Randall Brooks

Randall Brooks, Vice President of Training and Business Development, Aviation Performance Solutions, LLC

Mr. Brooks currently provides Upset Prevention and Recovery Training for a broad range of military, airline, and general aviation pilots. Randall has provided all-attitude/all-envelope flight instruction for over 30 years in over 40 types of jet, propeller, and glider aircraft. Mr. Brooks holds an Airline Transport Pilot Rating with over 14,000 hours of flight experience and type ratings in multiple jet and turboprop aircraft.

Randall’s many past flight operations roles have included director of operations, director of training, production flight test, simulation flight test, marketing demonstration and display pilot, corporate pilot, and ten years as a member of formation aerobatic demonstration teams.

Mr. Brooks holds a B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado.

Empowering Virtual Reality Through Upset Prevention and Recovery Training

Virtual Reality (VR) offers the promise of providing knowledge and skills in a forum that can replace certain live flying tasks. This presents the possibility of accelerating learning and reducing overall flight hours required while lowering capital costs required for existing simulators. While gains in efficiency and cost reduction are attractive, what are the associated costs in experiential learning and how can they be mitigated? What instructional tools do we possess that can help mitigate human factors elements which may not be present in the virtual classroom?

ICAO, IATA, FAA, EASA, and others have, for years, recommended the inclusion of Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPRT) not only to provide knowledge and skills to assist in prevention of Loss of Control In-flight (LOC-I), but to provide human factors elements of training that cannot be fully replicated through flight simulation. As we attempt to offload flight time to the virtual environment, the importance for training critical elements, which can only be seen in flight, increases. UPRT provides the most efficient means to provide the intensity in training required to build resiliency.

Current trials with VR in the upset domain will be discussed to highlight how properly integrated VR and UPRT can be used together to maximize overall pilot learning by using strengths of various platforms to compensate for the deficiencies of individual training mediums.