AVIATION VOICES
AQP / CBTA / EBT / MPL / ABLE / KSA

The New Airline Flight Instructor in the Era of CBTA/EBT/AQP

It is tempting to picture a training system as a machine whose output follows from its inputs: the syllabus, the simulator, the manuals, the cadet. On that picture the instructor is a component — necessary, but interchangeable.

In a competency-based system, the instructor is the decisive variable. Give two instructors the same syllabus, the same simulator, the same scenario and the same cadet, and they will not produce the same outcome, because almost everything that matters in Competency-Based Training and Assessment (CBTA) turns on instructor judgement.

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AQP / CBTA / EBT / MPL / ABLE / KSA

The Cattle Metaphor Is Right. The Diagnosis is Backwards.

A response to Norman MacLeod’s “Treating Pilots Like Cattle” (LinkedIn, 18 August 2026)

Cedric Paillard — Chief Executive Officer, Amris Aviation

Norman MacLeod’s piece posted 18 August is the most useful thing written about EBT in a while, and I want to start by agreeing with the part most people will skip past.

His prediction is that EBT becomes EBTA — Evidence Based Training Audit. Regulators who don’t have the capacity or the domain knowledge to oversee competency-based frameworks will do what they did with SMS, FRMS, IOSA and LOSA: push the burden of demonstration onto the operator. The accountable manager then discovers, at the worst possible moment, that they are accountable for something nobody ever built the means to evidence.

That is exactly right, and it is coming faster than the industry thinks.

Where I part company with Mr. MacLeod is on why we got here, and therefore on what to do about it.

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Uncategorized

Expert Interview: AI, AAM, eVTOL…and More

Editor’s Note: John Persinos interviewed Rick Adams, a leading aerospace expert specializing in the areas of training, simulation, artificial intelligence, and safety. A Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Adams authored The Robot in the Simulator (2024), widely regarded as the first book focused on AI best practices in aviation training. He also served as Lead Editor on the President’s AAM Safety Brief, placing him at the center of the industry’s evolving conversation around advanced air mobility and operational safety. Adams has held senior communications and editorial roles with major aerospace and technology organizations including CAE, Raytheon, and Singer-Link Flight Simulation. For several years, he was chair of the Pilot Training conference at the World Aviation Training Summit. The following is a transcript of his discussion with John Persinos, edited for concision. Questions are in bold. AI has become one of aviation’s biggest buzzwords. Where do you see the technology delivering measurable value today in pilot training and simulator operations, versus where the industry may be overhyping its near-term capabilities? Artificial Intelligence, unfortunately, is a marketing term which has indeed been overhyped and created outsized expectations of magic. Instead, we are confronted weekly with stories of “hallucinations,” which is a deflection euphemism for errors. We’re seeing the frenzied building of water-sucking data centers and the emerging fear that AI agents will go rogue and defy their creators. Instead of bragging about “AI Inside,” I now advise clients to limit references to artificial intelligence, which is neither artificial nor intelligent. AI is more aptly supercomputing on steroids. It can provide the capability to crunch amazing amounts of data in a very short time. But the data must be relevant to the solution being sought. In the aviation pilot training realm, that translates into information about the eight or nine defined “competencies” of Competency-Based…

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FAA / DoT

We don’t have a pilot shortage. We have a pathway problem.

By Nick Sanderson, Founder, Unrestricted Airspace

The 135 Lite framework fixes it.

Lower-risk operations…
Smaller aircraft…
Shorter routes…
Real-world experience.

Not theory. Not classroom time.

Actual flying that builds real pilots.

Right now, we force everyone into one path:
Instruct → hit a number → hope it translates.

That’s not a pipeline.

That’s a bottleneck.

135 Lite creates real jobs, real hours, and real experience.

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AI / ML / Big Data

Airline Pilot Club Renamed Amris Aviation

‘Amelia’ Platform Becomes Amris Competency Management System

The Airline Pilot Club (APC) announced a new chapter in the company’s evolution – changing its name to Amris Aviation, reflecting an expanded focus on aviation modelling, risk and intelligence.

“Amris Aviation represents what we have been building from the start: a trusted partner in airline pilot development and performance, founded on the core values of competence, confidence and character,” said Captain Andy O’Shea, Executive Chairman. “The team, our services, and customer commitments remain unchanged.”

