IFATCA's Spotlight Podcast
In our new podcast, IFATCA Spotlight, we shine a light on IFATCA's Member Associations. A podcast made by ATCOs for ATCOs to provide insight into different challenges and solutions found around the world.
IFATCA's Spotlight Podcast
Gate Aviation
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GATE Aviation Training will host IFATCA's Technical and Operational Committee (TOC) in Copenhagen, Denmark, from September 7th to 9th. On this occasion, GATE Aviation Training's Dirch Jans talks to IFATCA podcast host Thorsten Raue. He shares insights on innovative approaches to ATC training, emphasising personalised, culture-aware, and technology-supported methods to prepare future air traffic controllers.
Welcome to our podcast IFATCA Spotlight, where we normally shine a light on a member association, but this time we're recording a special episode and shine a light on one of Ifadka's industry partners. That would be Gate Aviation Training, and we've got Dirch Jans on the podcast. Welcome.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much, Dawson. Honor to be here. Thanks for letting me in and talk about what I really want to talk about, which is of course training and how we can continue developing training for the future eben issues or the future EDCOs, which absolutely is one of my biggest interests in this industry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, last time we met was in Bucharest at the Global Conference and you participated in a panel discussion about training. And to be honest, I felt there was more to say about it. So I um looked you up afterwards and we ended up talking about it and about the present state of ETCO training, about the future, and about passion. For example, we noticed that we've got a passion for training. And uh I don't remember who had the idea, but we agreed on uh talking about it here on in eFodcast Spotlight. But first things first, give us a quick overview. Who are you, where are you coming from, both geographically and what's your background, and what is gate aviation training? I'll do that.
SPEAKER_01My name is Dier Jans. I am uh 57. I started my career back in the advertising industry where I worked with commercials. Then the commercial industry in the in the end of the 80s, start nineties was quite intense. There was a lot of uh companies going up and down, so I decided that I wanted to use my safe money to become a pilot. But during that period, I also was forced to go into the military where I did a small career with the training of recruits. Parallel to that, I started flying. So I actually wanted to be a pilot. So start early 90s, I finished my pilot training, but there was no jobs, so it was difficult to get a job that time. I think I had 400 hours, but if I wanted to come into an airline, I needed 1,200. So, due to my military background, I got a message from the military that they were lack of air traffic controllers, and with my CB, they would like me to apply. I thought, why not give it a chance to apply? I succeeded and I started my education in January 1993 as a military controller. The contract was based that I should work on the civilian side. So I started there and graduated in 1995, and in uh 2000 I moved from Denmark to Switzerland to join uh Skyguide, and I worked with Skyguide as a controller, as an instructor, as a supervisor, as a project manager. I think I was through a lot of levels in Skyguide uh during my nine years there. Then I went back to Denmark, and after two years I went to Abu Dhabi to work as an air traffic controller there. After one and a half years, I went back to Kobling. Thought now is it, but then I got a proposal to come out in the private industry. So I joined a consultant company called Integar, who needed to build up a training academy. So I was chosen to do that. I did that back in uh 2015, and after two years with Integar, I went back as a controller and thought now it's done. Now I need to stay here. I've been training all my life and now I need to prepare for my retirement. But then I got a phone call about building up a new site in Copenhagen where I also could uh be the co-owner. So that was in 2017, and Gate had first operation January 18, and here we are now, almost nine years later, soon ten years later, with Gate who actually has done a good position in in the market for training. So that's actually my career and who I am.
SPEAKER_00Interesting, colorful background. I mean, we're right on the topic already. You received so many kinds of different trainings in your in your careers, like the normal kind of career uh being consultant or in advertising, and then military education and different kind of air traffic controller educations throughout the world. That's amazing. Maybe it's good to start with what went bad. So sometimes there's it's a huge motivation when you are being trained and you feel like, okay, this is not the way it's it's supposed to be. This could be smoother, this could be better. Well was that part of of your inspiration to found gate?
