Aviation Education Reimagined: Alexandre Alves on Pilot Training & Higher Ed Partnerships

This episode is sponsored by Student Growth Partners, your trusted partner in helping universities, and growth in the world. If you enjoy this podcast, please like, subscribe, and share it with friends who might find it valuable. Your support helps us reach more listeners and continue bringing you expert insights from the world of higher education. Welcome to the latest episode of the Enrollment Clinic. My guest today is Alex Alves. He is the Global Chief Commercial Officer at Airways Aviation Group. When I was thinking about recording this new episode, I always thought of Alex because just to give the audience a little bit of background, we met in Morocco at a higher education, trade show, or fair, and just seeing a lot of aircraft models there. I had never thought of higher education and aviation together. So welcome, Alex. Thanks. Happy to be here with you. I wanted to start with your background and how did you get into aviation and especially the education side of aviation? Okay. That's a long, long story. I don't know how many hours we have. Very, very briefly. I ended up in aviation by chance. So I started in the Portuguese military, I'm Portuguese, and my dream was always to become an Army officer. I did it. So I studied in the military school, then military academy. That was my university, the counterpart of West Point in Portugal. So five-year course, I graduated and I became an Army officer. Infantry, special forces. That was what I was doing. And suddenly, I realized that's not what I want. This is a little bit different from what I wanted. I saw myself 20 years in the future and I didn't like what I saw. And now after 20-something years, honestly, the vision that I had was not that different. So it's difficult to be a professional officer in Europe and in Portugal in my particular case. So I decided to live. And for a period of time, I was without a heading. I didn't know where to turn what to do. And by chance, my father said, "I have a friend who is a captain in an airline. Why don't you be a decedatory crew in Kevin crew? Why don't you become a camera crew?" He said, "Are you crazy?" Going from special forces to Kevin crew. But that idea stick with me and I said, "Maybe I really need to change because I was fed up of that life." And I applied. And I started. The Kevin crew just to give the perspective. The Kevin crew position in Europe is quite different from the US. It's still a more. It's a profession that is still as some glamour. And the salaries are quite good to the average salary all over Europe. So I thought, "Why not? Let me do it for a period of time, travel a little and maybe I'll find out what I want to do." And that's how I started 20 years ago and I never left aviation. Of course, because I had a different idea of what I wanted to do in my life and I was always very active. And even when I was in the army, I always had side businesses. I was always very entrepreneurial. I opened my first company when I was 18. So I always did two or three things at the same time. So in the airline, I quickly reached the top of career in five years. So I was the head of Kevin crew services in a private jet company after five years. I started and I started doing, working in the security department of the airlines because I had my military experience. Because of my business experience, I started doing logistics. So I used business jets and then it really ended up quickly and I eventually became part of the board of different companies, business jet companies. And I ended up in training, ten years ago by chance as well. I was invited by a businessman to open a business jet company actually and a maintenance company, which I did. But in the process, so we started the maintenance company in the process of getting the AOC, which is the airline certificate. So the approval that he's required to be an operator, he decided to sell his jets. And I was there already working with him and he said, okay, but I have this flight school year that I just acquired. I need some support and you are my consultant. Why don't you look into that? So this was ten years ago. So I went to it. We managed it for three years. I grew it. We sold it to L3 areas, a US company with an interesting profit. And then I stepped out. I was hired by another company to do the same. We sold this other school also with an interesting profit in 22. Then I got hired by my current employer, Air Rezifiation 2, also Restructure, Rebrand, and Expand. So I can say very briefly, so looking at my past, what I've been doing in the last few years and actually looking way back my experience, I can say I'm a trouble shooter. So I go into companies, find the problems, turn them around and usually sell the companies for profit. So that's what I do. That's highly in demand skill. Everybody wants to make money, turn everything into something profitable. But one interesting thing about your background and your story, because I feel like we all have been through it. And it's kind of a recurring theme, is that sometimes when you kind of have this period of time where you do nothing and you have zero direction, that's when things happen, creativity comes in, or just chance comes in and then you get into something you never thought you would. That is true. Right? You know, aviation