“Think of Amris Aviation as the voice of a senior airline captain who has analysed the latest research: professional, confident, and genuinely invested in people’s growth,” O’Shea noted.

As part of the rename, APC’s data platform previously known as Amelia will now operate as theAmris Competency Management System, reflecting the platform’s role as the company’s core intelligence system for decision-grade evidence, providing airline training and safety teams deeper visibility into crew performance and emerging risk signals which are clear, consistent and provable.

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Pilot

The Transponder of Story

Republished by permission from The Crucibel – The Transponder of Story – CRUCIBEL by Annabelle Peeretti A man walked onto a stage in Orlando and told a room full of pilots something they already knew. They had just forgotten where they kept it. Then he told them the other half—the half that keeps seventy veterans a day from getting on with life. Rick Adams has been covering the World Aviation Training Summit for twenty-seven years. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He has seen every keynote, every panel, every vendor pitch, every lanyard-wearing delegate shuffling between sessions with a cold coffee and a conference bag. When a man like that writes that a twenty-minute presentation was “the most captivating of the week,” the sentence carries weight that no press release can manufacture. The presenter at WATS 2025 was Dino Garner. The topic was storytelling in aviation training. The thesis was simple and devastating: before a pilot in distress reaches for the checklist, the pilot reaches for a story. Not a procedure. Not a memory item. A story. Told by an instructor, months or years earlier, in a briefing room or a crew lounge or standing next to a jet on a cold ramp. A story about a mistake that almost killed someone. A story about the three detents of an ejection seat handle. The Lanyard Here is the story Garner told at WATS 2025. A photographer is in the backseat of an F-16. The pilot pushes the aircraft into a near-vertical dive, then pulls a violent nine-G turn. The photographer—bent over, crushed downward by the physics of the maneuver—has a lanyard around his neck. The lanyard is attached to a Minolta light meter. In slow motion, he watches the light meter slide down over the yellow ejection…

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Halldale

I Won’t Be at WATS This Year – The Reason Why

By Rick Adams, FRAeS This year, for the first time in more than two decades, I will not be participating in the World Aviation Training Summit (WATS) in Orlando, Florida – an event which I chaired for multiple years. The reason? Onerous and intrusive US Government practices regarding social media for visitors from foreign countries. For those who may be unaware, I am a Swiss citizen. And somewhat vocal about American and world events. The MAGA-inspired border practices pose the very real threat that I would be denied entry into the US. It’s simply not worth the risk of being detained, harassed, and shipped back to my airport of origin. Or maybe to some other country, as has been the case with deported immigrants. Not to mention the cost of non-refundable transatlantic air tickets: about €1,800 or more. Under a December 2025 proposal by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), travellers from Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries – the ones considered ‘friendliest’ to the US, like Switzerland and other European nations, would need to provide: • Social media identifiers (user names and passwords) from the past 5 years • Telephone numbers used over the last 5 years • Email addresses used over the past 10 years • Names and addresses of family members Even though the DHS proposal is still technically ‘under review,’ and there has been considerable pushback, it could be implemented at any time. (A similar requirement for non-immigrant visa applicants such as fiancés of US citizens and cultural exchange participants took effect just last week.) Indeed, the practice of checking selected travellers’ phones, electronics and social media began unofficially more than a year ago. Noteworthy rejections that made headlines included a Norwegian tourist and a French scientist (enroute to a professional conference) who had content on…

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AI / ML / Big Data

Modernising Pilot Training

By Cedric Paillard, CEO, Airline Pilot Club

Two recent documents help clarify what the next phase of training should look like. One approaches the issue from the regulatory architecture side through the proposed modernisation of FAA Part 141. The other approaches it from the operational reality of training organisations, instructors, and students observed across multiple jurisdictions. Read together, they point in the same direction.

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Halldale

Halldale for Sale?

By Rick Adams, FRAeS

The Halldale Group, organizers of commercial aviation training events, is apparently for sale. At least, that’s what owner Andy Smith has been telling me the past 2-3 years in the wake of the devastating impact of Covid.

Given the current direction, it may be difficult to make a deal for the price they’d like.