SPEAKER_01I think the I have to go longer back there. I actually go have to go back to the military first of all, where I started to look at this uh relation-built training. I was training soldiers who should, if if it happened, go to war. I was supposed to go with them to war. So what you don't want to be is the first one who's getting shot in a war by your teammates because you have not treated them well, not trained them well, and you have not treated them at all. So what I started to do in the recruitment training was actually to build a relation so we could laugh together, but train and still have a line where they knew that this is the military way to do, I have to get them down to the mud, I have to get to take away the food and all that. So they knew that that was a consequence that I was they had to learn instead of making it like a penalty. So after that, when I came into the EDCO training, the pilot training I would say was actually quite good. I don't have any like episodes I can take out and say I wanted to change that if I could. But coming to the EDCO training, I was uh starting my ETCO training for simulator around 93, 94. And I will say what I happened there, what happened there was that all the instructors was like these bad cops. Everybody was just trying to fail you. We were a course of 24 students, we were only four who were qualified, which was a huge waste of resources. We were selected out of 1,200 people, so we were selected, we were invested in and all that, but you just put it on the street because people didn't know what training was, to be honest.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have uh we had a saying uh was uh break them first and then build them up again. And I thought always that was a huge waste of time and effort.
SPEAKER_01And here you didn't even build them up. You actually had micropaying. So it was not like I know that in the special forces in the military, uh, we have two different ones. Actually, we have three, but one of them they break people down and build them up so they fit into the system. The other one has started now to take individuals in and say, okay, we know Building has like this professional uh high performance team. There are nine roles, so they start to look at all these roles and put them in and say, okay, we need those roles to fit in a team, so they look at personality now instead. So it's two different ways of training and both are working. But in aviation, I think we have to go with the one where we start to define the roles and find the people for the roles. And that was what I decided to change when I qualified. I said, I'm gonna be extremely opposite of what I've seen, so I'm gonna go back and take all what I learned in the military about training, gonna take that and put that into ETCO. And that was actually where my passion for training started. And then I've just been lucky that I've been in training positions for many years, I've been in leading positions with training for many years, so I could also decide what way to go. And when I started GATE, the first lesson I did for myself was I want Gate to be agile, dynamic, and developing. It was not about going in and saying, now we have an ACC course. Now we have one ACC course. Next year that has to be improved and better together with the clients. So we started actually this about one size doesn't fit all, where all my competitors was like, one site fits all. But with my experience working in Denmark, Switzerland, and Abu Dhabi, I knew it was totally different traffic patterns. I needed to train for different traffic patterns. So one site from Scandinavian, you couldn't use that in Switzerland because it was small, tight, and in Abu Dhabi, it was like single man operation where we trained with two persons. So you never came through the right training anywhere. So we started actually with this about customized training. And that has been growing a lot, and this is I I guess this is one of the success criteria why we have training the UAC and also LVNL. I think actually it's because we are listening to the clients what is it they want. We know how to collect it and how to put it together and how to design it and train them, but we don't know the outcome what they want. They have to tell us that. So I think that was one of the passions I have.
SPEAKER_00I think that's really interesting. Like, could you give us an example when you think back? So what was the greatest change that you implemented the between courses or in the uh history of of gate concerning training?
SPEAKER_01I think the the smartest thing that we are working, still working on, but that was that we defined that there has to be a red line from selection until license. It's not module buildup. Because many says, Oh, you get an ACS rating course, then you go on the pre-on the job. But if there is not a red line of how do we teach them in each module, are they coming from one culture to another, or do we eliminate that culture so it's one culture? So also my instructors can go out who are non-political, can go out in the units and talk to the students during the OJTI to face the problems they are looking into and talk to the client about it because they are maybe afraid of telling this to the instructors because they can just fail them. Where with us there is like nothing. We are neutral, as I said. We are the Switzerland. So I think that is one of the biggest milestones we have accomplished so far. That is actually to convince all the clients that this is not a module, this is a red line, it goes from start to end, and we have all to be focused throughout the whole line.
SPEAKER_00I like the idea. It's quite often something that I hear from quite a few colleagues that uh they get the trainees come out of some kind of academy and then they're being released into the wild, and uh there's a huge gap in the uh in between and uh that has to be closed, I think, too.
