Founders

We’ve run airline training ourselves

Instructorrecruitment.com was founded by two serving airline captains, each a former Training Manager with a major European legacy carrier, with more than fifty years of airline experience between them.

Co-founder

Vincent van Valkenburg

Captain B777/787Former Training ManagerExperienced TRI & TRE

Currently flying the Boeing 777 and 787 for a major European legacy carrier, a former airline Training Manager, experienced as a Type Rating Instructor (TRI) and Type Rating Examiner (TRE). With more than 25 years in aviation, Vincent pairs sharp strategic judgement with a hands-on feel for how training teams work, turning staffing puzzles into clear, sound arrangements.

Co-founder

Vincent Aupers

Captain A321neoFormer Training ManagerExperienced TRI & TRE

Currently flying the Airbus A321neo for a major European legacy carrier, a former airline Training Manager, experienced as a Type Rating Instructor (TRI) and Type Rating Examiner (TRE). With more than 35 years in aviation, Vincent brings energy and an instinct for people. He is the founder who inspires instructors and training teams and keeps Instructorrecruitment.com close to what the industry really needs.

Vincent van Valkenburg

The bottleneck was never the simulator

As Training Manager, Vincent was responsible for the training, proficiency and licensing of a large pilot corps, and for the instructors who had to deliver it. Simulator slots could be bought. Qualified instructors could not.

When training volumes surged, the constraint showed itself immediately: an instructor cannot be created at short notice. Qualifying one takes months, and the people who already hold the qualification are the same people every other operator is calling.

What struck him most was how much capability sat just outside the roster. Highly experienced instructors were available, but only on terms the organisation had no way to offer them. That gap is what Instructorrecruitment.com was built to close.

Vincent Aupers

Experience walking out of the building

From the instructor’s side of the table, Vincent watched the same thing happen year after year: colleagues with decades of instructing behind them reaching the end of their flying career, still sharp, still willing to teach, and simply disappearing from the training organisation.

Almost none of them wanted to stop. What they did not want was a schedule someone else controlled. Offered the choice between full commitment and nothing at all, most of them chose nothing, and the training organisation lost instructors it had spent years developing.

Keeping that expertise in the room only asks for one thing: an arrangement that lets an instructor say yes when it suits him and no when it doesn’t, without either side taking a risk. Building that arrangement properly is what we do.

Why it matters

Selection by people who carried the responsibility

Training Managers answer for the standard of every instructor in their organisation. That’s the bar we apply to everyone in our database: would we have accepted this instructor in our own team? If the answer isn’t yes, they don’t reach your shortlist.

Talk to people who speak training

Tell us what you need. We’ll tell you honestly whether we can staff it.

Request instructors

No cost, no obligation, entirely confidential.