Enhancing the safety of the helicopter aviation industry

How long have you been with Coptersafety and what do you love about your job?

I have been developing with Coptersafety since May of 2015, filling various roles over the years. Since the beginning, I’ve been a freelance instructor and examiner for the Leonardo AW139, and still continue to be. I started as Head of Training at Coptersafety until 2017, when I began instructing for the Airbus H145. Since 2022, I’ve been the Lead Instructor for the H145 while continuing to freelance for the AW139 training as well.

The beauty of my work, as I see it, is meeting pilots and colleagues from around the globe. Even though my role is mainly to identify and strengthen their skills, in the process I have the possibility to continuously evaluate my own real-life decisions and flying. There is no training day in which I don’t think “interesting point of view, I haven’t thought about it in that way.”

Why is having a tailored training program so important for special missions pilots?

Providing tailored training programs is vital in fulfilling customer needs from both the practical operational demands, and from the national Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) requirements. At Coptersafety, we provide a number of tailored training programs for helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS), search and rescue (SAR), night flights using night vision goggles (NVG), etc. This is possible by the expertise of our instructors, as well as the flexibility of the approved training organization (ATO), as this type of training requires extensive knowledge and experience from both. As a HEMS pilot, I’ve had to adapt to the low amount of flight hours annually, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m responsible for maintaining my skills to conduct demanding HEMS night missions with only a few minutes readiness time. From my perspective, this is only possible via implementing efficient training scenarios. The simulator is the only place where I see my own “readiness”!

What does Coptersafety bring to the training environment that makes it the trusted helicopter training organization of choice?

Coptersafety’s basic ideology was and still is to enhance the safety of the helicopter aviation industry by providing high-quality training to pilots worldwide. Instructors at Coptersafety are highly experienced in a wide rage of operations including SAR, HEMS, and offshore. With a large group of experienced pilots/instructors, we always have up-to-date knowledge in-house. This allows us to always meet and exceed customer expectations.