SPEAKER_01I would say the biggest gap we have met is the culture gap. And that is something that that is difficult because again, now the Academy Gate is placed in Denmark and in Spain and Greenland, so but the the DNA is Scandinavian mostly. Of course in Spain it's Spain, but in Copenhagen it's a Danish DNA. So the culture here is also that we ask a lot of questions. Where we have seen other nations that we have trained that don't ask much questions. If I say you go do like this, they don't ask and say, but could I do like this? Where my culture is I can do like that. Can I do like that? Yes you can. Okay. So when we train the people they have of course fostered to have that approach to question and ask question because they are still training. So when they come out in a different culture where maybe this is not norm, then there will be a big gap that has to be eliminated. And I think we have started to get more and more focused on these small gaps to improve the success rate because it's not about selection. Selection is really good. Some of our clients, it's the most intelligent students that they come with. Then we have the training. I would say that we are hitting high level of training. There are some providers in Europe that I will say we are hitting really high levels of training. Of course, there's also some where it's more a business than actually a philosophy and a passion, and that's okay, because that also forces us not just to be too expensive. But we have to look where is the success rate then failing. Is it on the job training where some units are failing 80%? Nobody is asking questions towards it. Why? I think that that can be increased. But we need to understand because it's not because they are bad people, it's not because the training is bad, the selection is bad, it's because there is a gap of culture. And that's what I like to work with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's interesting that you mentioned the uh kind of the success rate, which is an important thing. But the question is always if you consider yourself to be a business, like the success rate would be they're leaving the academy and they've got the student license. That would be the success. But if you look at the whole education from beginning to fully rated EDCO, like with as you said with a red line, then the success rate moves towards the end. And is that the way you do it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we are measuring on end result, license results. So we are getting the feedback from our clients. We are not measuring on on the academy because as you said, I can easily get hundred percent pass rate, and as the first day they go to the new employer, then they fail. Because I didn't do my job, but my company has hundred percent. So, no, we actually don't use the number internally, we only use it to see why are so many people succeeding in our company. We're actually asking ourselves, why are so many people succeeding in our our company? What is the reason? Why are we not failing more than what we are doing? And that is what is interesting for us. Are we really so good? Or are there some corners that we haven't investigated good enough? And that is why we need this conversation with our clients so we exactly know how did you see them when they came? What was it? But again, many of our instructors have been working around the world, like myself, we have really good evidence to train from. So when we believe that they are good enough, I promise you they will be able to graduate. But again, the culture, the personality comes in, they come home to a home country, now they're back in their own culture, they speak their own language, which they maybe were challenged with us. So there's a lot of things that we can't control that suddenly blows up and is a part of the new training. And that is where it's get difficult, and this is why we cannot stop. When they had finished that gate, we cannot stop. We need to continue as long as they are on the job training until they get their license.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned the culture quite a lot, and uh just for the listeners not from Europe, you you just said muAC, that would be the Eurokontrol Center in uh Netherlands. Yeah, in Maastricht. And uh and they recruit people from all over Europe, and so now they're being sent first to Copenhagen to get the rating, and then they're being sent to Muwark, to the center to get the uh endorsements. Uh that's the way it is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they come to first they do the selection in Muwar. So Muwark does all the selection. We know how they do it, so we are aware of that. So that's the start of the red line. Then they select the people and they send the people to us. We start then to harmonize this group. This is the first time that these individuals are seeing each other. So we start to build up a performance team and do some uh workshops, some teamworks before we actually start the professional training. That takes a week, and then we actually start the training. So now they are a team, now they can work together, help each other, start to know their names and all that. So now we can start with the professional lessons. And then we start with the basic, go over to the rating, and after rating, we send them back to Maastricht. In Maastricht, they then have a course called the Pre-Pre on the job. That's uh where they come in and start to learn about the technical tools that they are working with. We are trying to mimic our technical tools so they are aligned with Maastricht technical tools in the education. So most of them they have, but of course it's a new HDMI. It's not a mimic HCMI, it's it's a correct MDI HCMI, and then they work with that. That they do. When they pass that one, there they will get a lot of traffic. Then they go to the pre-on the job, which is a new step. When they are finished with the pre-on the job, they go on the job training. So you can say they have three steps in mastering after our training.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, so many interesting things are already mentioned. Like for example, I like the idea, I I keep on saying uh for example, in regards to safety, uh you can't just look at the things that went wrong. It's sometimes it's way more interesting to see wh why there was a success you became a successful ETCO, and sometimes you can learn quite quite a bit from that instead of just looking at the negative cases. Really interesting. But coming back to the culture, like do you think the week is enough to get the European cultures kind of aligned enough that uh they work as a proper team and then they can go to New York, or how long do you think does it take?
