Halldale President and CEO Andy Smith picks the positives on another year the simulation training community will be happy to forget and looks forward to 2022 and some growth for the industry.

One feature of the future of aviation training was clear to see at the recent EATS, the presence of many delegates, clutching hand-held controls, with their faces obscured by VR google-facemasks. Conor Keeling, an A330 Captain for a major European airline, flying for 33 years and 20,000 hours since 1981, discusses his observations of EATS 2021.

Sometimes we don’t truly appreciate something until we don’t have it anymore. With the return of EATS and WATS as live, in-person events this year, many of us re-realised how valuable it is to get together as a training and simulation community.

From the moment we embarked on planning EATS 2021, we knew it was going to be a challenge for us and you. We asked you what you thought of EATS 2021, and are pleased to share some of the insights and results of this, the first live in-person event in Europe since 2019.

VRpilot signed a contract with Sunclass Airlines during the 2021 European Airline Training Symposium (EATS) for the delivery of VRflow, which is to enable Sunclass to qualify the pilots for the high safety standard.