Earlier this year, we interviewed Education Manager Maria Öhlén, who has worked at Sundsvall Airport for 25 years. In the interview, she shared her perspective on how six regional airports – stretching from south to north – came together in a joint and pioneering project focused on virtual training. Read the full interview here! In this Success Story, we now present the results of what we have achieved together so far.
The Challenge
Regional airports in Sweden consistently face financial deficits, partly due to the decline in regional air traffic. Therefore, it is necessary to find ways to reduce airport expenses. However, we cannot compromise on the need to maintain competence at these airports. For instance, the airport’s fire and rescue services must conduct training for various scenarios. The challenge is that training can only be performed with existing resources, which may not accurately represent real-life situations.
The Solution
Virtual and Mixed Reality solutions offer possibilities to create virtual training scenarios reaching beyond the airports’ existing resources. The project addresses their shared challenges, such as the lack of local opportunities to train on realistic scenarios when needed, while keeping down the cost and the environmental footprint. This limitation affects both the airports’ fire and rescue services as well as their core operational activities.
The regional airports are committed to maintaining high standards in emergency response training and operational readiness. By leveraging advanced training methods and emerging technologies, the project seeks to develop a first module for innovative, cost-effective training solutions that strengthen operational capabilities and ensure high levels of competence across the participants. The module is evaluated with a future national training platform in mind.
The project evaluates a virtual platform for training of various realistic scenarios, suitable for joint training between the regional airports in Sweden and other service organisations. As part of the project, the platform and the training modules are evaluated for effectiveness and usability.
This initiative allows for frequent, immersive training sessions posing low physical risk and low environmental impact. It enables remote training participation of other airports, creating a scalable and sustainable model for virtual training across Sweden. Midlanda Airport envisions this as a foundational training tool, with the potential to expand scenarios to include various aircraft types, ramp handling, and additional emergency response exercises. This aligns with Aero EDIH’s goal of digitalization advancing the use of the lower airspace, where the regional airports play an important role.
The fact that other airports could practice remote training, without having to travel to a specific venue can also create a revenue stream for the host(s) of the virtual training platform.
The Result
1. Operational Impact
The VR/MR training platform enables regional airports to maintain and enhance staff competence without depending on costly, location-specific physical exercises. By supporting remote and collaborative training, the system reduces travel requirements and associated downtime, thereby improving operational continuity and flexibility in scheduling. The ability to simulate diverse operational scenarios also strengthens coordination between airports, allowing training to take place more frequently and efficiently.
2. Safety and Competence
Frequent exposure to realistic virtual environments strengthens preparedness for both emergency and routine procedures. Trainees can rehearse critical actions in a safe, controlled setting, which enhances procedural memory, decision-making, and confidence without exposing personnel or equipment to physical risk. As the system evolves, multisensory feedback and improved supervision tools are expected to further enhance realism and safety awareness.
3. Economic and Environmental Benefits
A shared virtual training infrastructure significantly lowers collective training costs, providing cost-effective opportunities for financially constrained regional airports. Reduced travel and material use contribute to lower environmental impact compared with traditional training. However, the energy demands of XR systems, particularly during multi-user rendering, must be considered to ensure that sustainability goals are met through responsible system design and energy-efficient implementation.
4. Standardization and Collaboration
The introduction of a shared digital platform promotes common training standards and facilitates knowledge exchange across airports. Standardised modules and evaluation criteria can support more consistent competency assessment nationwide while encouraging collaborative development between airports and technology providers. This also strengthens Sweden’s position in advancing digital safety training within the aviation sector.
5. Advancement Potential
With continued refinement, the platform could evolve into a national virtual training system integrating additional modules such as ramp operations, passenger handling, and emergency coordination. Investment in usability, instructor control interfaces, and technical scalability will be essential to achieving broad adoption and long-term sustainability. In the future, the system may also serve as a foundation for cross-sector training collaborations, linking aviation safety practices with other emergency response organisations.
Lessons Learned
The participating municipalities expressed great satisfaction with the project process, including setting of product requirements and workshops. They also showed enthousiasm about the outcome, and believe the VR platform has great potential both for themselves and similar end-users. The VR headsets used in the project were distributed among the participants for continued training at their respective home airport, which was highly appreciated.
All-in-all, a very well executed project according to the customer representatives taking part in the project. However, time limitations always leave room for more testing and development. Both participants and the supplier expressed interest in spending more time fine-tuning the VR platform in order to increase expediency and shorten time-to-market respectively.
Social and Economic Impact
Regional airports represent an important infrastructure in society, both as everyday running logistic hubs as well as part of the country’s contingency planning.
The decline in regional air traffic, and consequential financial strain on regions and municipalities, while maintaining skills and competencies with the local airport staff creates a challenging situation.
The implementation of the VR Training solution addresses this challenge by reducing expenses without compromising the airport fire and rescue services’ needs for training and rehearsing realistic deployment scenarios.
“I feel that the collaboration has been very good and that the results of the project have exceeded expectations. We are continuing to work on how to plan for the next steps”, says Petter Andersson, Operatons Manager, Sundsvall Timrå Airport
“The close communication between Project Manager – Platform Developer – Customer – Business Developer positively affected project efficiency, and everyone involved is eager to continue exploring the features and benefits of the VR platform. This solution has great potential to improve the competitiveness of regional airports”, says Tomas Westlund, Project Manager, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