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Ab Initio / ATO

How Amelia Learns from Past Realities

By Cedric Paillard, CEO, The Airline Pilot Club (APC)

The history of AI is rich with promise – but also lessons in failure, overhype, and underperformance. Early AI efforts often failed to deliver on their lofty promises due to inadequate computing power, narrow rule-based approaches, and a lack of robust data governance. These shortcomings led to the so-called “AI winters” – periods of diminished funding and confidence in AI technologies.

Amelia has been designed with full awareness of this context.

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HoT Topics

Thinking of Travelling to the US for Business?

By Rick Adams, FRAeS

After several years as the Chair of a major airline pilot training conference, held annually in the spring in Florida, USA (and attending for more than 20 years as moderator, exhibitor, etc.), I will sadly not participate in the event next year.

One reason is that I cannot, as a foreign national (Swiss), be confident of safe entry into (and out of) the United States. At least not until freedom of speech and due process are re-established.

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1500 Hours

Why 1,500 Hours Doesn’t Guarantee a Safer Pilot and What We Should Do Instead

By Capt. Mark Walton FRAeS

Reprinted by permission from Yaw Aviation

When the FAA introduced the 1,500-hour rule in 2013, it was seen as a major safety enhancement as a direct response to the Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash. The logic seemed simple: more flight hours must mean more experience, and more experience must mean safer pilots. But more than a decade later, we have to ask – has this rule really made us safer?

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Ab Initio / ATO

‘Long Covid’ Effects on the Airline Pilot Supply

By Captain John Bent, FRAeS

Historically, commercial aviation has faced various shocks, but none have affected manpower availability as severely as the Covid-19 pandemic.

It will take many years to adjust the fleet to the new realities and return to stable growth. Even after 10 years, the industry will not have fully regained all that it has lost with the pandemic.

This essay looks at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on commercial pilot experience and consequent safety, noting the financial devastation1 faced by airlines and their key employees, and an underlying reduction in pilot proficiency.

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Pilot

“Hap” Arnold: Forging the USAF

General Henry “Hap” Arnold stands as a towering figure in aviation history, his career soaring from the dawn of airpower to the brink of the jet age. His leadership was instrumental in forging the United States Air Force, establishing him as a key proponent of air dominance and national security.

Excerpted from AEROMASTERS, Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot

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1500 Hours

PART II – The 1500-Hour Rule, Data Sharing and NFTA’s Mission

Technology has led us now, over the last 14 years, to be able to do so much more. We can build better pilots, which was the goal in 2010 when we passed that rule. Build better pilots. Now we can, using other means, and I think we have to now entertain that.

I would like, and I’ve been very public about this, we need to stop talking about hours. That’s not the focus. The battle lines have been drawn for so many years now, and it’s so vitriolic that when one side or the other says anything about anything, they might tell us the sky is blue this afternoon and the other side will go, no, it’s not, because they just are diametrically opposed to anything the other side has to say.

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Pilot

Bert Hall, Lafayette Escadrille

Excerpted from AEROMASTERS, Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot

AEROMASTERS—the Pulitzer Prize-nominated, coffee-table/ narrative trilogy by Dino Garner and Liz Fetter—is now available on Amazon.com. A breathtaking tribute to a century of American fighter pilots. Reviewers call it “A literary and visual masterpiece of American history.”

To order the book: AEROMASTERS: Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot: Dino Garner, Liz Fetter: 9798218486778: Amazon.com: Books

Westin Birch “Bert” Hall was one of the most unforgettable characters from the Lafayette Escadrille.

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Ab Initio / ATO

Swiss Unveil World’s 1st Regulator-Approved MR Flight Simulator

A small Swiss company has achieved a surprising breakthrough in commercial aviation flight simulation – the world’s first regulatory-qualified mixed-reality (MR) flight simulator. Brunner Elektronik AG, with 30 employees in the Zurich suburb of Hittnau, revealed on 4 June that its NOVASIM MR DA42 FNPT II (Flight and Navigation Procedures Trainer) has been authorised for training credits by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA), based on European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) standards.

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Business Aviation

Tariff Vortex for EU Business Aviation

By Rick Adams, FRAeS

The European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) took its first solo flight this week, staging the annual European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (EBACE) at Palexpo in Geneva, Switzerland without its longtime partner, the US-based National Business Aviation Association (NBAA).