SPEAKER_01I would say the first eight weeks, that is where we are forming the group. That is where they know who they are, who who is strong in meteorology, who is strong in aircraft, how can we utilize it as a group and learn from each other? I would say that's the first eight weeks. So that is where they are forming the group, they are forming and starting to learn as well. They are not performing yet. Of course they are performing with the theoretical learning, but they are they are like still in a forming group. When we come to the uh radar training or the simulation, that is where they really start to to show how strong they are together. That is where they work together as planner executive. Uh they are also in sim pilot positions where they have a lot of the irresponsibility that the training has a value and a quality. So you can say that that is where they really start to perform professionalism. So this is where we start to train them to be the really professional. First, we like get the group to be strong, then we start to form the people there. But we also have this physical training in our training that once a week the groups go to physical training together. And that's not to like that is actually to build them. First of all, we want them to train to be tired in the body but still fit in the head. And because you can go to work as an EDCO and you didn't sleep well, but you still go to work, but they have never trained that. Nobody has trained them in that. So what we are doing is that once a week we really hit them down on physical training in the morning and they go to the academy and then they train the whole day and they are tired, but they are not tired in the head, they are tired in their body. So we learn them how to cope with this stress that they have because it's not fatigue, it's just stress. They are stressed that they were tired and it was hard for the body. So we actually start in a very early stage to also learn them how to cope when they have stress or s a small fatigue of missing sleep. So that's actually one of the the things that we are.
SPEAKER_00I've never heard that any other uh kind of academy does this holistic uh approach of of looking at at all kinds of of uh things you have to teach them. Really, really interesting.
SPEAKER_01We are the only academy doing that as far as I know, except from the military academies. But we are the only one civilian.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe because of your military background, then maybe that's why you had the idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Of course, of course I was used to train when I did my military at co, I also had physical training, but actually it comes from more than that. It comes that we have fatigue and stress, who is a big topic within the ETCO uh industry. So I think it's very important that we also teach them that in an early stage instead of too late.
SPEAKER_00In the in the preparation for for this little interview, I I looked a little at what is training, what is teaching, what is learning. And it's surprising that uh it's pretty hard to really put the finger on what it exactly is, and it gets even harder if you want to measure it. I remember when I had the fortune of visiting your premises, we already had a talk and you said uh there there are some studies that basically uh you have to do stuff about a hundred times and then you start to being proficient in it. What else would you say would be kind of what's guiding your your training and how you approach your runs and all the education?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say that training is about being curious to something else, and practical training is about sharing experience with somebody who has tried that before. So if we can combine those two, curiosity and good instructors who can share experience, or what happens when we run out of instructors and we need to use the technology, that is what we are. But but I would say that the training for me is about how can we move people from one level to a professional level in a very short time. If we do it too steep learning curve, we will lose them. If we do it too soft, they will not compete it. So how do we actually get in and find that balance about training? What we're looking for now is I think we have found a really good balance, but we also know that there are coming some bottlenecks ahead. Bottlenecks about the ANSP starting to keep the instructor for longer to they they can roll when I was sorry, I'll go a little back. When I started my career, I could uh retire with 55. Today you can continue as long as you're medical and your proficiency check is completed. That is in Denmark. So everybody is now increasing the age of retirement, meaning who will be the future instructors because when they go to retirement, they really go to retirement. Where before, when you l when you stop with 55, you are too early to go to retirement, and that was where there was I can still use my skills, I can still share my know-how, my experience. I'll be a freelance instructor, I'll work three weeks, one month, and two months off, and whatever. But I think that we will come into a problem here, and that is I'm not nervous about the training right now. I'm nervous about the training five years. How will that training be? So, how can we keep hands on all this? That is something that we have to solve together. I remember in Bucharest in the panel, I said, Do you believe that in three years, 65% of our co-training can be done as self training? The guy next to me, who was also in the panel, he just said without the microphone, because I had the microphone, he said to me, It's never gonna happen. And I then I replied out to the uh audience, I said, Look, this guy here, he said, It's never gonna happen. I believe it will happen, and I believe it will happen in two years. Because in two years I think that sixty five percent of Of all training for Abnisha will be self-training, but we have to be smart when we do it without compromising the quality. And we have to do that to avoid the bottleneck of instructors in the future. So that is that was a long way around what you actually asked for, and actually so long that I almost forgot what what the final qu what the question was.