has a problem because when it gets into you, it doesn't get out. I've done other things, even during this period, there's a period of my life that I was living in Africa in Mozambique. I was managing a big group of companies with the Agri business, Railway maintenance, all different number of companies, food distribution. But in the end, it was always the aviation calling me, that's what I want to do. I think that's something that anyone that works in this industry, regardless of the position or the area that they are working, it's really a disease that gets into you, an healthy disease, it gets into you and it's very difficult to get out. It's a passion. So you combine the passion with the rational thinking and aviation is really interesting industry, very vibrant, very challenging. Really there's no boring times actually. So this is a good segue into talking a little bit about the industry, especially from an educational perspective overall. So you're at Airways Aviation Group, which is obviously based in Dubai. What does that market look like? What are your educational competitors? How is it divided geographically? I would love to get some background on that. So we are quite different from our peers. I don't see the market as our competitors. We are all working in the same market, but we're different approaches. So we are actually based in Dubai, in the UAE, as you mentioned, but our original first company, let's say, was in Australia. So we are part of a reservation group belongs to a Rihanna group, which is a family office of an Australian entrepreneur. So we have a wide range of businesses related to real estate tourism, yachting helicopters. He has a very, very large and long experience in the education sector and he sold for a few hundred millions, a very large education company that he had before. And he decided to do something in the aviation area, combining his experience in the education industry, his passion with aviation as a helicopter pilot. He loves aviation since he's a kid. And he decided to do something that until today, this was ten years ago, we don't see anyone else doing it. So bringing that education vision to an industry that is typically more technically oriented. And it's just a pilot training and nothing else. So we do more. So we pivoted. Our headquarters is really in Dubai, but we are now in 15 countries where we have different levels of schools. We start with what we call a foundation school, which is something that we can open very quickly and easily. I would say it's more than anything else. It's a recruitment center. We provide non accredited courses. One month, let's call it a one month foundation course, is a very thorough assessment of the candidate skills to become pilot. So this works well in some certain certain areas of the globe, specifically on non-English speaking countries where they struggle with English. We have these schools in India, in China, in Middle East, in Africa. And so we provide for a really low investment. The first, we offer the candidates to be faced with the aviation terminology, the subject state they will need to study once if they decided to move along. We face them with, we have, we use desktop simulators to train them, it's specific things. We train in English, in the maths, in physics. In the end they take oral and written exams, which I would say, although it's just one month, it's very similar to a PPL course. And this really prepares the students that want to continue to, when they start their airline pilot training course, they have the fundamentals already very well in their heads. It's not so scary for them. But also the ones that we feel that are not capable, we tell them you don't need to spend 100,000 dollars or whatever, just maybe you fit in more doing a maintenance technician course or a cabin crew course or whatever. Or if we see that they have the capability but they need to study more, we can, we guide them through that. Okay, we go, tell them, okay, go and study these subjects, come back in two or three months and we redo your test, free of charge and we'll see how it goes. Once they are fully ready, then we give them the options. We have courses in Australia, in France, in Italy, in Portugal and a number of other countries, different licenses, different levels and different levels of prices as well. We have all of these offers, so it's basically up to them, up to them where they want to train, where their budget fits in, where they are personally feeling better to study. I mean, France currently, we have a very large school year and of course I would say that the French speaking, the students that are coming from French speaking countries would feel more comfortable to train in France. Although all our training is done in English, of course the day-to-day life outside the school is French. Or if they are family in Portugal, for example, or if they like the good weather of my country, which is, I'm a little biased at that, but there are different number of subjective reasons to choose one rather than the other. But as far as I know, there's no other aviation training organization that offers what we are offering, such a wide global coverage and we are expanding. So I joined the group two years ago, it will be two years in January, almost two years, and I open seven countries in just two years. So next year it's going to