Virtual reality

Brad Thress, recently appointed President and CEO of FlightSafety, talks to Anthony Harrington about his new role and the company’s expectations for exiting the pandemic restrictions

On February 14th this year, FlightSafety announced that Brad Thress, formerly Senior Vice President, Global Parts, Program and Flight Operations, at Textron, and the President of Able Aerospace, was taking over from David Davenport as President and CEO.

AH: Brad, congratulations on your appointment. It must have been something of a wrench leaving Textron after 27 years, but you are now heading up one of the most exciting and technologically sophisticated companies in the industry. When you decided to move, you knew they were already a huge player in the market. What motivated you to take the leadership position and how does it feel now that you have?

BT: I suppose the first point to make is that I have been familiar with FlightSafety and their simulators and training for a very long time, probably 30 years or more, as a pilot. Plus, I had a very close working relationship with the company when Textron put together our joint training venture with FlightSafety, across a number of our models.

I knew too, that they were a very geographically dispersed company, with 80 physical locations and 37 learning centres around the world, and that was very interesting to me. Then there is the fact that simulation and pilot training comes under a lot of different regulatory regimes around the world.

However, there is no doubt that while it is a tough business, aviation training, in general, is a very good business to be in.

AH: Simulators are about creating a very realistic, immersive experience for pilots. However, this is also exactly what the computer and console gaming worlds are all about and we are seeing billions spent on creating virtual realities there. Do you see some crossover potential there for simulators?

BT: We certainly think gaming has a big part to play and we already have two products that address this. We have developed a virtual reality system that we think can translate across aviation training in general. It is a mixed reality system, with some physical components, such as a control stick, while the rest of the cockpit is simulated in 3D goggles.

With this system, the student can sit at the desktop and practice all sorts of things, up to and including flying in formation. All this happens in virtual reality, so VR and developments in VR are something we are both using and watching really closely. This is all part of the solution to accelerate pilot training.

Of course, right at this moment, with so many airlines grounding most of their fleet, the industry is not really feeling the acute shortage of trained pilots. However, as soon as things start normalizing, that problem will come back with a vengeance. So we need to be thinking of ways of expediting pilot training safely, as well as refreshing and enhancing the skill sets of experienced pilots, and this is what our clients are looking for.

AH: What kind of a falling off in demand for training have you seen through the pandemic crisis?

BT: We have seen quite a drop, but on the other hand, we have taken an aggressive stance towards ensuring safety. We have very thorough and rigorous procedures for cleaning the simulators, and we have distributed over 100,000 masks and gloves to staff and clients. We have FAA approval for staff and trainees to not put oxygen masks on for emergency descents during recurrent training.

At the same time, we have tried to facilitate clients doing extended learning from home. We have received FAA certification for our online ground school training as well as our LiveLearning.

Plus, we have an enterprise-wide scheduling system, which enables us to see what staff are available at our various locations at any one time. So we can map out the logistics of meeting customer demand across all our centres. There are a lot of constraints on the schedulers because all the courses and training are so specific to models and situations, so it is a very complex job. This system was deployed only a month ago and it is going to be a huge benefit to the whole organisation.

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