50 years of training to support aviation at the Institute of Air Navigation Services in Luxembourg

700,000 students trained, 103,000 candidate controllers assessed using FEAST, 20,000 pilots and ATCOs tested for English language proficiency via ELPAC – these huge numbers pay tribute to the ongoing excellence of EUROCONTROL’s Institute of Air Navigation Services (IANS), which celebrated today a half-century of providing cutting-edge air traffic management training.

26 June 2019 saw Eamonn Brennan, Director General EUROCONTROL, and Alex Wandels, Head of IANS, welcome to the IANS site the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel; Marc Reiter, Government Attaché, Ministry of Mobility and Public Works of Luxembourg; and Levan Karanadze, Director of the Civil Aviation Agency of Georgia, and other high-level guests, as part of the celebrations to mark a notable milestone - 50 years of training to support aviation.

Looking back, Eamonn Brennan paid tribute to almost 60 years of close links between Luxembourg and EUROCONTROL – from December 1960 when Luxembourg became one of EUROCONTROL’s 5 founding members, to December 1967 when the EUROCONTROL Permanent Commission took the crucial step to establish IANS to offer advanced and specialised air traffic services training, standardised staff training, and the training of ab initios.

Since 1969, the Institute has been delivering training excellence, continuing to evolve its portfolio over those 50 years to continue to offer a comprehensive range of high-quality training courses, tools and services in air traffic management. While ab initio training came to a close in 2012 with over 1,000 ATCOs successfully trained, IANS has continued to innovate and evolve. Today’s Institute boasts a superb portfolio of 125 classroom courses and 50 e-learning courses – the latter having seen 576,000 students complete training since their introduction in 2003, bringing the total number of students trained to over 700,000.

This year, over 90,000 aviation professionals are expected to be trained, a number that continues to rise every year, drawn from our 41 Member States, 2 Comprehensive Agreement States and beyond. Today IANS supports over 240 organisations drawn from the airline industry, air navigation service providers (ANSPs), governmental agencies, industry, the military, international and intergovernmental organisations, and many more.

Two standout products developed by IANS and delivered globally are FEAST and ELPAC. FEAST, the First European Air Traffic Controller Selection Tool, has since 2004 seen over 100,000 candidate controllers tested via a high quality, thorough selection test that guarantees a high success rate in controller training. Used by 50 ANSPs in 40 countries, FEAST is a global success story – as is ELPAC, the English Language Proficiency for Aeronautical Communication, which debuted in 2007. ELPAC is heading for its own new milestone, shortly, the 20,000^th test administered. Around 60 organisations use ELPAC, which helps aviation actors (ANSPs, aircraft operators, CAAs, training orgs) meet the ICAO language proficiency requirements.

From left: Eamonn Brennan, Director General of EUROCONTROL, Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Alex Wandels, Head of IANS