be a little bit quieter. We need to consolidate, we acquired some companies as well. We've grown quite a lot in the last 10 years and mostly through acquisitions. So of course we grow organically and we grew in some countries purely organically, but in others, like Kitali, we open organically there, but we just expanded by acquiring an existing school, a 30 years old experience. So if you look at our portfolio, we've acquired around 10 schools in those different countries, so we go back to over 45 years of experience. We trained over 30,000 aviation professionals so far from different courses. Yeah, I'm curious, I wanted to go back to the training classes. It's an interesting model just to offer students almost like a taste, a sampling of here is what it is and then put them through a funnel that way to get them to do it. But we also do it in the other end. So what we do, so that's how they start, then they do the airline pilot training, but at the end, we also always partner with higher education institutions, so universities, colleges and we offer a higher education to our students. It's not mandatory, but we always recommend, because again, we see ourselves as an education in training company, not a flight training company. So we want to do more. It's very important for especially the pilots that come to us, they need to focus on the technical skills for sure, but they need to see that more and more, it's necessary to have another set of skills. Are you talking about general education classes when you partner with universities, are you talking more kind of like business and what are we talking about? Yeah, usually yes. So we have, depending on the country, so we started this in Australia with the Southern course university, with Griffith University. They have specific aviation degrees, so Bachelor and Master degrees. So we try to integrate them within the pilot course. In France, we did the same with Montpellier Business School, which is I think over almost 130 years old university here in Montpellier. So what we did is in two years, while they are doing the pilot training course, they are combining with a Bachelor in Management with a minor in aviation, so specializing in aviation. Gotcha. So for me, it's important for two reasons. First of all, the pilot career is probably the only one or one of the few, at least that comes to my mind, that every six months they go to the simulator and they can be grounded. Every year or above 45 years old, every six months they go to do a medical exam and if they don't pass, they are grounded. So they are always in the thin line to be out of job if they are not fit or if there is an issue. Interesting. So, I know a few pilots that lay in their lives, they got eye issues and they cannot fly anymore, so they lost their license or they got, I don't want particularly, you got epilepsy, which is not allowed anymore. And he had no backup plan. So if they have some higher education, this is a backup plan for them, they can do something else. It also, this is the first reason. The second reason is if they want to grow, even in the airline, they are working on, if they want to go into managerial positions, they need to have other kind of training, other kind of vision. So more and more, the airlines are looking for pilots and I'm just talking about pilots, but we can do also for cabin crew information, but specifically pilots that have a different vision that can understand the business, that can help grow the business because when we are managing an airline, we have to look into a different number of things, cost management, human resources and in the past, the pilot was just there to fly the airplane and that's it. But today, no, they need to consider costs, they need to see if they can save some fuel on the taxi or on the flight, if there's ways of saving fuel, managing the human resource, the passengers, the crews. So it's really, it's necessary to have a wide variety of skills that purely the standard pilot training courses don't provide. So from day one, that's what we try. So we have this funnel in the beginning, but we also have it in the end. So we want to complete really, we call it the airline pilot pathway program. So from zero to, to call it to university degree. And would this be a Montpellier diploma when they graduate or is it like a joint, you know, they get Montpellier diploma for finishing kind of the generalization and then they get a special diploma for Mew. Yes. It's two different things. So because the aviation industry is not under any education regulation. It has a specific one. So we issue in the specific case of France or Italy or Portugal, it's called an AASA license. So AASA is our FAA. It's the European agency, we call it, first European aviation safety agency. So it's a, it's a, the agency that depends directly from the European commission that regulates all the aviation in the, in this space. It has right now, I think 31 countries. So all the European Union countries plus some that are not part of the European Union, but like Switzerland or Iceland. So they are also part of the AASA. And currently, like FAA in the past, AASA is now the most strict regulator in the aviation world. And it's also the reference. So our, our training, our regulation, because it's so strict, it's, it's, it's becoming the reference worldwide. Even the US has started to