At Cranfield Aviation Training, more than 6 000 students are certified per year.

With over 80 courses available to all flight deck, cabin crew personnel and flight engineers, Cranfield has remained relevant and embraced all advancements in the aviation industry over the past 20 years.

This is made evident with its recent training addition, a remote pilot license training for drones.

“We realised that the modern day learner is no longer content with training in a classroom environment,” says Mandy Tebbit, director for Cranfield Aviation Training. “To ensure our longevity as the leading provider of training in aviation, we needed to meet the demands of the new learner and embarked on a search for an e-learning platform that was feature rich yet cost-effective, and selected aNewSpring.”

She says that today’s learners want the flexibility and convenience that anywhere, anytime learning provides: “The classroom element will never disappear completely especially when it comes to courses that have a practical component. It also remains a preferred method among some of our older members when completing their annual recurrency training.”

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has given Cranfield Aviation the initial go-ahead to put six of its courses on the e-learning platform. Tebbit says that the training provider is confident that once the CAA see the results and benefits that online learning provides, approval for other non-practical courses will follow.

“We see a huge demand internationally for human factor training in other industries such as mining as well as oil and gas. Our goal is to take these courses outside of the aviation industry using the aNewSpring platform,” says Tebbit.

Paul Hanly, co-founder of New Leaf Technologies says: “We are excited about this project and look forward to the results that we know e-learning will bring to this traditionally conservative industry. We see huge benefits for people like pilots and cabin crew who are often out of the country and can now do a large amount of their recurrency training remotely, in their own time.”