VR flight deck training

The flight deck crew are those who work in the aircraft cockpit and pilot an airplane. They include at least two pilots and a flight engineer.

Flight deck and cabin crew need to establish proper communication to be able to control in full the situation in the crew.

In the case of the emergency like some passenger gets unconscious and there’s a threat of his or her life, or improper passenger behavior can affect other people’s safety, the personnel has to be able to quickly deal with such situations up to initiating an emergency landing.

This is possible through efficient communication between the flight deck and flight attendants.

By virtually putting the personnel in a dangerous situation, virtual reality can greatly help the flight deck learn necessary communication skills to react quickly to emergency together with the cabin crew while piloting an aircraft.

One of these emergency situations can be a fire in the cockpit. Flight deck teams currently use special electronic flight bags (EFBs) to efficiently perform flight management tasks instead of doing a lot of paperwork as it used to be.

However, these information management devices are a potential threat for a flight crew.

The thing is that a flight crew can’t use an extinguisher if an EFB catches fire since pilots still need full access to all aircraft equipment and displays after the fire gets extinguished. That’s why using a fire sock, in this case, is more suitable.

However, putting this EFB into a fire sock while flying an aircraft requires clear coordination and effective communication between flight and cabin crews.

With virtual reality solutions, a flight deck can safely experience this type of scenarios in a virtual environment.

With well-known cases of lithium-ion batteries catching fire in various mobile devices like Samsung Galaxy Note 7, there’s no guarantee that a particular EFB won’t have the same problem.

In-flight entertainment

With the continuous growth of the VR market, airlines like Lufthansa and Air France have already started adopting virtual reality for business purposes.

These companies widely use the main capability of the immersive technology to put users into virtual environments for entertaining passengers.

During a flight, passengers usually experience discomfort caused by a wide number of factors like aircraft’s engine noise, other people’s talking, crying babies, and tight environment.

While sound factors can be eliminated with headphones and preferred music, the only way passengers can ignore visuals is sleeping.

However, if you travel long distances, it is almost impossible to sleep the entire flight. A virtual reality head-mounted display offers an audiovisual escape by providing passengers with a capability to find themselves within other surroundings like a Mediterranean Sea beach or Mars surface.

Through a VR headset, Boeing allows passengers to watch a live 360-degree video from sports events. Along with a surrounding sound based on the Dolby Atmos technology, users can feel as if they’re seating in the first row in a stadium or above a racetrack during a flight.

How popular airlines use virtual and augmented reality

The immersive technologies as VR and AR are not only potentially useful tools for employee training and building marketing strategies. They have already become a proof of concept since various airlines have implemented either VR or AR in their businesses.

Lufthansa