implement things that, for us, we've been doing it in many years. So when you have an AASA license, you can go and work almost anywhere. You just do a very easy conversion. If we want to have a FAA license, it's so easy. The process of conversion. I think we need to do a 20 question quiz in the flight, the flight skill test and they give us a license. If an FAA pilot wants to do the same in Europe, they have to do all the 14 subject exams. They have to do a flight training program and sets much more complicated. So this is what they get in the end. They get school certificate, of course, but the license, which is issued by the aviation authority. And then on the side, they have the university diploma that is issued by them. And who is your typical student? I'm always curious. Like, who is the typical students in terms of that, that has an eye for aviation that you meet into fears and your classes. You know, aviation is still one of the few professions that combines, as I mentioned, before the passion with the rationality. So it has the rational size because it's still a well-paid profession to become a pilot. It's worldwide. I don't see any country where it's not one of the top paid careers. So that's a rational part, but then it combines with the passion. It's the office with the best view. It's really, even if you fly all your career, the same type of aircraft and the same route, it will never be the same. The weather is never the same. The crew is not the same. The passengers are not the same. So even if you do the same, it's probably the most challenging one because you are always, every day you are facing different conditions. And it's quite fun because of that. It's not a 9-5 desk office. But because of this passion, typically we are talking about men still, more and more women, but still the majority is men. I'm saying right now, I'd say 85% are men and the rest women. We are not growing our female intakes, but we need to push more. But this passion starts when there are kids, young kids. It starts because they have somebody in the family or that you see the industry or they have a friend or they live near an airport. So they see the planes and this passion starts really from a young age. And it just stays there. So we also try to promote this. We go to schools, we do presentations, we do education fairs and try to show them. Right. A lot of people still don't understand that this is a possibility. I got a girl in a education fair saying, "Oh, can women be pilots?" And I was shocked. "Oh, you're 21st century, how are you a woman telling me this? You can be whatever you want." So there's still a lot that we can do to try to promote the profession. But it's still not for everyone. It's still an expensive profession. Most of our students, they require bank loans to get it. So depending on the country, it's easier or harder. But it's still a high investment course. I know that in the US it's different from Europe because universities are very expensive. But in Europe we don't face that to those issues. So we have public universities that are almost free. But even the private ones, they are expensive. But comparing the pilot courses is quite expensive. But you also get to return very quickly. So after two years you are working and you start getting, I think, the junior first officer in Europe probably starts getting around, let's say, 70, 75,000 dollars. And after one year they're getting more than double. And it's easily they get a senior captain can get up to 400, 500,000 dollars a year. Oh, wow. I didn't realize it was that. I mean, I thought it was maybe 150, 200 max. Depends on the country, independence of the airlines. So if you go, I think in Europe the company that pays the more is Lufthansa. And the senior long goal senior captains are getting more or less that. But that's what the US airlines are paying now. So it's really. Yeah. Because there's a shortage of pilots there. But just completing your going into your question. So let's say our 85% standard profile is a young boy with an average from 18 to 23. So this represent I would say 85% of our target. But then we have the exceptions. We have older guys. We just started the year in France in November in New intake. And we have a guy that it was a professional football player. Actually, the last club he played soccer, not football. But the last club he played was actually LA Galaxy. It was in the US. It was really a professional. So he got it. It did a good career. He got good salaries. He decided to become a pilot. So he just started with that. So he's much older. Yeah, it is. It's much older. But so we have these exceptions. And I see more and more that is changing. Now there's no age limit to start. You have an age limit to retire still. So it's mandatory retirement to transport passengers. It's 65. OK. But above that, as long as you pass your medicals, you can still be a flying instructor in school. Like hours or you can still do simulator instruction. You can still do some aerial works like firefighting or crops spraying. But passenger transport, you can only do up to 65. Interesting. But there is no limit to start. So you can start your course with 60. If you want to do it for two years, that's it. But this is broadening our market. And we see more and more people coming from different professions. The guys at Doctors actually dentists, doctors