Eurosatory 2014: “Just Like in High-Performance Sports: Practice, Practice, Practice.”

On occasion for Eurosatory, Alexander Steffen, Founder and Managing Director of ProPilots, was asked three questions:

How did you come up with the idea for this training software?
Steffen: Over the course of countless training flights as a trainer and examiner in both helicopters and simulators, I have seen – time and again – how lack of practical experience can lead to pilot error.  It’ really no surprise, since emergency situations are only rarely trained during the training phase. I just thought that there has to be another alternative, especially in today's high-tech world. And that’s what I and my partners have done over the last three years – we’ve developed a solution.

You yourself are an experienced helicopter pilot with 25 years under your belt. You don’t need this kind of training anymore, do you?
Steffen: On the contrary. Emergency situations are a huge challenge for any pilot, because anything can happen in these situations – things that you haven‘t experienced before, even in 25 years of flying. This is why emergency measures and procedures need to be practiced time and again, until they become fully automatic. Because when it happens in real life, it happens very, very fast. It's the same with elite athletes. They need to practice their motions over and over and over again. And this is what our software makes possible.

But can the software really provide this kind of experience? Don't you need to be sitting in the helicopter and practicing it “for real?”
Steffen: Real-life situations are of course the best way to practice. But even during our actual training and test flights, we can only expose our pilots to most situations in theory. There are many emergency situations that we simply cannot “recreate”, and several others that would be too dangerous to initiate. Our training software is very realistic, because the highly detailed animations have essentially closed the gap between theory and practice. I am certain that pilots who use the software will very quickly notice the difference, and feel much better prepared.

AF