In Brussels on may 15th, at the EASA Safety in Aviation Forum for Europe conference, Ray Conway, Director of Flight Standards & Chief Pilot at Ryanair, said “the signing of this 6-year agreement with CEFA Aviation marks the beginning of the next chapter in Ryanair pilot training. CEFA Aviation’s flight replay will set new standards for delivering constructive feedback to our crews in a way that would have been impossible to imagine without the innovative approach to secure data processing that has been delivered by CEFA Aviation’s team”.
Conway, a longtime advocate for the proactive use of operational flight data to enhance airline safety, added “We see the CEFA AMS flight replay facility as a natural progression to the existing operational and safety reporting tools already provided to Ryanair crews. Over the next 12 months we will monitor pilot performance based on an agreed set of KPI’s to ensure that our pilots not only deliver to the highest standards of safety and efficiency in the industry but set new standards of excellence for the years ahead” .
Dominique Mineo, CEO and founder of the France-based software company, is “extremely satisfied to partner with one of the fastest growing airlines in Europe and to welcome this low-cost carrier into the CEFA AMS community. After Asia and our launch customer All Nippon Airways*, it is highly important to deploy our innovation within Europe with this continent’s
No. 1 airline, and an airline with an absolute commitment to safe operations . We will benefit from this new cooperation through Ryanair’s return on experience – allowing us to continuously enhance our mobile service.”
“The implementation of CEFA Aviation’s world first mobile service testifies Ryanair’s innovative strength as well as our strong desire to lead the shift of the pilot training paradigm as advocated by EASA,” says Captain Andy O’Shea, Head of Crew Training at Ryanair. “Our airline has high hopes for CEFA AMS which integrates into our world-leading OFDM (Operational Flight Data Monitoring) system that was adopted fleet-wide in 2004. The CEFA AMS flight replay facility app is a milestone in our endeavors to enhance our pilots’ proficiency. It is the perfect match with our unique OFDM replay facility in our fleet of Fixed Base Simulators. We are proud to initiate a change designed to revolutionize not only the debriefing and training culture within the company, but also for European aviation, thus making the sky safer,” says O’Shea.
With 5,500 pilots, Ryanair operates approximately 2,100 daily flights and carries 142 million passengers across 1,800 routes in 37 countries, on a fleet of 455 aircraft with an additional 210 Boeing 737-8200’s on order “Training to the highest standards of safety and efficiency is, and always has been a top priority for Ryanair” explains Ray Conway. “Our focus on safety is unrelenting. Our pilots are among the best in the business and our 34-year safety record speaks for itself .”
For Ryanair, it is essential to bring back flight data and make it understandable and easily accessible to the people who should always be able to review it in the first line, namely the pilots. Access to data gives a strong and positive signal from the company as a real proof of confidence from the airline towards its pilots. With CEFA AMS, the airline wants pilot life-long learning to reach new heights and for this, aims at achieving three goals: strengthen pilot training efficiency; harmonize pilots’ skill levels as they join from airlines with different SOPs and reduce time and costs spent in line training while always building and improving flight safety.
“Innovating with this brand new mobile service has been a development of our 3-year Corporate Safety Strategy ensuring that safety & security remain at the heart of everything we do in Ryanair,” says Conway.
*3,000 pilots of Japan’s largest airline, ANA, have access to CEFA AMS on their tablets on a daily basis since February 2017.
