CAT Editor-in-Chief Rick Adams, FRAeS has some modest suggestions for improving the civil aviation industry’s path to recovery.

 

While politicians fiddle, airlines are burning through cash. US$51 billion in Q2. Another $77B expected in the second half of the year. A further $5-6 billion per month through the end of 2021, according to IATA’s current forecast.

Some governments have continued to prop up their nation’s airlines, such as Japan and Australia, but others have become preoccupied with elections and second-surge pandemic restrictions, ignoring pleas from aviation leaders while tens of thousands of talented, experienced airline employees are furloughed or released.

Under the radar, thousands more jobs are being shed throughout the airline supplier community – aircraft manufacturers and component builders, MROs to an extent, catering companies, ground transport, airport retailers, and aviation training organisations.

Looking to read the full article? Become a Premium Club member and gain full access today!

Global ATS-V is live today, with over 800 attendees, 60 speakers, an interactive exhibition hall, live demos and lots of networking. This new virtual event explores the future of training. It's time to Reset, Restart and Rebuild. Join us!

 

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.

Looking to read the full article? Become a Premium Club member and gain full access today!

The accession pipeline in the US for new pilots, increasingly dependent on learning technologies, is being restored, and none too soon, as a pilot shortage is eyed toward the mid-part of this decade. Marty Kauchak reports.      

Civil aviation remains on a turbulent path in the attempt to return to pre-Covid-19 operating levels. With lackluster passenger demand and the unsteady pace of restoring domestic and international routes, the industry is no longer facing the pilot shortage with which it was grappling just a few months ago. Reopened flight training programs, which increasingly rely on distance learning and other technologies to help select and retain aspiring pilots, are part of the strategy to help minimize a predicted next pilot shortage for later this decade.    

Looking to read the full article? Become a Premium Club member and gain full access today!

This guest commentary is offered by Christian Popp, Chief Customer Officer of MINT Software Systems. Christian looks at how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed our personal and professional relationship with technology.

To preserve our mastery in a digitized world, we need to match the technical capabilities of new technologies with an application strategy for our benefit. To do that, we need a working, albeit basic, understanding of these new technologies. Commentary by Christian Popp.

As restrictions begins to ease and air travel resumes, the cancellation of flights, grounding of fleets and unprecedented job cuts will have knock-on operational impacts for the wider aviation sector. Bhanu Choudhrie suggests changes to the way pilots are trained to ensure there is not a pilot shortage in the mid- to long-term. 

Even during the business-crippling pandemic, airlines continue to provide initial, recurrent and transition pilot training. Robert W. Moorman explores United’s training efforts.

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.

Looking to read the full article? Become a Premium Club member and gain full access today!

More than 20 of the Asia Pacific region’s leading experts on airline pilot, cabin crew and maintenance training met online to discuss, among other things, how to best manage the new world of online training in a socially distanced world.