Bourne Group Ltd. puts the innovative use of flight simulators at the heart of their latest offering for teamwork training.
The Bourne Group is offering teamwork training courses based on the use of flight simulators. Using the British Airways’ pilot training facilities at London Heathrow and the GE Capital Aviation Training Centre at Gatwick, teams are presented with the challenge of flying a modern passenger airliner between two international airports. After an introduction from the course facilitators, participants are given a manual and two hours to plan their flight as a team.
The courses are facilitated by a group of senior, practising airline pilots who, through personal experience on the flight deck, thoroughly appreciate the necessity of working as an integrated team. Already experience is showing the realism of a flight simulator to be a powerful modifier of individual behaviour patterns in a team environment. Says John Curnow, Bourne’s Managing Director, "If the participants have not planned and prepared as a cohesive team, when faced with the complexities of a modern airliner’s flight deck they are unlikely to complete the exercise successfully." However, the realism of a flight simulator is such that, when successful, the ‘crew’ gets a huge sense of satisfaction from landing safely at the end of a flight. After one exercise, a customer remarked, "You can’t solve our problems, but now the managers know for themselves what the problems are and are beginning to resolve them,"
In addition to improving teamwork skills, the exercises can also highlight weak or missing team role personalities. These aspects are discussed in post-exercise de-briefings with the course facilitators. Tailoring of the training to suit particular team or business situations can be arranged and meetings to discuss such individual requirements, prior to courses, are welcomed. Whilst primarily aimed at the team training market, it is also possible for these events to be used for Employee Incentive and Corporate Entertainment purposes.
The great advantage of this active participation team training over other forms is that it is not only effective, but also extremely safe, presents an exciting challenge, and represents an experience which most people find tremendous fun.
e-mail: dave@bournetraining.co.uk
Tel: 01794 523301
Fax: 01794 516720
