At WATS 2023, cabin crew trainers honored staff emotions while delving into data to help trainees learn.

Before the world faces another pilot shortage, the industry needs to learn how to recruit, train and retain new pools of people. Rona Gindin reports.

When the pandemic is past, or at least under control, and air traffic climbs toward and beyond 2019 levels, a pipeline of new commercial pilots will again be needed. The industry must look beyond men to fill airline cockpit seats.

The forecasts may fluctuate as the airlines recover from the Covid-19 crisis, yet in coming decades military, commercial and private staffs will be populated with hundreds of thousands of additional pilots, and they’ll look different.

Women alone can provide a virtually unlimited supply of candidates. In each region, various sub-groups of the population can also join the ranks. In the United States, for instance, that includes African-Americans, Latinx, LGBTs and Asian-Americans, among others.

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With the global economic downturn, criminal activity is on the rise. Airlines train their employees to spot potential sex trafficking victims, and to take action — safely. Rona Gindin reports.

At check-in, the ticket counter agent notices a young teenage girl with a man about 40. The man does all the talking, answers all questions, handles the passports. The girl keeps her eyes down. She’s just a grumpy adolescent with her dad, the airline employee assumes … yet something just does not feel right.

That duo could indeed be standard travelers. They could also be a victim and perpetrator of sex trafficking. Air travel is involved in 38% of human trafficking incidents, says Polaris, a Washington, DC-based organization that fights human trafficking.

That means it’s worth training aviation employees to spot potential human trafficking incidents, and to teach them which authorities to contact when a situation looks iffy.

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Before vIITSEC takes place virtually this year, we are taking a look back at last year's conference. From life-size virtual helicopters to a haptic suit that lets soldiers feel faux gunshot wounds, I/ITSEC 2019 demonstrated the rapid evolution of high-tech training aides. Rick Adams, Andy Fawkes, Rona Gindin, Dim Jones, and Marty Kauchak report.