In August 2019, Entry Point North delivered emergency and refresher training to two groups of participants from Aeronautical Radio of Thailand (Aerothai). It was the first time that we provided this type of training to Aerothai in Malmö, Sweden. As the participants of both groups came from a different operational background, we developed two courses which were both five days in duration and were tailored to the participants’ specific training needs.
Five operational air traffic controllers from various Tower Units in Thailand participated in the first course, which consisted of theoretical in-classroom lessons as well as practical exercises in our tower simulator. After each simulator run, the practical exercises were followed by instructor-participant discussions. Participants learned how to handle landing gear problems, bird strikes at take-off, wind shear, communication failure, engine failure and many more emergency situations.
The second course was delivered to six participants from various approach units and the area control center in Bangkok. Although this course featured the same set-up, the participants were instead working in the radar-simulator with a mixed setup for approach or area control.
The participants commented on the high-level performance of Entry Point North’s simulators and pilots and felt that conducting the refresher and emergency training by means of simulator practice was of great value compared to talking about emergency cases based on written examples and case studies. We are pleased with the outstanding results the participants achieved in their training and look forward to continuing this cooperation with Aerothai in the future.