2APA and Cyberiad Labs partner to train African aviation professionals in AI
From maintenance hangars to control towers, AI is already part of aviation. 2APA’s members will start Cyberiad Labs’ AI course on 2 November.
RALEIGH, N.C., and TOULOUSE, France, 13 October 2026. Cyberiad Labs and 2APA (Association Africaine des Professionnels de l’Aéronautique) today announced a partnership that will give 2APA’s members free places in Cyberiad Labs’ future classes.
2APA is a pan-African association of aviation and space professionals: engineers, pilots, air traffic controllers, technicians, managers and trainers, in Africa and in the diaspora. It was created in March 2026 by Yaninthé Tiomene and officially launched in April 2026. Its mission is to explain aviation careers to the African public, promote African expertise, and help the continent’s talent build their skills, with a particular focus on young people and women. Cyberiad Labs teaches people to work with AI while keeping their own judgment and their own voice. Its first class opened on 14 September with 1,005 learners from 51 countries, 95% of them in Africa.
2APA’s places come on top of the public ones. The public seats of the November class are taken.
“When people hear ‘AI course’, many still picture software engineers. Aviation shows how outdated that picture is,” said Julien Barbier, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “AI already predicts which aircraft part is about to fail, and it is being tested to tell controllers when a runway is clear and to read through safety reports. The people who decide whether these tools are used well are the engineers, controllers, technicians and safety managers who make up 2APA. Yaninthé came through the ALX software engineering programme I led. Today he works in aviation safety and unites Africa’s aviation professionals through 2APA. Our course is for people like him, and for every member of 2APA.”
On Airbus’s Skywise platform, a 2018 trial covering three technical issues across 85 easyJet aircraft predicted 31 failures, so engineers could replace the components before they broke. Airbus now offers Skywise Predictive Maintenance+, with more than 200 predictive algorithms covering hundreds of parts. At Heathrow, NATS has been testing Aimee, an AI built by Searidge Technologies that watches the runway through cameras and tells the controller when a landing aircraft has left it, even when low cloud hides the runway from the tower. In safety, researchers asked ChatGPT to read incident reports from NASA’s public Aviation Safety Reporting System and name the human causes behind each one, such as fatigue, distraction or a breakdown in communication. Two safety analysts can need up to five business days to process a single report. These are not all the same kind of AI: Skywise learns from sensor data, Aimee from camera images, and ChatGPT is a language model, the kind learners use in the course. Knowing which kind is in front of you, and where it fails, is part of the job. Regulators are getting ready too: EASA has published an AI roadmap built on a human-centric approach to integrating AI into aviation.
Africa will need people who can do this work. Boeing forecasts that Africa’s commercial fleet will grow from 755 aircraft in 2025 to 1,625 by 2045, and that the continent will need 75,000 new pilots, technicians and cabin crew between 2026 and 2045.
“In aviation, safety depends on people who understand their tools, and what those tools cannot do,” said Yaninthé Tiomene, founder of 2APA. “AI is coming into every part of our work. Africa will need tens of thousands of new aviation professionals over the next twenty years, and we want them to arrive ready: able to use AI, to question it, and to keep the final decision. This partnership is an important step for African aeronautics professionals. It gives our members, especially young people and women, practical skills that will be essential throughout their careers, and helps ensure that Africa is not only a consumer of AI in aviation, but an active and competent actor.”
Cyberiad Labs’ Introduction to AI and LLMs teaches learners what AI is, how it works and where it fails. In the first week, they see that the system answering so confidently is a program predicting text, one piece at a time, and that it can be wrong. Throughout the course, they practise checking its answers, asking for its sources and verifying them, and deciding for themselves when to rely on it.
“Aviation professionals are trained never to trust automation blindly: the pilot monitoring challenges, the controller insists on the read-back, and critical maintenance work gets an independent inspection,” said Youssef Charif Hamidi, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “That is the habit we teach with AI from the first week, so 2APA’s members start with the right reflex.”
The partnership starts with the class that opens on Monday 2 November 2026. The course, Introduction to AI and LLMs, is online, part-time and four weeks long, and it will be free for 2APA’s members. This is Cyberiad Labs’ second education partnership, after the Mandela AI Hub Foundation.
About Cyberiad Labs
Cyberiad Labs teaches people to work with AI without handing it their thinking. Those skills help people keep a job or find one, and help organisations keep up as AI changes their work. It teaches learners directly, and works with schools, universities, companies, NGOs and governments.
Julien Barbier co-founded Holberton School, a software engineering school with no teachers, no lectures and no upfront tuition. It grew from one campus in San Francisco to 32 worldwide before it was acquired. He then led product and growth at ALX across its software engineering and applied AI programmes, where the number of learners went from a few thousand to more than 1.6 million. Before Holberton, he was the first head of marketing, growth and community at Docker.
Youssef Charif Hamidi is a full-stack engineer. He learned to code on Julien's 12-month ALX software engineering programme. He finished it on an Android tablet, because cerebral palsy limits him to about two words a minute on a computer keyboard. Previously, he built MathVellum, a maths editor for people who cannot hold a pen.
Home: https://www.cyberiadlabs.com
About 2APA
2APA (Association Africaine des Professionnels de l’Aéronautique) is a pan-African association that brings together professionals from the aviation and space sectors. It explains aviation careers to the African public and dispels the myths around them. It also connects African professionals, including the diaspora, so they can take an active part in the growth of Africa’s aviation market. 2APA supports continental integration through aviation, including the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM/MUTAA) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. It helps young people and women access training, mentoring and jobs, and builds partnerships with national, regional and international institutions. https://www.2apa-afri.org
Contact information
Julien Barbier, co-founder, Cyberiad Labs, julien@cyberiadlabs.com
Yaninthé Tiomene, founder, 2APA, contact@2apa-afri.org
Sources
- Travolution, “EasyJet strikes Airbus deal to use AI to predict aircraft component failures”.
- Airbus, “Vueling chooses Skywise Predictive Maintenance powered by the Digital Alliance”.
- Avionics International, “NATS Continues Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence for Low Visibility Procedures at Heathrow Airport”.
- NATS, “The Art of Intelligence in Digital Towers”.
- Aerospace (MDPI), “Examining the Potential of Generative Language Models for Aviation Safety Analysis: Case Study and Insights using the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS)”.
- EASA, “EASA Artificial Intelligence Roadmap 2.0 published: A human-centric approach to AI in aviation”.
- Boeing, “Boeing: Africa’s Airplane Fleet Will More than Double by 2045 to Meet Rising Air Travel Demand”.
- AFM, “Boeing Forecasts Africa Will Need 22,000 New Pilots as Fleet More Than Doubles by 2045”.