What Heathrow Closure and Similar Events Reveal About Resilience During Pilot Training

When Heathrow, one of the busiest European airports, faced a sudden shutdown a few months back, pilots had to adapt quickly. Some 120 flights that were already airborne and destined for Heathrow had to be diverted, and pilots had to make real-time decisions under pressure. Cristian Puig, Deputy Head of Training at BAA Training, one of the leading global aviation training organizations delivering both Ab Initio and Type Rating training, and part of Avia Solutions Group the world's largest ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, Insurance) provider, says that this showed the depth of resilience that is now built into pilot training.

As the world’s skies grow more unpredictable—due to factors like climate events, cyber threats, and airspace closures, for example—pilot resilience has shifted from a nice-to-have to a critical competency.

“Today’s pilots are expected to manage more than just the flight path,” says Puig. “They’re navigating increasingly complex operational environments, and training must reflect that.

“Traditional pilot training, on the other hand, has long emphasized handling in-flight emergencies and diversions. From fuel management to alternate airport landings, pilots are taught to expect the unexpected. But disruptions we’ve seen in the last several years alone are evolving beyond simple checklists.”

Apart from the Heathrow closure and a more recent power outage across Spain, Portugal, and parts of France, in 2023, a UK-wide ATC system failure led to cascading flight delays across Europe. Before that, drone activity near Gatwick Airport in 2018 grounded flights for over a day, and volcanic ash clouds, conflict-related airspace closures, and global weather events have made sudden, large-scale reroutes more frequent.

“The days of procedure-only training are behind, and today’s pilot has to be well-versed in more than just flying,” notes Puig. “Pilot training academies like ours are well above just teaching procedures, we’re building mental agility that becomes a key skill in thinking and adapting dynamically.”

Modern pilot training programs are shifting to reflect these demands. Now, adaptive training is built into every stage—from early simulator scenarios to advanced multi-crew exercises. While still not as widespread, but more and more training academies have been critically evaluating their training curricula and redesigning in order to prioritize adaptability, critical decision-making, and resilience, explains Puig, as strong core pilot competencies come into play much more often.

These appear in a couple of forms in modern pilot training. For example, competency-based training (CBTA) methodology prioritizes competency-focused training and assessment over the classic hour-based training.

“This approach was designed with the purpose of emphasizing resilience and adaptability—to learn how to recognize problems and apply the right skills,” Puig notes. “What it means in practice is that the training scenarios are much more varied and less predictable, and decision-making under pressure as well as risk management are, too, evaluated alongside the technical skills of a pilot.”

Another good example of adaptive training—the Multi-crew Pilot License (MPL) programs, which have been gaining more popularity within the industry in recent years. MPL programs are designed around real-world scenarios from day one of the training. Puig says that it is a good measure of how confident the industry is in scenario-based curriculum.

“Airlines like easyJet, TUI, Wizz Air, and others are investing much more of their resources in MPL programs, as have ours, as a training academy. We’ve partnered with Volotea and Qatar Airways to run dedicated MPL programs for them. And I think partnerships like these only reinforce the fact that pilot training is in the middle of a positive change, taking into consideration how multi-layered the landscape has become.”

Aviation faces an era of complex disruptions, and the industry's response starts in the training room. Pilot resilience—fueled by adaptability, collaboration, and composure—is what keeps passengers safe when the unexpected strikes.