Newly appointed as the Director of HUTC, who is Hervé Maugis and what will he bring to the company?
BACKGROUND
I started my helicopter pilot career in the French Army Aviation in 1988. Along this time, I participated to several overseas operations and involved in the operational development of warfare systems, such as Horizon (AS 332 equipped with a surveillance radar). Climbing my way up to FL150 with oxygen was an interesting experience even though this concept has been given-up since. In the meanwhile, I privately attended a CPL/IR course to enlarge my fixed-wing knowledges.
I completed my military career as flight instructor at the Franco-German training school for EC 665 Tiger crews at Le Luc. Willing to extend my knowledge of international project management, I joined a European organisation for Defence programme acquisition (OCCAR, Bonn) in 2005 where I was in charge to manage the IHM and operational design of the Tiger on behalf of France, Germany and Spain and then the Tiger aircrew training means (courses & synthetic training devices).
After having completed these duties, my desire to fly built up and led to my decision to fly with Heli-Union as AS332 L1 pilot at Tripoli. Stating that the contrast between Bonn and Tripoli was huge! This is a kind of a smart euphemism! Anyhow, I really enjoyed this period and really appreciated to work with the Libyans. Afterwards, Heli-Union offered me this new position of HUTC Director. Leading a training organisation was one of my goal and I therefore accepted this proposal with a great enthusiasm.
WHAT IS NEXT FOR HELI-UNION TRAINING CENTER?
Obviously, I am delighted to be given the responsibility of managing this training organisation which is the leading helicopter training center in France and one of the biggest in Europe.
The first forthcoming challenge will be to maintain the high degree of satisfaction of our customers while tracking the remaining room for improvement we have. The downturn of Oil & Gas revenues has entailed the training volume of our key customers, pushing us away from securing our current clients and finding new segments. For instance we have invested in a brand new FTD representative of H135 T2+ which has already demonstrated its added-value. Thank to this very powerful training device, we are able to propose a PBN training at a very affordable cost, certainly one of the lowest in Europe. We are confident that its level of fidelity with the real helicopter should enable us to get additional credits in the future.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN ISSUES THAT YOU ARE PLANNING TO ADDRESS?
We have other issues at stake like updating our training courses in the purpose of fulfilling the EASA and ESPN-R recommendations. In this perspective we intend to wash-up the content of the theoretical knowledge by introducing more evidence-based training (EBT) and competency-based training (CBT) inputs, in promoting pilot decisions and risk analysis. Our students are invited and encouraged to share our internal flight safety meetings so that they feel considered as pilots and not only students. Additionally we consider that this involvement should enable them to understand the safety standards which are the main priority for any companies or operators in the world. We also intend to prepare our students to the new cockpit design, HMI and equipment. Finally we would also grab this opportunity to review our courses and introduce innovative training solutions.
These are ambitious objectives which should be achieved by the end-of 2018 thanks to the highly professional and motivated team of HUTC.
