EATS 2026 ATO Preview: From Instructor Shortages to the Airline-Ready Pilot

How do flight schools produce the pilots airlines need, while facing instructor shortages, rapidly changing technology and a training system increasingly focused on competencies rather than hours?

Those questions run through the ATO stream at EATS 2026, where discussions will range from instructor recruitment and standardisation to Cognitive-Based Training & Assessment (CBTA), artificial intelligence, simulator regulation and the transfer of training evidence from flight school to airline.

For stream moderator Paul Preidecker, one of the most important themes is what happens between the Approved Training Organisation (ATO) and the airline, and whether the two sides have enough information about how well training is actually working.

“The pipeline from a flight school to an airline” will be a significant part of the discussion, Preidecker told Halldale, particularly around “how we’re measuring performance and training” and ensuring an airline gets what it needs from a flight school graduate.

That comes into sharp focus in a session with Nick Munns, Pilot Training Specialist within the Commercial Training Solutions division of Boeing Global Services. He will examine how EASA Area 100 KSA, a mandatory competency-based training and assessment framework for professional pilot students, can be made consistent and measurable using scenario-based learning, CBTA, Threat and Error Management (TEM) and learning analytics.

He will be followed by Cedric Paillard, CEO of Amris Aviation, who takes the discussion beyond graduation, exploring whether a portable, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)-aligned competency record could allow evidence collected during initial training to follow a pilot into type rating and line training.

Preidecker sees the potential feedback loop between airlines and training organisations as particularly significant. In the US, he said, the 1,500-hour rule can leave a substantial gap between flight school graduation and airline employment, making it difficult for schools to know how their graduates ultimately perform. In Europe and elsewhere, he sees greater opportunity to connect the two stages.

Who Will Teach the Pilots?

But improving training also depends upon having enough instructors, and ensuring those instructors deliver training consistently.

In a session titled, Who Will Teach the Next Generation?, Glyn Chadwick, CEO of evoAPTL aviation training institute, will examine the ageing instructor workforce and the loss of experienced, often ex-military instructors, considering options including new sources of instructors, secondments and greater centralisation.

He will be followed by Helen Heenan, Personnel Licensing Policy Specialist  at the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, who approaches the instructor challenge from a different direction: standardisation. She will argue for using SMART learning objectives to standardise the required training outcomes while still allowing instructors freedom over how they teach.

It is a balance Preidecker knows well from his own experience as chief flight instructor, examiner, and captain. “Keeping your instructors standard is huge,” he said. Without effective mechanisms to achieve that, “you get too much divergence in how people are taught.” At the same time, instructors need to be able to bring their own experience and teaching styles into the classroom without departing from an organisation’s procedures.

The issue becomes even more important as training moves towards CBTA, which weaves through much of the EATS programme. Where traditional assessment might establish that a pilot failed to meet a particular standard, competency-based assessment asks why: was workload management responsible? Understanding of automation? Communication? Decision-making?

That requires instructors to identify and interpret observable behaviours consistently, something Preidecker believes remains a significant challenge.

“Everybody can tell if somebody’s flying too fast or too slow or they’re at the wrong altitude,” he said. Assessing less tangible competencies is harder, and “the standardization of that is something that doesn’t sound like it’s been conquered, but it needs to be.”

Different Routes to the Same Destination

CBTA will also be central to the joint Pilot and ATO panel The Future of Ab Initio Pilot Training: One Destination, Different Paths, moderated by Captain Diana Gomes da Silva. The session will contrast different approaches to producing airline-ready pilots within the same Urbe Aero training ecosystem.

The panel will explore easyJet’s emphasis on CBTA, EBT, simulator-based learning and early exposure to airline operational scenarios alongside a more traditional approach from ITA Airways, the national airline of Italy, that places greater emphasis on foundational flying skills and aircraft-based experience.

With contributions including Ascanio Russo, Aircrew Standards & Implementation Section Manager at EASA, and Captain Giorgio Peon Gonzalez, Nominated Person for Crew Training and Head of Training at easyJet, the discussion will ask whether there really is one optimum route to an airline cockpit, or whether different combinations of aircraft, simulation and competency development can reach the same destination.

AI, Simulation and Regulation

Technology provides another strand running through the programme. The session Beyond the Simulator: Regulatory Shifts and AI Pipelines brings together artificial intelligence, training-device regulation and the changing relationship between training objectives and the technology used to achieve them.

University of Melbourne Associate Professor Fabio Mattioli will draw on AI deployments across five languages to argue that successful aviation training applications depend less on the underlying AI model than on human-curated data, expert-built logic and systems that users can trust.

Preidecker sees AI primarily as a tool rather than an instructor replacement. Adaptive learning is one area where he believes it could have significant value: analysing performance data to identify what a student already understands and where they are struggling, allowing training time to be concentrated accordingly.

He also sees longer-term potential for AI to analyse data generated during flight training, giving instructors another source of evidence about whether students are meeting required standards while the instructor remains responsible for both teaching and flight safety.

Meanwhile, Capt. Dr. Christian Norden of German aviation consultancy Harms Aviation, will examine the evolution of flight training device regulation from a “task-to-tool” towards a “competency-to-tool” approach, while Marco Brandes, Managing Director of Dutch aviation consultancy Clement Aviation Company, will look at the implications of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)’s changing Flight Simulation Training Device (FSTD) regulatory framework and Capability Signatures.

For Preidecker, the broader question is whether regulation is keeping pace with what modern training devices can achieve. Simulator and immersive technologies may not eliminate the need for aircraft training, he argues, but improved technology strengthens the case for reconsidering how much training credit can be awarded outside the aircraft.

“It’s better training, it’s more efficient,” he said, pointing to schools already investing in VR and XR despite receiving no regulatory credit for doing so because they see benefits when students subsequently transition to the aircraft.

Taken together, the ATO sessions reflect an industry reconsidering not simply how much training a future pilot receives, but how effectively that training develops and measures the competencies airlines ultimately need.

And Preidecker sees another reason for flight schools to join the discussion: many are wrestling with the same problems. He jokingly compares events such as EATS to “group therapy,” an opportunity to discover that “my flight school is not the only one that’s dealing with some of these issues”, while hearing how others are tackling them and seeing how emerging technologies are being used.

To explore the full EATS 2026 conference programme, click here.

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