The split was amicable, Doug Carr told me, as evidenced by his appearance as a speaker in one of the more than 30 presentations across three ‘stages’ embedded around the exhibit floor across 2 ½ days. Carr is NBAA SVP for Safety, Security, Sustainability and International Operations.

“Taking over the show was… challenging,” admitted Holger Krahmer to a media gathering on the eve of the event. Krahmer is Secretary General of the not-for-profit EBAA. He promised “a completely new look and feel, a lot of new ideas, a new concept.”

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Halldale

Lanyards, Revolutions, Internationals and Ugly Stepchildren

Four Takeaways from WATS 2025

by Rick Adams, FRAeS

I’ve lost track of how many WATS conferences I’ve attended over the past 27 years… most of them certainly. There’s a comfortable consistency to the events. With perhaps the exception of the first post-Covid year and the 25th Anniversary.

But what I look forward to is the new players – the first-time speakers, the first-time exhibitors. It’s all fresh to them, and they bring a different energy than the veteran attendees.

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IATA

The Aviation Training Voices Interview

Tanja Schmidt, Director of Training, IATA

2nd in a Series of Conversations
with Commercial Aviation Safety and Training Leaders

By Rick Adams, FRAeS

Tanja Schmidt began her role with the International Air Transport Association (https://iata.org) in September 2024, inheriting a department which manages hundreds of training courses across dozens of airline-related categories: airline management, operations, air navigation, cargo, dangerous goods, environment, ticketing, finance, law and regulation, safety, security, tourism, even courses for civil aviation authorities. To deliver the courses around the globe, the Geneva, Switzerland- and Montréal, Canada-headquartered IATA leans on hundreds of industry partners with specific subject expertise.

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Ab Initio / ATO

Lufthansa, Innovative Training Giant

From aspiring cadets to astronauts and simulators to digital twins, Lufthansa Aviation Training has breadth and vision.

RICK ADAMS, FRAeS

Lufthansa Aviation Training is much more than routine type-rating and recurrent courses and sim scenarios. Post-Covid, their offerings include an ab initio academy, upset prevention and recovery training, the first EASA-approved ATO, training of military, helicopter and business aircraft pilots, even astronauts, a foray into eVTOL, ‘fear of flying’ courses, and application of lessons learned for hospital personnel and business managers.

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Business Aviation

Rega to the Rescue

Swiss Air-Ambulance, AXIS & LAT Bring CL650 Training to Europe

By RICK ADAMS, FRAeS

Under certain circumstances, Rega will repatriate you from anywhere in the world so you can return to Switzerland for medical treatment, which rates among the best healthcare in the world. The first option, when you call, is to determine if you can be adequately cared for in a nearby hospital. The next choice would be transport home on a commercial aircraft, perhaps accompanied by a Rega doctor and nurse. But if you’re flat on your back like Johan, as a last resort, they’ll dispatch a jet and appropriate medical team.

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AAM / eVTOL

Shaping the Future of AAM Safety

An RAeS Briefing Paper

A proposed predictive safety approach for Advanced Air Mobility be conducting innovative ‘pre-mortem’ investigations of forecasted accidents with a global lens to collate critical safety lessons and recommend actions now to prevent them from happening in the future.

I was privileged to be the lead editor for this months-long project by an Aerosociety task force of subject experts.

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AI / ML / Big Data

“I’m Here to Learn.”

An Exclusive Conversation with the FAA’s AI Guru, Dr. Trung Pham

By Rick Adams, FRAeS

“I joined the FAA in June 2022, Had a six-month honeymoon period. And then around February 2023, I was called by REDAC [the Research, Engineering, and Development Advisory Committee – which provides advice and recommendations to the FAA Administrator on the needs, objectives, plans, approaches, content, and accomplishments of the aviation research portfolio]. The REDAC asked me what happened to the Roadmap that they recommended.”

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People & Performance

Adams-Nelson Announce ‘Voices’ Thought Leadership Mentoring Consultancy

Veteran journalists and corporate communicators Rick Adams, FRAeS and D-L Nelson have announced the ‘Voices’ consultancy, which will provide thought leadership mentoring to select companies and organizations who wish to amplify their voice in the business marketplace.

VOICES will provide communications strategy, messaging, media / presentation coaching, writing / editing and other services to help navigate the evolving landscape of traditional and social media.

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