Michael Vercio

Senior Vice President, Simulation Systems, FlightSafety International

Michael Vercio serves as Senior Vice President, Simulation Systems. He is responsible for the design, manufacture and support of FlightSafety’s simulation, visual system and display products.

He has more than 15 years of aviation industry experience in engineering, manufacturing and product support. Michael joined FlightSafety from Textron Aviation where he most recently served as General Manager of Able Aerospace and McCauley Propeller Systems. He previously held other positions of increasing responsibility with Textron Aviation, including Director of Experimental Operations, Vice President of Global Product Support and Director of Engineering.

Michael holds a Master of Arts in Economics from Wichita State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Walla Walla College.

Navigating Climate Change Risks Through Cutting Edge Training & Device Technologies

Climate change has arrived.

Rapidly changing technologies on the horizon can shape air travel safety in a variety of ways. New technologies in the cockpit, crew resourcing improvement, and certification processes all factor into the safety equation of air travel.

Yet, while the rest of the world is preparing for climate changed induced risks, is crew training and preparations keeping up with these increased risks? How does our industry measure climate change risks and ensure our training programs and devices lead the climate change fleet?

Everyday our industry is seeing the effects of climate change and how they affect air travel worldwide. Large data and technology improvements allow for increased model forecasting within the meteorological industry. What climate change models should be used and what risks deduced to address immediate and long-term risks in our industry?

Econometric and statistical forecasting methods offer great tools to recognizing the valuation of a process or product change. Merging both air safety statistics and climate change forecasts into an active safety model is imperative to maintain a strong safety program.

FlightSafety, Frasca International, and academic institutions are teaming up to understand the effects of climate change and how they pertain to crew training and safety. This corporate sponsored working group has built statistical models around historical climate-induced accidents and have been completing hypothetical models on what the future of training devices looks like to maintain and increase safety levels posed to air travel in a climate-changing environment.

This working team will share climate change modeling forecasts and what is being done to drive safety improvements into leading edge courseware improvements, flight training devices (FTDs)/Level D simulation devices, and modeling improvements within our training programs.