that they have-- because when they started, they were not able to do it for financial reasons or because of age limits or whatever. But now they're coming into the profession. And is that an area that you are actively marketing to, for example, these adult learners, which we would say, it's not. It's just a by chance. You don't think there's an opportunity there? There is, but it's really a small percentage, still. So if we would have to market just for these guys, it I think would be complicated because the profiles are so different. So we wouldn't know what would be our target. So we really focus on our standard target, which is the 17 to 25, let's say. So end of high school, beginning or finishing or middle of the university. And then we have the exceptions. But those exceptions, we try to cater them with doing open days, which are open to anyone that wants to attend. And we do seminars, we do podcasts like this. So this is trying to attract those non-typical-- the ones that don't fit on our typical target. Interesting. And what are the fastest growing markets from a recruitment enrollment standpoint for you? In terms of-- OK, geographically-- New students? Yeah. New students. No, it's very tricky. It's a good question because it's never the same. It varies even during the year and depending on the region. Let's say-- so for example, let's talk about Australia, where we started. We-- Australia is typically a country that is known to be an education hub. People from all the Asia-Pacific region typically goes to Australia or New Zealand, but mostly to Australia to study in universities, but also to do pilot courses. With COVID, Australia was probably, if not the most strict, one of the strictest country during COVID. So they were first to close and the last to open. And at that time, we had 90% of our students coming from international markets. So suddenly, they were first to leave. So we had to go home. And until this year, as we speak-- so from 2020 until now, we were not able to get any international students. So the country reopened, but the visas for international students didn't reopen. And our company, together with others and even universities, we tried to lobby the government and show that we are losing-- the country is losing millions and millions. And they came to us saying, OK, we can give you a quota. But the quota was insignificant. Imagine that we were getting 100 pilot students a year, and they gave us like 10%. But I'm very happy that last week, we got a letter from the government, we, and of course, the industry saying that they are reopening with immediate effects. The student visa for all kinds, of course, as in Australia. So as long as they fit in the requirements in terms of showing that they have the means of sustainability to be there, they are allowed to get a student visa. So we are very, very happy with that. But what we did, basically, we pivoted to the domestic market. So suddenly, we are really growing a lot in the domestic Australian market, really, really a lot. So much that we are hoping our third base there in Brisbane. So we're going to have a base in Brisbane, in the Gold Coast, and in Lisbon. But then we go to Europe, and you'll see that we're pretty stable in France. We are growing 35% here on year in France. That stable? That stable? For me, the growth is stable. It's a stable growth. That's a good number. 30% here over here. It's a great number. I'm counting since COVID, right? Because we're really-- Yeah, yeah, no, let's rock bottom with COVID. So we're growing it. It's OK. And I think we can still keep this kind of growth a couple of years more. And then we need to stabilize because we can grow more. Because we are talking about flight training, and there's a limitation in terms of number of aircraft we can have in our specific airport. There are slots. There's a number of things. Italy, where I just starting, as I mentioned, we bought a school in September. I see they are working a third of the potential. So I really see a huge growth for next year. So it really depends on the year or the phase of the year. I see some countries that are-- They grow more in a specific month because typically it's the month where the school year starts. It changes in Europe is mostly September or October. That's the high season. But I would say they are pretty much stable honestly. One thing that I would like to point out is that we are still more a bit to be company than a bit to see. I'm trying to balance it more. Which means that we are more related with the airlines than the self-sponsor student still. So we work a lot with airlines from the Middle East, from Europe, from the Asia-Pacific region. So we do particular tailored programs to their own. So they recruit the students and we train them. We also do military and insecure, so defense contracts, military and security contracts. So we train, we train, I can say, right now we have an ongoing contract with the German Air Force. We have we want a tender last year for three years to train French Navy pilots. We have done in Africa, for example, Senegalese Air Force pilots. We have done in the past Australia security forces or defense forces. We have done the National Guard of Malaysia. So we have quite a wide variety of experience working with governments, security and defense forces, airlines and that has been our core business. But