The aviation industry is facing a critical talent inflection point. Mass retirements are draining the maintenance workforce of experienced technicians and managers, leaving MROs struggling with high new-hire turnover and a knowledge gap that on-the-job coaching can no longer fill. CAE recently unveiled a set of ground-breaking programs designed to meet this crisis head-on.
David Bienvenu, CAE’s global leader for maintenance training and OEM relationships, sat down with Aviation Maintenance magazine to explain how his organization is pioneering solutions — from flexible hybrid classrooms to modular, fleet-specific coursework — to help MROs retain new hires, cultivate first-time managers, and ultimately, secure the future of aviation maintenance.
Aviation Maintenance: Let’s begin by talking about what CAE unveiled at NBAA-BACE.
Bienvenu: At NBAA, we had a couple of things going on. First and foremost, we were talking to some of our customers about our Talent Aviation Forecast. This is where CAE forecasts the needs for pilots and technicians across the industry.
AVM: So what did you find this year?
Bienvenu: A lot of our customers are coming to us talking about their tech shortage. There are a lot of challenges they’re seeing with their technicians, namely (a) retention and (b) training during their onboarding.
The reality of what we’re seeing is that the shop floor is changing for a lot of our customers. In the past, you’d have essentially nine experienced technicians for one new individual. Under that structure, you would have structured training for your new hires, but most of the coaching was done on the job.
Fast forward to today, where you have mass retirement of a lot of your core technicians. About 30% of the workforce is within 10 years of retirement. So you get to a place where you have a lot of experienced technicians leaving, a lot of new technicians coming in, and an increase in demand in business aviation. This results in less time for a lot of that on-the-job training.
Going back to the theme of experienced employees retiring, it’s not just veteran technicians who are approaching retirement — your experienced managers are leaving as well. As a result, a lot of technicians are now getting thrust into management positions. They too need the kind of structured training that CAE can provide, which is really important.
For people new to management, instead of just throwing ’em off the deep end, we take them through our Aviation Interpersonal Management Skills (AIM) class. We help them develop the skills they’ll need to be a solid leader on the floor — a lot of those emotional intelligence skills — and facilitate the transition from a strong technical worker to a strong manager.
AVM: What else did you launch at NBAA?
Bienvenu: We talked about our online booking tool where customers can now effectively book their maintenance training courses online at mxt.cae.com. It’s in beta mode for now, but we’re taking feedback as we go along.
Using this site, customers can now peruse course details and have a view of the curriculum. If they do have an account with us, they can book online very simply. If not, they can click a button to contact one of our sales representatives. We see online booking as a natural extension of working with our customers in the way they want to interact with us.
AVM: So let’s talk about the maintenance technician training. Let’s start with remote hybrid training. What is involved in that?
Bienvenu: At CAE, we deliver training in three fashions. First, we deliver them at our 70 locations around the globe. Second, for customers with enough technicians, we actually will fly out an instructor and give the training at their location. Third, there’s our hybrid training rooms and technology, which enable us to simultaneously have people in the classroom and at a distance. Our hybrid classrooms are designed and equipped with additional cameras, sensors, and TVs to really make sure that the person who’s remote is not a small square on Teams. It’s a proper portrait of the individual, with some additional tools to help the instructor keep the student engaged even though they’re at a distance. This enables that additional flexibility for our customers.
We now have hybrid rooms in Montreal and Dallas. We’ll be launching shortly in Savannah, Georgia soon, next to the Gulfstream facility, as well as shortly in Burgess Hills in the U.K.
AVM: Are AR/VR goggles going to be part of the training that’s offered?
Bienvenu: Great question. If you take, as an example, our Gulfstream G500/G600 program, we do have a full VR walk-around of a G500/G600 where some of our trainees are able to interact virtually with the aircraft and be in a common space with our instructors. We see that really as a tool to complement a lot of the learning that they’re having on our regular courses.
AVM: CAE is now offering modular training, where students can pick and choose the courses they take when they need to take them. Why have you come up with this approach and what are the benefits?
Bienvenu: We developed this approach for Bombardier. Our goal with modular training is to address their scheduling challenges. Having the ability to piecemeal the initial training across different weeks lets their staff take bite-sized pieces of what they’ve learned, practice it on the floor, come back to learn more at a later date, and so on.
This modular approach offers another advantage for Bombardier, and some of the other larger MROs who are supporting a multi-aircraft fleet. We teach their people the commonalities on some of the platforms where they’re common, and teach the differences where they’re different. For example, on the Challenger 350, 605, and 650, some key elements are similar, so we teach them together. But where the elements are completely different, we have a separate course for each aircraft. This enables Bombardier technicians to ramp up a little bit faster on a larger suite of aircraft. Our ambition is to look at other MROs that would be interested in the same format.
AVM: Tell me about CAE’s three tiers of professional development courses.
Bienvenu: My pleasure. Let’s start with High Potential Employees, aka new technicians. We talked about the tech challenge associated with a lot of new technicians coming on board. If you don’t want them to jump from one company’s hangar to the next, you have to invest in them. That’s because investing in their development is critical for employee retention. This is why CAE has classes really tailored to that first subset of the market, to help to get new technicians off the ground running quickly.
Then there’s First-Time Managers. This is our flagship Aviation Interpersonal Management (AIM) course. It’s a four-day course where we bring people together from different companies and work on developing their emotional intelligence and the skills that they’ll need in order to start leading a team. It really helps to develop those future leaders that we’re going to need.
Finally, there’s Executive Training (AIM 2.0). We’ve recently developed AIM 2.0, which is much more tailored to personnel moving into an executive role at a company. So it goes a lot more in depth in some of the key areas versus AIM 1.0.
AVM: How does CAE see the world of training changing in the aviation industry?
Bienvenu: Overall, there are a lot of elements changing. First, we have a real learning divide that we’ve noticed. The newer generation, who grew up with an iPad and a computer, do not learn the same way. So, to teach them, we use videos, visuals, and bite-sized content, which are key elements that our newer customers will appreciate. I can see we’ll expect a lot more of those interactive, visual bite-sized tools that’ll start developing.
In addition to some of our classroom settings, I think we’ll start pivoting towards more ongoing training, so more consistent training versus a quick sprint and then not doing it for the next two years. That consistent approach towards training is what we’ll see some of the top companies in employee satisfaction and in employee retention will start to do.
AVM: Finally, are there new programs that we should be expecting from CAE in 2026?
Bienvenu: Of course. Especially from our division, with respect to the aforementioned issues around new technicians that we’ve discussed, we’ll have a lot more to talk about in the first quarter next year. We have a lot more coming down the pipeline on some of these interactive elements too. So a lot of the trends we talked about today, we’ll have a lot more to share with you in 2026.