The Technician Who Showed You How... Why Mentorship Is the Most Underrated Tool in Simulator Maintenance

Behind every confident, capable simulator technician or engineer is someone who once said, "Come with me, I'll show you how it's done."

When we talk about sustaining flight simulation programmes in an era of ageing hardware and shrinking OEM support, the conversation almost always turns to spare parts,

obsolescence management and systems integration. These are real challenges and they deserve serious attention.

But there is another kind of support structure that is just as critical and far more human. Mentorship.

As simulator systems grow older and more complex, the survival of the industry will depend not only on what experienced technicians know, but on whether they pass it on.

Seasoned technicians and engineers carry years of accumulated insight, fault-tracing intuition and hard-won experience that no manual or training course can fully replicate. When they share that with the people coming up behind them, they're doing far more than just teaching skills. They're ensuring continuity, building confidence and creating the kind of organisational resilience that outlasts any single individual.

Why Simulator Maintenance Is Different

Unlike aircraft maintenance, where systems and documentation are standardised and tightly controlled, flight simulator systems, particularly older full flight models, often reflect decades of custom modifications, hardware substitutions and (unfortunately sometimes) undocumented adjustments accumulated over years of operation.

A seasoned technician or engineer knows the quirks. Which relay clicks a half-second late. Which interface drops sync during a power cycle under certain conditions. How to finesse a system through a notoriously difficult QTG validation test that the documentation doesn't quite prepare you for.

That knowledge doesn't live in a manual. It lives in people's heads.

A mentor acts as the bridge between what the documentation says and what the simulator actually does. Without that bridge, newer engineers learn through trial and error, which is slower, more expensive, and in a field where simulator availability directly affects pilot training outcomes (and business revenue), potentially consequential.

There is also a demographic reality the industry cannot ignore. A significant portion of the simulator maintenance workforce is approaching retirement. Many of these technicians and engineers began their careers in the 1980s and 1990s, when Level D simulators were establishing themselves as the backbone of commercial pilot training. Every one who leaves without passing on what they know takes with them knowledge that was never written down and cannot easily be recovered.

Mentorship is about so much more than individual development. It's about preserving operational continuity at a company, and even an industry level.

What Mentors Actually Do

There is a common misconception that mentorship in a technical field is primarily about skills transfer. Show someone how to replace a component, walk them through a calibration sequence, demonstrate the fault isolation process.

These things matter, sure. But they are not the most important thing a mentor provides.

The more valuable transfer is something harder to articulate. It's the ability to walk into a room, look at a system behaving unusually, and just know, from accumulated experience, where to start looking. It is the calm that comes from having seen a similar fault before, even if the exact symptoms are slightly different this time. It is knowing when a problem is what it appears to be and when it is pointing to something else entirely.

No search engine or knowledge base teaches this kind of thing. No training course shortens the path to it as effectively as working alongside someone who already has it.

A Personal Reflection

In my early years working on full flight simulators, I was fortunate to be guided by several people who did far more than teach me how to troubleshoot, calibrate and test. They taught me how to think critically, act responsibly and take genuine pride in the purpose behind the work.

One mentor in particular stands out. He had a way of letting me take the first attempt at a problem, watching patiently as I worked through it, before quietly offering a better approach or gently correcting a misstep. He never made me feel inadequate for not knowing something. He made me feel capable of learning anything, provided I stayed curious and committed.

More than the technical knowledge, he set the expectation for professional standards. He made it clear that our job was not simply to keep the simulator operational. It was to ensure pilots received the most accurate, reliable and safe training environment possible, and that in doing so, we were part of a broader safety chain that extended well beyond the simulator bay.

That shaped my skills, sure. But more imporatntly (in my opinion) iIt shaped my mindset. And it is the reason I think about mentorship as a professional obligation rather than an optional extra.

What Good Mentorship Looks Like in Practice

Mentorship in the simulator maintenance environment does not require a formal programme or a significant budget. It simply requires purposeful intent and protected time.

Some of the most effective approaches are straightforward. Letting a junior technician shadow a senior during fault diagnosis, then reversing the roles when they are ready or when the situation is less time critical. Taking five minutes after resolving an issue to walk through the reasoning, not just the result. Getting the junior technician to prepare a presentation on a specific fault (chosen by a more senior engineer) and how they would work through the issue. Ensuring rotation across simulator subsystems, so newer technicians develop exposure to motion, visuals, host systems, instructor stations and interfaces rather than becoming specialists in isolation.

Introducing deliberate fault scenarios on non-operational training devices is particularly effective. A technician who has worked through a fault in a controlled environment with guidance alongside them is significantly better prepared for the same fault in a live operational context than one who encounters it for the first time under pressure.

The benefits extend in both directions. Teaching helps experienced technicians reinforce and articulate their own understanding. It keeps them stay engaged. And it builds the kind of team culture, grounded in trust and mutual accountability, that makes an organisation genuinely resilient rather than dependent on key individuals.

For operators, a team culture that values mentorship produces measurable outcomes. Simulator availability improves when technicians are better prepared. Fault resolution times shorten. Succession risk decreases as knowledge is distributed rather than concentrated. And audit preparedness strengthens when procedures and practices are understood rather than just followed.

The Stories That Don't Get Told Enough

Some of the most capable technicians I have encountered had no simulator background when they started. They came from automotive trades, IT roles, electronics & avionics workshops, and of course flight-line maintenance. What distinguished them was not what they knew on their first day but the presence of someone who believed in their potential and gave them room to develop.

A junior technician I once worked alongside had never been near a 6DOF motion platform before his first shift. Six months later, he was calmly leading fault isolation during a high-stakes QTG period. That did not happen by accident. Someone had taken the time to guide him from the beginning, and it showed.

These stories are not rare in the simulator world. They are simply underrepresented. The future of simulator support is being built one technician at a time, often in quiet moments of shared knowledge and patience that never appear on a maintenance log.

Be the Technician You Once Needed

If you are an experienced simulator technician, think back to your early days. Who helped you feel confident in a system you did not yet understand? Who gave you your first real opportunity to work through a problem independently? Who explained something in a way that finally made it click?

Now ask yourself: who are you doing that for today?

Mentorship is not tradition for its own sake. It is how critical knowledge stays alive when systems age and external support becomes harder to find. It is how we build the next generation of technicians and engineers who do not just survive in this field but genuinely thrive in it.

The impact of that investment tends to outlast any part you replace, any system you recalibrate, or any QTG you help pass.