we are now trying to balance more to the BTC because in my particular view, we need to have it, it has to have a equilibrium between BTC and also an equilibrium between markets. We cannot be over dependent on one specific market. So as we, I don't know if you say that, but we used to say we don't put all the eggs in the same basket. We should spread them a little bit more because you know in aviation, the markets don't follow all the same rhythm. For example, the US is now starting to come down. There was a huge shortage of pilots in the US, much more than anywhere else in the world. But now it's coming down. But in Europe, we are still suffering a shortage. So the timings are completely different. So if we are in different regions, we can balance. If one region is worse than the other, we are balancing with it. So that's what we are trying to do. From a B2B perspective, do you see a lot of competition? We mentioned earlier before we were recording the US, China. There are very different markets. Do you see some of these companies like ATP, for example, going global? Yeah, ATP, I think, well, it's the biggest school in the world, Abinishu school. So Abinishu is the, as you know, the so we can say to ourselves that Abinishu company. So we provide the basic training. So once we provide the basic training, they get to pilot classes, then they go to do the advanced training, which is usually type rating and then go to the airline. So ATP is the biggest Abinishu company school in the world, in terms of fleet, in terms of locations, whatever. But they are only in the US and I think they're only working the domestic market. I think strategically they don't want to expand. But there are a few large schools in the US that work well at international markets. So they compete with us, of course. And we are friends with some of the CEOs of this school. So we we like to have, and I like myself particularly to have a good relation with with my competitors or peers. No, I think we only gain by if the market works well, if everyone works well, we all benefit from it. So I have no problems in actually sitting down and having good, good meals and discussions with my competitors. So there are a few companies in the US very active internationally. There are a few companies in Europe and also in Australia that are very active internationally. But there's no company covering so many countries like ours. Like we do. Like our net. And usually they just do pilot training or they just do maintenance training or they just do cabin crew training. It's very difficult for finding an organization that covers all these like we do. So I don't see, I don't want to sound pretentious, but I don't see actually a company that we can call competitor. Sorry, but there is of course, the CEO is the biggest in the world, but they are by far the biggest in simulator training. They are very, very strong in in a benign issue training, but they have specific partnerships, specific programs. I think they are on a different level and it's like all three areas, they are publicly traded companies. And so we are in a different level. They are much bigger than us, but privately owned and we are one hundred percent privately owned. I think we are the largest. And this allows us to have, I see this is one advantage. Of course, they have much more revenue, money, resources than we do, but we are much more flexible. And this allows us to offer more tailored programs to our B2B customers in particular. We don't promote one specific program. We can, we usually we sit down with our potential customer. We listen to what they require and we try to present a suitable option for what they intend to do. And the other thing that I think we, it's an advantage for us because we are smaller, but because we depend on indian on one person decision, which is our shareholder, our decision process is quite fast. Our executive board is made of four people. So our chairman does he owe myself and another person. So we are only four. So it's quite, quite easy process, quite flexible. And this is a good example. I can tell you that last week I was together with the chairman. We went to do due diligence on another school that we made by or not. This was last week. And today we sent you offer. So we did a really thorough due diligence in one week. And I don't think that there are a lot of companies that can do it so quickly. So that helps out. One of the challenges is how can we keep growing? And as we grow, we need to increase the team and the processes, but keep growing, but also keep this flexibility and quick decision making process. That's one of the challenges that we are thinking about. How can we keep it for next year? Yeah. I mean, this is a fascinating discussion, Alex. I feel like we could sit here and talk for hours. But as we're getting close to wrapping it up, one area that I wanted to talk to you about was specifically AI. In my mind, again, I'm not in that industry, I'm thinking just like driverless cars, I would think we're going to have driverless airplanes. I'm sure you're the. Just a matter of time. Yeah. So how do you mitigate for that? You're recruiting students, but then at the end of the day, this may be one of those areas where AI will be a huge disruptor. Yes, it will happen, but I have no doubt that it will happen. But for me, it will take still a long time. Why