So at the time of writing we are just over two months away from the premier aviation training summit in the region, If you don’t have your ticket yet, I’ll pause so you can go and get that sorted, because obviously you’re going, and early bird pricing is about to end, when your ready we will keep going.

Sorted? Jolly good.

I started planning the maintenance stream as soon as I got back from last year’s APATS and reached out to some contact to find out what you want to see, who do you want to hear from. We have some familiar faces and some new ones, and I think we are ready to go.

Opening our maintenance stream, we have a session based around training “Gen Z”. For context I did my basic training in the mid to late 90s, and while powerpoint was around, I still think we did a lot of learning via an overhead projector, and notes and white/blackboard, and it was just like high school, sit there, listen, ask questions, study….. but we have created a situation where the new generations are not used to learning like that (though no fault of their own I might add) OK, so how do we adapt our training for them. If nothing else, as a father of a teenager, I’m looking forward to this session.

One significant change I guess this year is moving away from the big round table discussion type of sessions, if you have been there in the past, you will know they are not well attended, so while I think they are great and a great piece of learning, perhaps it’s not the right platform,

We replaced one of those sessions with a HF workshop, those of you know and have seen Soren Seindal Agner from Aeroteam, will know he is a passionate HF practitioner, and if you have been following the development of his training program Mayday, new updates this year, with data flow to the SMS. So, we are dedicating a session to flesh that out and see how it works. If you don’t know Soren, I can tell you from personal experience, he changed how I thought HF training can and should be delivered. If you feel your HF training is getting a bit stale, this is the session you need to attend.

Closing out the first day we have a session on competency-based training. And this is an interesting one for an Australian, because we have had CBT in Australia since the mid 90s (in fact it was my cohort that was the first group to go through a CBT based apprenticeship. But we are acutely aware that this is going to be a new ‘thing’ for some of you in our region. Some really interesting presentations here from Boeing and Airbus (I got a sneak peek at WATS) looking at some of the technical aspects of the CBT program, but we also have Glenn Ryan from Aviation Australia, our biggest maintenance training school, speaking about actually what a CBT program looks like but also the benefits of such a program, as we look for solutions to the workforce shortage.

To kick off our second day, I am actually going to present. I’ve presented in the past (the two online COVID APATS) But I’ve been reluctant to present at the face-to-face versions, mostly because in our subject areas, we have been blessed presenters far more equipped than me. But during those planning sessions early on, I knew we would have a session on trainer development, and that is something that I can speak to. We (as an industry) are really good at taking a great engineer, giving them a Train the Trainer course and say “right, now you’re a trainer” and letting them go, in this session we are going to discuss the importance of developing trainer/instructor competence, not just technical competence.

If I’m honest, I have been in the training game for something like 25 years, and probably most of my development has been through picking up bits and pieces from other trainers (that’s what I’m presenting on) but if you want some accelerated development, or something you can put in front of a regulator and say “yes we are developing our trainers”, attendance at APATS has to be one of the best options, two days, surrounded by “trainers” talking about training, worst case scenario, if you take nothing else away, you will at least see a dozen+ different presentation styles, and you pick up some pointers to improve your delivery, and that will impact every training session, every student that sits in front of you, win win.

The other round table we have replaced with a session on Failure to Follow Procedures. Now I have to admit that this is far more prevalent than I thought, and listening to some stories at WATS and discussions post that, I can completely understand how it’s happening. We are lucky to have Buck Gains lead this session. Buck is the Technical Operations Training Manager at Alaska Airlines and the Chair of the A4A Maintenance Training network. Buck led a couple of great sessions at WATS on the subject, so I’m happy to hand over the reigns here. There is some worldwide learning to happen in this space, to find causes and solutions, as training practitioners we will have a big role in that.

Right, finishing off the maintenance session, some VR and AI. Aliesha Staples is back, this year looking at how the VR solution was implemented at Jetstar. I met with Aliesha at WATS and they actually have a well-developed Augmented Reality solution, aside the presentation, I can recommend connecting with her to look at that. AI was one of the topics you asked for, so really looking forward to Taja Hillier’s presentation, they have been doing work in the pilot space but speaking to her there is an opportunity for maintenance training, this is going to be a great introduction to the subject.

Our last speakers will be Denis Manson and Anne Lomperis they have a real focus the technical English competency for aircraft maintenance and using AI to teach and analyse that (I hope I have that right). Anyone who has seen the recent CAE talent forecast, they are estimating we need about 120,000 new technicians over the next 10 years in our region alone. A lot of them will come to the industry with English as their second language so I’m really interested to see how their solution is implemented and works.

Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Conference Centre

It’s looking like a great conference, The facility at Marina Bay Sands is one of the best in the world, the networking and opportunity to expand your network of ‘training’ contacts, meeting the OEMs, connecting with vendors, providers, and innovators is invaluable.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Asia Pacific Airline Training Summit 2025

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