WOMEN IN AAM PODCAST: Stella Filippatos on How CAE is Leading the Charge in Electric Aviation Training

Our lat­est pod­cast episode is live! And this time, it is the inau­gur­al episode of eVTOL Insights’ Women in AAM series, which is led by Chair­per­son Mar­i­lyn Pear­son.

In this episode, she speaks with Stel­la Fil­ip­patos, Pro­gram Man­age­ment, Elec­tri­cal Air­craft, CAE, about the com­pa­ny’s jour­ney toward elec­tri­fy­ing pilot train­ing air­craft and the broad­er impli­ca­tions for sus­tain­able avi­a­tion.

Stel­la recounts her path from elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing into aero­space, with expe­ri­ence at Bom­bardier and CAE, where she now leads CAE’s elec­tric air­craft con­ver­sion pro­gram. The ini­tia­tive, announced in 2022, focus­es on con­vert­ing Piper Archer train­ers to elec­tric propulsion—an effort dri­ven by CAE’s com­mit­ment to becom­ing car­bon neu­tral, achieved in 2020 through off­sets.

Philip­patos explains that while elec­tric air­craft cur­rent­ly have lim­it­ed range, they’re ide­al for ear­ly pilot training—short “A‑to‑A” flights involv­ing cir­cuits, touch-and-goes, and famil­iar­iza­tion exer­cis­es. This not only reduces emis­sions and noise but also helps pre­pare pilots for eVTOL and AAM oper­a­tions, where under­stand­ing elec­tric ener­gy sys­tems will be key.

Women in AAM also has a What­sApp group which mem­bers can join. If you’d like to be part of our com­mu­ni­ty, please send an email to claire@womeninaam.com which includes your head­shot image, job title and LinkedIn pro­file link.

You can also vis­it womeninaam.com for more infor­ma­tion

Click on the Play but­ton below to lis­ten to the episode, which is avail­able on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.