EATS News: Airline Commits to Five Years of VR Training

Visionary Training Resources (VTR) has announced a five-year agreement under which Ryanair will continue using FlightDeckToGo, VTR’s virtual reality flight deck trainer for the B737NG. The agreement follows a six-month evaluation in which Ryanair cadets used FlightDeckToGo to learn and rehearse B737NG flows before entering the simulator.

FlightDeckToGo places trainees in the first officer’s seat of a B737NG flight deck, delivered on a VR headset. Each flow is taught in three stages: a guided “Learn” mode with instructor voiceover, text boxes and flow lines, a “Practice” mode with hints, and a “Validate” mode where the trainee performs the flow unaided.

Ryanair’s simulator data from the evaluation compared 581 cadets who trained with FlightDeckToGo against 420 cadets who trained before its introduction, across three flight training device sessions. The VR-trained cadets showed statistically significant improvement in eight of nine rated core competencies, led by Flight Path Management and Application of Procedures, with instructor grades shifting from good to very good.

In post-training surveys, 111 cadets rated FlightDeckToGo 9.2 out of 10 for immersiveness, and 17 instructors rated it 8.9 out of 10 for procedural reinforcement.

“Our cadets now arrive at the simulator with a clear understanding of the flight deck layout and the sequence of each flow. The simulator evaluation results gave us the confidence to make FlightDeckToGo an established part of our cadet training programme,” said Captain Paul Kelly, Deputy Chief Pilot Flight Standards and Head of Training, Ryanair.

“Ryanair ran a rigorous evaluation and measured what matters most to a training department: performance in the simulator,” said Evey Cormican, CEO of VTR. “Seeing VR-trained cadets outscore earlier cohorts across seven competencies shows that flow training done before the sim carries directly into it. We look forward to the continuation of our partnership with Ryanair.”

Visionary Training Resources is exhibiting at the European Aviation Training Summit (EATS), 3–5 November at the Estoril Congress Centre in Cascais, Portugal, at Booth 202. Stop by to learn more.