is that? Many reasons. First of all, the technology is not reliable enough yet. Of course, you know, we have UAVs, UAPs, whatever, I don't know what they call it. We have all these unmanned aerial vehicles, mobility, whatever. Even in the airlines, most of the flight is 95% of the flight or 90% is then by the autopilot already. But the human is there as. Do you call it? Like a safety kind of like a double safety, but yeah, it is what you call it. There, I forgot my word in Portuguese. So many languages in my head, I'm confused. But yeah, the human being is a safety measure that is there. And also the second pilot as well because there's always a redundancy, that was the word I was trying to look for. If you go into Airbus, for example, there's always like four systems redundant to each other. So one doesn't work, there's another, and there's another. And the human is there as a redundancy. If all the systems go down or if there's a problem, there's a human. And if that human goes down, there's a second human. So I know that there's recently, especially in the US, we have been huge discussion about the single pilot operation. And it will happen, but it will take some time. I think one of the reasons is the technology is still not there yet. It will be. The second thing is the psychological factor. People are still not yet comfortable to get inside the plane without anyone sitting in the front. Yeah, this will take years. But if you go back into the aviation history, not that many years ago, I would say like 60 years ago, we had five people in the cockpit. So we had a captain, the copilot, the navigator, the flight engineer, and the radio telegraphists. This was the first to go down with the development of radios. Then the navigator, then when I started in aviation, so 20 years ago, I still flew with three guys in the cockpit. We still have the flight engineer. the copilot and this was the last one to go. So the first officer will be the next one to go. So take some years, but he will go and then we will have a few maybe a few decades where we'll have one guy in the cockpit supported by AI, which will be a more reliable and trained AI. And then in the future where I probably won't be alive or will be very old, then we will be without anyone there. But first this has to happen in cars, smaller vehicles. You know, there is these projects of these UAEPs, UAVs or VMs that so it has to start somewhere. They will start using it and then it will start developing into the bigger airliners. It will take some time. I would say it's a matter of time. And also the AI, you know, we are already using a lot of things in AI in training. So to assess, to help out creating questions or assess the behavior of the students or whatever, but the AI needs to learn. So there's a period of learning that takes time. It will take, I would say a couple of years because they really need to face thousands of candidates to be able to learn about all the answers, all the physical, if they are looking into the face expressions. There's a learning process that it's long enough. And even for that that we are already using, the human reaction or the assessment that we do from another human, it's still AI is not there yet. Our brain is still the most powerful AI that exists in the world. It made me think, it makes me think of something I read a while back that was predicting that by 2025, you know, Uber was predicting that roughly about 60% of the cars on the road will be AI kind of cars. You know, so this is 10 years ago on the predicting. You see how many are there? Yeah, no, I think of that quote. We were, we were, what was that the Peter Tielco that we were promised flying cars. We got 144 characters. It will happen. I have no doubt, but it depends on a number of things that are not there yet. We also have been talking about the sustainability of aviation, the power plants. So how can we introduce new technology that burns, creates less emissions and a lot of the industry is focusing on this and not in the cockpit itself. And this is a discussion that it's very present. You know, a lot of most of the countries sign the 2050 emission agreement that should be carbon neutral in 2015. Now everybody is pulling back because they realize the technology is not allowing to do that. So it will happen, but it will also take longer. There's a, there's a process. It's a, we can try to to impose dates, but in the end, the reality comes against as it says. It's not feasible in those dates. So we will do it, but it will just take a little bit more time. So and it's, it's the reality for the power plants, for the engines. It's also the reality for the AI implements, but we are already using it for training, like VR as well. We are, we are starting implementing virtual reality to train the procedures to help out the students before they go to the aircraft. Also the cabin crew to visualize, we can give them, they can train at home and visualize the aircraft. There's also augmented reality that is starting to be implemented as well. And I think it will be very useful because it's really it's a jump in terms of feelings and then reality from VR. It's really a next step level. So technology is is is here and it's being implemented. And even today, if you look at our operation, the standards or the basics are the same as they were 40 years ago, but we are training. So