During the Great Recession a dozen years ago, smaller communities in the US lost aircraft departures at a rate five times greater than losses at larger airports. US Editor Chuck Weirauch outlines the regional airlines status and outlook.

As the tempo of US Navy’s Pacific Fleet operations increases, it is deploying the latest methods and technologies to enhance and accelerate training. MS&T’s Chuck Weirauch reports.

Although the rotary-wing community seems to be less impacted than the airline community, there are differences as to how various vertical flight operations have been affected. US Editor Chuck Weirauch surveys the helicopter training market.

In a normal year the MS&T team would attend conferences in person and report on the proceedings. This year, we have not travelled, but logged in. As well as congratulating the organisers for delivering the conferences in a whole new way, what did we learn from the conferences and the pros and cons of these virtual events?

With the live I/ITSEC 2020 being cancelled and transforming to a virtual event, vIITSEC, MS&T’s Chuck Weirauch looks back at the virtual TSIS held in June and reviews its participation and content and provides a contract opportunities chart for MS&T readers.

The application of virtual reality technology for flight training is gaining momentum, and training providers are developing new tools that may provide more effective training. Chuck Weirauch investigates.

The US Air Force is working to develop its Operational Training Structure (OTI) through the incorporation of LVC. Chuck Weirauch takes a look at the latest efforts to integrate the Live element into the LVC environment.

While US and joint training demonstrations have validated the concept of blended live-virtual-constructive (LVC)-based air combat training, the primary remaining challenge is the integration of virtual and constructive entities with front line aircraft Operational Flight Programs (OTFs) according to Michael Aldinger, Northrop Grumman manager of LVC Mission Integration.

Just how to “spoof” blue aircraft sensor systems into “believing” that the projected virtual and constructive entities they “see” on the training range are real adversary aircraft, missiles and ground elements and then showing them to the pilot of the aircraft on its screens and displays is the key to adding the “live” component to air combat LVC training. The means to accomplishing this goal is to modify the aircraft’s OTF so that it recognizes those projected false adversary virtual and constructive entities as what they were made up to be, rather than what they actually are. Multiple sources sending virtual and constructive false electronic entities into the range environment as adversaries can be added to increase the complexity and realism of the training exercise.

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Robert Luthy, Interim GM, L3Harris Airline Academy was interviewed by Chuck Weirauch.

An overview of the impact of the pilot shortage, a summary of current, pending and future FAA regulations and flight standards, along with discussions about how best to address regional airline training challenges, will highlight the Regional Airline Training (RATS) track as a part of WATS 2018. Chuck Weirauch provides this report, followed by an interview with RAA president Faye Malarkey Black.