SPEAKER_00But it was a nice segue into moving future education. This is basically what you're thinking every day about because your management, you gotta keep the academy going. You actually already probably feel that you it's harder to get some instructors and so you've got to think about the future. When you say self-learning, so how do you envision that? You can't just give them a textbook about ATC. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Maybe self-learning is uh is the wrong uh word. Self-training might be uh a better word.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01What I want, I still want the human to be involved, but maybe the human are only involved in 35% of the training. Where today they are involved one to one, pretty similar run, there's an instructor. But what if we could digitalize a lot? This students will instead of coming out with 100 hours of training, they will come out with 200 hours. So now we go from 100 hours with instructors to 200 hours where 35% is with an instructor. Meaning that they have 70 hours with instructor, 30% less, not 65% less, but they have much more training. And if we go back to when you said I mentioned this about training things 100 times, we need more hours of training to be able to do that. The clients will not pay for it, so we need to be smart, be able to provide 200 hours for the same price as today, that we can only achieve by being smart. And this is what I'm working on with Gate. We are there, and I think that we are ready to launch this in 27 Q4 or early 28. Uh and then we have to convince the market that this is the way we want to do it. But again, we we were the first runner on the customized training. We have broken so many barriers to the old conservative training organization thinking, and we have forced them to be like us. Everybody is now, everybody's talking about customized training. Nobody did it before I. Everybody was like one fit soul. So I I'm known for going the opposite way, uh, provoking the industry. And this is also why, of course, it's a business, but I use all the money to make training even better. I'm not buying a yacht, I'm not buying anything. I'm actually reinvesting all the money that Gate is earning to do it properly. Help the industry to the bottleneck that I see will come.
SPEAKER_00What kind of tools? So if being you're saying you need to use computers better, you digitize, what kind of tools would be the key factors you need to achieve that kind of training that you envision?
SPEAKER_01See, now we are coming into the business part where we're still we are not there yet. So if I say too much, there could be some competitors listening to this.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_01I know my competitors, some of them are already working on the same issue, but of course it is that we have seen AI come into the world. We need to understand how to use AI because everybody says AI, but we have to understand how we can use it, because what AI is doing is if you if you try to play with AI, it never says no. It never says I can't do it. It will always come with some BS to you. And if you're critical to where it gets the data from, then you also see a lot of mistakes in AI. So we need to understand how to use AI, how to work with AI, and how AI can support what we actually are looking for. So I would say that one of the, of course, one of the big tools we are working with is AI. And that is in many different areas of the training. So it's not only about the simulation and this about self-training. It's about the whole concept is built about how to understand and get technology to help us with the bottlenecks that we see. I still need humans, I still want humans because AI can't share experience. AI can only find experience on the internet. AI can't tell you a story about a situation you were placed in as an EPCO. It can only tell from different videos or what happened there, but it cannot with the heart and with the passion tell you about it. So there's a lot of learning that can't be replaced with AI.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I I don't know if if your vision like with the 70, 130 ratio, would be okay, but I think there is lots of potential in the idea of just increasing training time for trainees. So the trainees quite often know themselves that they've got kind of they lack some kind of competence in in a certain area. And they actually want to work on that, but quite often they can't because the simulator is not open and stuff like that. So that would be a solution for that, for example.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah. And that's actually also we we want the students to be able to train when the students want to train. We have the academy hours that they have to come and train because we need to form them still to this professional life and professional work. So it's not only about having a professional work, it's also to be professional in your life. So we have to train them for that as well. It can't be done without human contact. So we still want them to come and train in the academy, but of course, we want them to be able to train also when they are off. Today, our academy is open 24-7. The students can come and train outside working hours, but they need a couple of colleagues to join them to play the pilots and all that. That will be eliminated very soon that they don't need so they can actually just come and train alone. So here we're already improving it. The next step we've got to improve is that they don't need to go to the academy to train. In Spain right now, we have a lot of students who is sleeping over. We have just