Client Conversations

Take care of us

Matthew HallWhat does Advanced Aircrew Academy do, and what was your thesis going in?

Alvin WongWe build customized curriculums that operators can deliver and maintain for their crews across their operations. The big thing is making sure that when we get their manuals and their operating specifications, those map to the training, so they're compliant with what the FAA requires. When the FAA does an inspection, they've got it all buttoned up.

A director of operations at one of our customers told me that what they're looking for is a partner. Take care of us. Make it simple, make it easier to administer, so we can keep our focus on flying and be safe for our customers.

An amplifier

Matthew HallHow did AI go from something you were curious about to something you'd bet the business on?

Alvin WongWe started out trying to solve a very practical problem, which was taking our content and migrating it into a new technology platform. That took us the better part of a year. With AI, and with the right team on it, it really accelerated. It was like going from driving a car to flying a jet.

I think of AI as a tool. Everyone has access to [the same] models. What it lets us do is amplify our people: our subject matter experts, who have been in the field and have the domain knowledge, and the people who know sales or customer success really well. We double down on them and give them the tools to build and improve.

What owners already have

Matthew HallWhat's something about AI you believe that you don't think many other leaders believe?

Alvin WongOwners, CEOs, executives can underestimate what they already have. We have people who understand the work, who have the relationships with customers, who know what to do when things get difficult. AI has given us another way to put that knowledge to work.

It has also given everyone the ability to build anything. A lot of owners are building fancy internal tools because vibe coding exists. It's a great toy, but it's not a scalable application. A lot of people think you can just build it and it'll work because the front end looks nice. Underneath, it's spaghetti.

It's like buying a house. You put a down payment on it. The down payment is the application that you built. Afterwards, once you own it, you have to maintain it. So the question is, are you prepared to hire an engineer?

The green light

Matthew HallWhat are your active bets, and how did you choose them?

Alvin WongOne of the big bets is that customers should have less work to do because they use Aircrew Academy. A flight department shouldn't have to buy another system, learn another interface and still do all the coordination itself. We want to handle more of that work: preparing the right training, keeping it aligned with the operation, following up on what's outstanding.

Our customers still keep the judgment and the responsibility. They're not offloading it. We take on more of the defined work that supports them.

Matthew HallDoes that mean owning more of your plumbing, your data and your systems?

Alvin WongDefinitely yes. But it's really important to keep the judgment on what to build and what to buy. You can build anything, the whole thing top to bottom, but you have to be prepared to maintain it once you're done building.

Around the clock

Matthew HallCan you share any hard numbers? Time to build a course, response times, anything like that.

Alvin WongScenario-based training is a huge product for us. It takes a lot of time to build, because you have to work across different functions: subject matter experts, instructional designers, people who know the work and have the judgment about what to put into a course.

You can upload a course as a PDF into [any of the chat models] and it'll give you a course. It'll be 80 percent good. To meet the FAA requirement it has to be 100 percent, and that requires judgment. It requires human oversight, and I think it will continue to require it.

To be candid, our first iteration of scenario-based training took almost a year to create. We got that down to about six months. Now we're down to weeks, and it's less about button clicking and more about planning with the customer.

What's beautiful is when a customer said to us, “This feels like it's written by a pilot for a pilot. This is written by a mechanic for a mechanic.”

In the hangar

Matthew HallWhat would you tell leaders in other industries about what AI is good for, and what it isn't?

Alvin WongWhat we believe at Aircrew Academy is that hiring great people is still the number one thing. AI is a medium that amplifies. If you've got great people, it'll amplify them.

We've got a value called people serving people. It doesn't mean a person should manually move the same information between three different systems. I'd rather have our people spend their time resolving a difficult training question, improving a course, talking to a customer about what's changing in their operation.