Global Airline Training & Simulation – Virtual was 'on air' for more than 45 hours – 15 consecutive hours each day, from morning in Europe to early evening in North America.

If Day One was the appetizer of the Global Airline Training & Simulation – Virtual conference, Day Two was meat and potatoes.

Try this combination: (1) learning a new airplane, (2) adapting to a new way of flying, (3) limited ATC and other resources (4) managing crew risk in a pandemic, and (5) navigating through the smoke of massive wildfires. Regional airline training veteran Paul Preidecker describes his new career flying on-call medical missions.

On a recent trip to airports on the West Coast, we were dispatched to Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle. Descending through FL240, we could begin to smell the smoke. There was absolutely no forward or vertical visibility. We were eventually cleared for the ILS to runway 14R with the visibility reported barely above the minimums required for the approach.

On that same trip, we had an overnight in San Francisco (KSFO). Upon arriving at the aircraft the next morning, we found that it was covered with a thin but very noticeable coating of ash that we removed before starting the day.

En route from the southwest on another trip, Denver Center told us that all arrival routes from the southwest into KDEN had been shut down due to smoke and the number of TFRs in the area.

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Pilot Flight Academy has partnered with IAGO Flight Training to offer and deliver fully integrated training solutions for their customers.

Training to restarting operations at an airline requires collaboration of pilots, cabin crew, trainers, regulators and others. CAT Europe Editor Chris Long, FRAeS, relates the story of how Emirates is meeting the challenges.

The world reeled at the speed and depth of the onset of Covid-19. As we all know, the aviation industry was one of the hardest-hit sectors, and the reaction to it also needed to be both rapid and profound.

Tim Clark, President of Emirates airline, made it clear that despite the challenges which the pandemic brought, the airline will not compromise on the safety of passengers or crew.

Emirates is in a unique situation as the largest operator of exclusively wide-body fleets, and in theory, could have taken the biggest hit. But, as Captain Martin Mahoney, Emirates SVP Flight Training says, whilst practically all the A380 fleet was initially grounded, the B777 fleet continued to operate.

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