now purchased the first gate campus where we're gonna do it with hotel and study environment inside the campus so they can study in their spare time. The academy is not there. We want them out of the house, nothing goes on insane. They need to travel five kilometers to the academy and back again. But when they come home, they don't need to go to the academy five kilometers, they can actually train in the campus. So we want to learn from that and see how much is it used, what does it how do we get that? All the data we will get, instructor team will get the data, can see who has trained, will get all the data, how they performed and all that. So it's not like a video game, it is a relevant task. And I got this from when I was flying, but when I was taking my pilot license, I actually had what we call solo navigation flight. That was where there was no instructor with me at all. Nothing. I didn't have a flying license, but I was out flying on my own. And this is why I said, why is it that our students are not sitting in front of a computer where they can't do any mistakes and train on themselves? But I was allowed as a pilot to take a Cessna or a Piper, go out, fly out with an aircraft where I could do huge damage. Nobody was with me. So yeah, there we have been too conservative. And this year was the end of the 80s. I did this. And we have still not moved to this about train yourself. Come on, do it. Let me get some data for what you did. And because there was a debriefing when you landed the aircraft, there was a day briefing taking place. So I still think that we are not developing with the speed that I would like us to develop. And this is why gate is I think gate has its position in the market because we are the ones who are we don't have to deliver money to our investors and all that. We can actually just go in and say, we want to do this for the business, for the industry, because the industry needs it.
SPEAKER_00I think the the debriefing part is the important thing to avoid the trainees learning something wrong and then reinforcing it over and over by by doing it. And maybe it works, but it's wrong for some other reason. And then uh it's it's always hard and difficult to unlearn something. At least for me it is. I'm an old dog and new tricks, you know, the saying. But I understand what you say, and I fully agree.
SPEAKER_01Uh the debriefing is absolutely one of uh of the most important one. And what I see the tendency today is to there's a lot we can digitize, right? But if I if I have to go down to the supermarket and I need to make a grocery list, my wife is dictating what to buy, I put it down on a note, I put it the note in my pocket and I go to work and then I go to the grocery store later this afternoon. I would be able to to memorize 70% of what I wrote. Opposite is my wife give me this and say, I've put down the notes here, I put it in my pocket, I look at it, I put it in my pocket, then I go after work again down to ship. I need to I need 100% concentration on the list. So why is it that we suddenly are moving, uh we are not using all this brilliant data, evidence with the students that suddenly we are now digitizing the feedback. They don't with us, the students are writing the feedback themselves because of this. The more you write, okay, the more your brain works. So we are of course facilitating the debriefing and asking them, I would like you to put this on paper. They go and do it on paper exactly with a with a pencil because of this.
SPEAKER_00Interesting, because it reminds me of my daughter. She's uh studying in university right now and she's studying chemistry, and especially when they work with dangerous chemicals, they make them write it down on paper, as you said, by hand. What happens? What do you have to take care of? What happens if it uh you get it into an eye or whatever? And I have to write that down exactly, probably because of what you said. Interesting, how it reaches every part of our life basically. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But I see we are moving more and more away from it. I I've told my company, even that it's old, I want this to stay because that is the most powerful learning. That is that you take you activate your nerve system up to your brain and you remember. Just remember 40% of 50, 60%. But if I give you a digital one, you read it, you put it in your mat and say, okay, that was the debriefing, thank you very much. You remember 10-20%. I believe that we can remember 60-70% of what we're writing. So if there are some really habits to work with, the pencil, the nerve system, your brain, that's the generator to put on the engine, so you can learn it.
SPEAKER_00I love it that you want to go to the future and use AI, use digital digital stuff, but when it matters, uh the pencil is the tool you need. Different tools for different tasks, and uh that's the difficult thing of choosing the right tool and the right point of time which tool to use. And that's correct, and that's bringing me back to what we talked about.
SPEAKER_01This about we need to learn how we can be supported with AI. We need to learn to work with AI. AI should not take over, but we should support it. And this is very for me, that's that's the key in working with the all these digital solutions. Number one rule for me is I don't want to compromise learning. I don't want to compromise the output. I want to increase the performance level of the student, and I want the s the the clients to understand how important it is that more training is necessary for a better outcome. You're not you're not being a professional football player by playing football for a year.
