Captain Mark Farquhar

Chief Training Captain, easyJet

With over 12 years experience in easyJet in a variety of roles, Mark provides leadership for both pilot and cabin crew training teams, supporting over 600 instructors delivering training in over 28 locations throughout Europe. He has experience in airline pilot and cabin crew training; operational standards and safety investigation. He actively instructs in the classroom, aircraft and simulator and flies the line.

His main focus is on continually improving training effectiveness and efficiency to better serve the airlines cabin crew and pilots, to equip them with the competencies and confidence to excel in their roles. He has been instrumental in enhancing how pilots and cabin crew are trained within easyJet: ensuring that over 12,000 crew develop competencies to safely and effectively manage any unforeseen situation.

A graduate of the University of Aberdeen with a Master of Arts with Honours in Business Management, he gained experience in public relations within safety critical organisations in the Oil & Gas sector and the Emergency Services. Prior to joining the fixed-wing industry, in the rotary sector at Bristow Helicopters he led a transformational turn-around of an operational control team, improving the operation and regaining key client confidence.

He has been an active participant in a number of industries panels, including the UK CAA Flight Operations Training Standards Group; UK CAA Human Factor Advisory Panel & IATA Evidence Based Training Task Force.

Innovating Training Through the Pandemic

With over 325 aircraft easyJet operate over 1000 routes, in 35 countries with 150 destinations, easyJet is one of the worlds largest airlines. easyJet Chief Training Captain Mark Farquhar will share insight to how the easyJet training department evolved to overcome the challenges that the pandemic presented and used it as an opportunity to holistically rethink how they could improve training effectiveness, to better serve their customers, more than 13,000 pilots and cabin crew throughout Europe.

With a team over 600 instructors, the solutions and insights learned, have already delivered tangible training improvements. The transformation has created a culture of innovation that will enable continual improvement to ensure future generations are best served and improve industry safety in the long term.