we are, for example, in our organization, we are paper free. So the students don't touch on paper anymore. So they have an iPad, everything is digital. We have a bunch of apps that support with e-books, CBT's, specific apps for the flight training part. We have simulators that replicate the the aircraft. And in the US, they are not, they are not so fan of using simulators. Yet, I know they are starting to, but for us in Europe, we are using simulators for years. They it really helps out to expedite the training and to train a lot of things safely that we cannot we cannot do in the aircraft. And just really, and if the student is not is not performing in that particular mission, we just repeat and repeat and repeat with the lower cost. And then also going to the aircraft, we have now what we call glass cockpit, which is basically all those old analog displays are just replaced by digital displays, touch screens. A lot of the systems that they are going to face when they're flying the bigger liners, we are already using them in our small aircraft. So technology is here and it keeps being updated. Even the engines, we are the type of fleet that we use. We use a lot of diamond aircraft, which is a very expensive aircraft. It's like BMW Mercedes of the of the general aviation aircraft. And we also use Cirrus, which is a US company. So it's really high end aircraft. This is where we position ourselves as well. We are not they're not the low costs low end school. We we are we we we we we want at least we we see ourselves in the in the tier one of the of the flight training organization. So and the type of aircraft in type of equipment is part of it. But even the engines, if you look at what we operate, we consume less 20% between 20 to 40% less than competitor aircraft that our other schools are competitors used. Now if you go into the airlines, it's the same. If you operate a 737 max, for example, comparing to a 737 early generation, it burns, I would say 30 40% less fuel. So technology is an innovation particularly is one of the industries that really is at the forefront of implementing technology and developing new technologies. And I have no doubt that we will continue to do it. And yeah, it's but I was just going to say I mean it's it's amazing to me how many flights there are millions of flights. Every day, I think it's around 270,000. Yeah. And commercial flights. It's not the mood. It's not complete military flights or training flights. Yeah, yeah. Let's say you have a million flights a day. When you think of like accidents or issues, you know, they're just so minimal really low. Really low. I have the training that's part of all of this that we've been talking about. Yeah, it's the technology. So the more technology you have, the less risk you have is the quality of the training, the more training and better training, the less risk you have. So the regulation as well. So the more regulation you have, the less risk you have. So all of this combined, this is what makes aviation and they're transport the safest way of moving around, which is really true. Yeah. And but just going into complete what you have. So even when all of this is implemented, then the airplanes will be automated, let's say, or run by an AI. In that part, we already be flying into Mars and somewhere else. So pilots will always be necessary. So there will always be something to pilot. That's true. Now I have a last question that I like to ask a lot. You know, what is one thing that we're not talking about or we're not talking enough about when it comes to aviation, education and training? Well, it really depends on the country. Also, for example, the US is a country, as I mentioned, you and we were off that it's pretty much about volume. They focus about volume and they don't focus them about other things. So outside the US, we focus more on this higher education things and non-technical skills. I think it's very important, the non-technical skills that the airlines look for. I think one of the main issues is that there's still a big gap between the airlines and the flight training organizations. I think we need to be more integrated. It's starting to be, we see a lot of airlines opening their own schools or buying or doing agreements with schools like ours and being involved in the training. But there, I think they're still a big gap and that's the main thing. Because we are trying to follow a route and sometimes that route is not what the market is looking for. We think it's the best one, but then the airlines have a completely different idea. So I think that's the main, we have our vision, but the market speaks for itself. Maybe our vision is not right. I think it is because our students are really employed very, very quickly, which sometimes even me, I'm surprised. They complete the course and after one month to month they're employed, which is great. But yeah, I think that's probably one of the things that should be more tackled. It's the integration of the initial flight training and then the operators, which will be the end users of our students. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Alex. This has been fantastic. And I'm sure-- It's great we have so much stuff. We have to do three or four more. I'd love to. So let's plan it out. Let's do a whole series of aviation education training. Thank you so much. My pleasure.