviation programs.

In this industry-first milestone, Envoy and CESI have gained FAA approval to use VR training as part of Envoy’s E175/170 AQP.

An Embraer 175/170 virtual flight deck is used to enhance Envoy’s pilot and aircraft maintenance training programs, and includes items such as checking of aircraft pre-flight, flight deck flows and checklists and more. The incorporation of the VR procedural training into the company’s flight and maintenance training programs provides a realistic, dynamic virtual environment for pilots and mechanics, delivered at the point of need from either a web browser while off-campus, or from a dedicated Virtual Reality lab while on-campus at Envoy’s headquarters and training center in Irving, Texas.

Allen Hill, Director of Flight Training at Envoy, told CAT his airline hopes it will be able to use this device to free up other training devices that are used at “a higher level” for simulator time, so pilots can accomplish those tasks in this device. Envoy expects to run about 650 pilots through the course in one year. Use of the CESI-delivered device, “will increase the throughput because we believe the skills of the flight deck flows is ultimately what we are going for. We believe that on Day 1 in our simulators, our pilots will be 100 percent proficient – which today they are not.”

The CESI-Envoy relationship has been built over two years, from when Hill first saw the S&T company’s VR capabilities demonstrated at WATS. Tony Lynch, Technical Director at CESI, noted the product was delivered to Envoy in 10 months. It took about 14 months from their contract signing to the date FAA approved the training program enhancement.

Hill added another key lesson learned from this process – the imperative for close collaboration between the supplier and customer. “Having a vendor that worked so closely with Envoy and having our subject matter experts work closely with their CESI counterpart, who was a true hero in this process as he worked on the technology backside, provided the pilot group with a very, very user-friendly experience.”

CESI further supports Envoy’s continuous training improvement and effectiveness initiatives through use of CAART’s system data collection and performance metrics.

The Envoy project uses HTC Vive Focus 3 headsets.

I Didn’t Flinch

I hope that professionally I have not become so jaded when I noted the mobile elevated work platform (MEWP) VR Simulator at the Serious Industrial Motion Simulations (SIMS) booth and don’t think twice. While monitoring and commenting on programs and products in the adjacent safety critical industries space, I have noted such devices increase safety and enhance training for those workforces – so why not the aviation industry.

Edmonton, Alberta-based Terry Allen, CEO at SIMS, said the technology was perfected around the construction industry. “Anyone working around heights in construction, perhaps building a data center these days, let’s say for Microsoft, organizations will nowadays say to their general contractors and subcontractors: before your employees’ initial training up through competency checks, we would like them to get on this simulator.” For this purpose, SIMS has a full-motion-based, VR/XR device that operators can go on and complete several scenarios. “It measures the competency of the operator regardless of the certification or competency card they are holding.”

Let’s cross-over to the aviation sector, with Allen pointing out equipment striking aircraft on the ground “was a $30 billion problem last year. When you look at that $30 billion number that goes from ticketing to leasing the aircraft.”

Enter another collaborative effort in the S&T sector to solve a challenging problem. In this case, SIMS paired its motion-based solution with Mass Virtual’s expanding XR competencies to refine the MEWP VR Simulator.

United Airlines, Southwest and British Airways use the SIMS platform to permit operators and maintenance engineers to gain proficiencies on the MEWP prior to actually operating a boom, scissor lift or like device.

The Canadian firm D-Box supplies SIMS with the device actuator. SIMS internally developed the physics-engine for motion.

John Brooks, Founder and CEO at Mass Virtual, noted the environment he observed at SIMS which motivated him to collaborate with the company included “being impressed with the capabilities, the science, all the human measuring criteria that came up over the years to measure and deliver that not only to the customer and their diverse experiences, but also trying to mitigate the insurance for a large organization. Going forward this lift will be more crucial as they move into shipbuilding – and we’re going to help them with that. As you know the shipbuilding the US is talking about establishes these huge capabilities, so there’s going to be a large amount of hiring in the next 10 years – and lifts will be everywhere.”