SPEAKER_00True. I thought the point you said before, the AI never says no, is an important thing as well, because I keep on saying to my trainee just in real life, basically what I want him to do is learn to say no at the right time. Not always, but at the right time. And it's it was funny, just two days ago there was another trainee working next to us and she had to say no, and she actually admitted that she really felt bad afterwards. And it's it's not in our nature to say no quite often. And uh it's it seems to be a difficult thing for people to learn, and uh I wonder um how it is possible to help, but I didn't come up with an idea yet. Maybe I need a day of where he just says no to no to everything to get used to it, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01But it but it is and I think the question is also that we have to look at the profile we are recruiting to be the future EDCOs because we we need to redefine or redescribe the role of an EDCO. Because again, as I as as you see, more and more is getting digitized. A lot of the practical work will go into monitoring work. So I actually think that instead of waiting until it's too late, there is a big responsibility in the aviation industry right now to define how do you look at the EDCO role in five to seven, ten years. Because we need to recruit for that. So it's not about learning because otherwise we'll go into a timeline where maybe a lot of EDCOs young, they will say, now it's not fun anymore. That was not what I signed up for. So I've actually raised this a couple of times and said we need to redefine the next generation and the role and responsibility in being an EDCO in five for ten years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, at the beginning you said that uh recruitment at the moment is fine, but uh you're working with New York at the moment, they're using the Euro control feast test, the aptitude test for EDCOs. In what regard would you think does that need to be adapted for the future?
SPEAKER_01We work with uh 24 different nations, and Muork is one of them, and I would say that 20 of these nations are using Feast. Feast can be too difficult in some regions of the world where you can't get the people actually to be at co if they have to pass Feast. I believe Feast has some really good evidence. I believe Feast is a way to select, but I also believe that there are other ways to select. What we do is that Feast is built on old data for the old generation that has popped in that we need uh situational awareness, spatial awareness, we we need to be able to do decisions and uh take decisions, we need uh cognitive skills, uh, we need math skills, all that English level, blah, blah, blah. It has a lot of things built in which is good. But this is why I'm asking what is the future role of an echo? Because does fees deliver that? Because what fees deliver is very, very smart young people who have a high IQ. That's what it delivers. Every people with high IQ has spatial awareness. Every people with high IQ cannot do math. Well, that's basically the IQ test. Exactly. So there is not much rocket science in it, to be honest, if we go down, read it down and say what is it we want? We want people who can learn fast and all that. I think we should again start to redefine because I think that there will be so many opportunities for these young generations that they will maybe not select the ATC way for the industry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm not sure in this, this is my old philosophy and my uh my old statement, but I do believe that it will be more and more difficult. And this is why we need to remove we need to go backwards on the IQ level and find those who are fighters, those who isn't natural talented, but fighters, who have fightered them through the school, maybe not with the best grade, but with a decent grade. Those who have uh tried to be out and worked before they come in. Those who actually uh maybe this is a job where they say, I never thought I would have that job with that income. That's maybe where we should start to look. Because and then we should look at social status as well, of course. Because social status is also about can we keep them for 25 or 30 years, which we want. Or are they used to after 10 years they go up again because now they family life and all that. So so we need to collect some different data in my world. That's how I see it. Again, this is on my own.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I mean you are agile enough as a young company. I think the age of the company has got quite a quite a bit to do with that, and of course the being the head.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't have to ask anybody about permissions to go in and studies and all that.
SPEAKER_00You could just try it and and see if it works. And if it doesn't work well, then you have to change and and try something new.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And we don't release something that doesn't work. We don't do it because we won't compromise what we have a brand now. Gate has a brand, Gate is uh well liked in the industry to be honest, and we don't want to destroy that because we have an idea or a vision about how it can be done. But I still truly believe that that's the way we have to go.
SPEAKER_00We've been talking about recruits quite a lot now. So how about the other side, the uh coaches? What do you think is the situation there? Where should we go? What's the assessment of now and what about the future there?
