Commercial and Educational Facilities

Flight Schools

Adding PilotEdge to your flight training devices fundamentally changes the work that can be performed in your sims. It’s just that simple.

It’s no secret that student pilots are generally terrified to talk on the radio. Mock practice sessions on the ground don’t adequately prepare students to deal with the anxiety that manifests itself just seconds before reaching for the Push to Talk key.

As a flight school owner or manager, you can use PilotEdge right away to:

  • Stand out from your competition
  • Increase the utilization of your training devices and instructors
  • Removed the last shred out doubt that “the sim isn’t like flying the airplane”, attracting clients to the simulator who may have otherwise preferred to work in an aircraft
  • Provide ICAO Level 4 Aviation English classes that rival anything in the market
  • Interact with other PilotEdge commercial users (flight school owners and chief flight instructors) in an exclusive, private forum to share experiences, marketing strategies, pricing models, best practices and more.

There are additional opportunities, too:

  • Set up a number of sims, FAA-certified or otherwise, to run group sessions with live ATC and traffic, allowing students to share a single instructor. This gives students the opportunity to fly “in the system” under instructor supervision at a “no brainer” price point for the students.
  • Go deep into Scenario Based Training that involve multiple aircraft and ATC, something that can’t easily be practiced today.

If you don’t yet have a compatible training device running X-Plane, Microsoft® ESP™, or Lockheed Martin® Prepar3D™, we can help you choose from growing list of manufacturers that ship with PilotEdge pre-loaded on their devices.

Flight Training Departments (Part 121/135)

With such a focus on CRM, it’s astounding that there hasn’t been a means for instructors to evaluate a flight crew’s ability to deal with the challenges of interacting with ATC.

When airline pilots train in multi-million dollar Flight Training Devices (FTDs) or Level-D simulators, the instructor still attempts to play the role of ATC. The result is that the instructor is distracted from the task of monitoring the crew’s performance, and the crew is working in an environment that doesn’t feel anything like the real National Airspace System.

Commercial customers can take advantage of PilotEdge functionality not available to non-commercial users. Instructors can have private conversations with on-duty controllers and actually schedule ATC mistakes, much like they would plan engine failures, or failed gear deployment, ahead of time.

Examples of controller mistakes/distractors that can test crews include:

  • Transposing the numbers and letters in a callsign.
  • Confusing company aircraft callsigns.
  • Sending the aircraft to an incorrect frequency.
  • Issuing turns the “long way” (e.g. “Turn left heading 250” when the pilot is on a 220 heading).
  • Asking for an unreasonable speed to the final approach fix.
  • Sending the aircraft through the localizer without notification.
  • Leaving the aircraft too high on an approach.

High School Aviation Programs

We’re excited to help provide the infrastructure that will train the pilots of tomorrow.

While PC-based flight simulators are a cost effective way to bring the thrill and challenge of learning to fly an aircraft into the classroom, PilotEdge takes it even further. The interaction with live air traffic controllers increases realism, and helps students maintain focus.

If you run a high school aviation program, we can work with you to help create custom scenarios that are run in quieter parts of the airspace with dedicated controllers. We realize that high school aviation students are not necessarily as skilled as older students enrolled in formal flight training programs. Away from the bulk of the traffic on the network, “creative deviations” will not impact the training experience of our other customers. This takes some of the pressure off your students, and makes the training experience far more enjoyable and productive for everyone.

Once your students master the basics, we can help you craft scenarios that take them into more crowded airspace, where they will share the air with other PilotEdge users.

College Pilot Training Programs

If you run a college aviation program, PilotEdge can revolutionize the experience you provide for your students. No matter what kind of simulators you have running in your lab (Microsoft® ESP, Lockheed Martin™ Prepar3D, X-Plane, even certified Flight Training Devices), we can work with you to integrate your sims into our network. We have experience working with a variety of simulation engines.

We can work with your instructors to build a library of challenging scenarios that meet your specific needs.

ATC Training Labs

PilotEdge offers the components required to build ATC training labs that include Ground, Tower, Approach/Departure and Enroute positions.

Each scope is capable of simulating a variety of radar display modes (ARTS, STARs, DSR, and more as needed). We also offer a Tower view client, suitable for building tower simulators. Traffic is provided through target generators, and/or through the use of connected flight simulators.

Contact sales@pilotedge.net for more information on how PilotEdge can help your facility!