Panagiotis Poligenis

Head of Strategy, Business Development and Innovation, Lufthansa Technical Training

Panagiotis Poligenis is part of Lufthansa Technical Training’s management team and is responsible for the companies’ strategy and business development as well as the innovation and product development process.

He has a holistic expertise of the aviation and the MRO industry and has focused over the last years on developing new products and concepts for the qualification of aircraft maintenance technicians. Within his area of responsibility, he is overseeing the activities of creating new training methods such as online and digital learning formats for Lufthansa Technical Trainings’ product suite.

He joined the Lufthansa Group in 2002 and during his career, he has been holding several management positions in the group. Before joining Lufthansa Technical Training in 2018, Panagiotis served several years as Associate Partner at Lufthansa Consulting in charge for market development and project activities in South-East Asia, the Middle East and India.

Panagiotis is currently living in the Frankfurt area. He graduated from the University of Applied Sciences in Worms, Germany and holds a master’s degree in business administration.

Aircraft Maintenance Training for the Next Generation

Do we need a new approach for a highly skilled and versatile future generation of aircraft technicians?

Airlines and MROs are constantly faced with the challenge to maintain a sufficient level of suitably qualified technicians to secure a flawless operation. During the last decades qualifying and training of technical employees focused on providing technical knowledge rather on developing competency and problem solving skills. Teaching and learning methods mainly followed the traditional “frontal teaching” layout, where collaborative learning and interactive methods have been underutilized in learning concepts.

Today’s and upcoming generations are more digitally connected and committed to personal improvement. Digital natives are used to sharing knowledge and data via social media platforms and are more familiar with the world of virtual and augmented reality. On top, learning content available at our fingertips has shifted the approach to a “want to know now” rather than a “have to learn then” philosophy.

At the same time, airlines and MROs need to balance the regulatory requirements to deliver a compliant training and the learning objectives while developing training concepts that will be well perceived by the young generations. More than ever, the question of developing modern effective and efficient training programs at reasonable cost has become a priority.

The presentation will scrutinize the question on how to approach the digital generation with modern training concepts and will provide best practice examples on blended and collaborative learning methods, micro-learning as well as applying digital technology such as VR/AR and mixed reality in aircraft maintenance training.