SPEAKER_01First of all, I I think that it's like in the role of an ADCO, it's like you're an instructor. When I trained in the military, I needed six months to go into an academy to learn how to train people. If I want to be a driver instructor, I need three months of an intensive course before I can go out on the road and teach people how to drive. If I want to learn people to ski, I know this because my oldest son is a skiing teacher. I need ten days with 12 hours a day to learn all the details about how to teach people to ski. If I want to be an air traffic control instructor, I need a five day course. That's it. This doesn't paint a picture of that. We don't learn how to teach. We don't learn what are the tools, what is pedagogical skills, how does cognitive go together with stress and all that. There's nothing about that in the education. I know that because we have the education that is described by ESA, what we have to do. So I believe that we should invest much more in the instructor in the future. First of all, I don't think that everybody should be an instructor because again, it's not everybody who has this skills to be an instructor. I've seen many instructors in my life. Somebody, they are really good at something else, but not to handle students and teaching. But they are extremely good at procedures or laws or whatever, and the job themselves, they are extremely good at it, but not something about young people. Then I've seen other people with really good competences and all that, that just doesn't have the idea. They have only seen themselves be trained, so they do exactly the same as what they have seen, but there is no development. I believe that we should start to say to ASA that refresher courses have to be, it is mandatory today, but they also have to be mandatory about upgrade of instructor. Because right now the NSP can just say, no, we just buy the tick in the box, that's a one-day course, you get it. When I took my instructor course to be an adco, it was ten days. Now it's five days. And that's only because the ANSP don't want to pay the money. So it's again, what is it that cost saving does towards us to develop our skills and performance to be a really good instructor? If you don't have the passion in that, that you go home, you study, you follow TikTok, or you look at YouTube and say, how would I have done this? If you don't have that passion, you're just an instructor who had a five days course and you do what you have seen being done and you take that along. But I think we need to change that because we need to put passion in again to be an instructor. I've been passionate about training my whole life, to be honest. I loved it. But I love to see how people develop themselves.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, that's something we we talked about in Bucharest. Like, what is passion and how do you make people passionate, or can you make people passionate, or is it something they have to do themselves to some uh extent? Good question. By the way, I just uh I definitely agree. I uh I think in Germany the course is like ten days or something, but still I always compare it to teachers in elementary school. They have to learn teaching for years, and I did it in ten days, and honestly, no, I was not a proper uh instructor afterwards. I needed like about two trainees, and then I started to become a proper instructor and getting the experience and getting the feedback from the trainees.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I always praised my time in the military because that was the first time where I actually started to educate adults. So I I really like that because I was stressed throughout six months. Of course, there was a lot of exercises that has nothing to training do, but it was the mentality and the culture about how to train people from the street to be soldiers who can actually go to war with you. I would say that if we skip all this about the war, it was more about the cognitive skills, the soft skills, the hard skills, all those skills that you have to have in your repertoire to actually use it in different learning situations. Because not all learning situations are identical, so you also need a lot of different tools to work with those if you want to be a good teacher. Uh so I would say that that's what I really praise today that I was lucky to learn that in the military.
SPEAKER_00Okay, maybe it's time for all the academies to kind of learn from the military as well, because quite often I've heard that they've got quite a bit of experience in doing that, and they're doing it evidence-based as well. I've read a lot about the army structuring their training and on the how to instill professionalism, which you mentioned at the beginning as well. So yeah, it's it's good that we've got you kind of having all this kind of experience and bringing it into our field.
SPEAKER_01I love to debate it, I love to talk about it, conversate about it, because again, we need to discuss this openly, otherwise nobody will move forward.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we did today on this podcast, um a little bit longer than uh we normally do, but honestly, we could talk for a we could continue on and on because we're both so passionate about it. But uh let's leave it at that for now. Thank you for giving us a first glimpse into our passion, into training, into what Gate is doing, what they're doing in the future, and the secrets they sometimes still have stored for the future. At the end, just leaves me to say thank you for being uh an industry partner. It's always great to uh be able to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, but thank you for inviting me or getting me, giving me the chance, providing me the chance to be here. It's been a pleasure, as you said. We're both passionated. We could talk many, many hours about this topic. So thank you very much, Torsten. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate EFATCAD the work they do around the globe. And this is also why we are an industry we partner that we want to support that in the best way we can do it.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Thank you so much, Dick. Uh I hope I'll see you soon. Goodbye.
SPEAKER_01Goodbye.