FlightSafety International has announced that Edward Koharik has been promoted to general manager, visual systems. He assumes this responsibility from Jon Hester who retired from FlightSafety after more than 35 years of experience in the design, development and support of flight simulation products and services.
“We congratulate Ed on his well-deserved promotion,” said Ray Johns, executive vice president, government. “Since joining FlightSafety in October 2015, Ed has consistently demonstrated his outstanding leadership and management skills, and developed an in-depth understanding of the current and future needs of the commercial customers and government agencies we serve. We sincerely appreciate the many contributions Jon made to the success of FlightSafety and wish him all the best.”
Koharik leads a team of over 200 engineers, systems specialists, and service and support professionals based in St. Louis, Missouri, Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Together they have developed many innovative products including the new VITAL 1100 visual system and CrewView glass mirror display.
Prior to joining FlightSafety, Koharik served in the United States Air Force for 23 years. In addition to his operations experience, Koharik’s positions included a Senior Service Fellowship at the Naval Postgraduate School and staff assignments at Air Mobility Command and U.S. Transportation Command.
Koharik served as the chief of U.S. Transportation Command’s Enterprise Readiness Center prior to retiring from the Air Force.
Koharik graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering. He also holds a masters’ in computer resources and information management from Webster University and a masters’ in military operational art and science from the Air University.
Koharik has more than 3,300 hours of flying experience on a variety of aircraft. He was the first Air Force pilot qualified to operate the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle.
FlightSafety’s VITAL 1100 visual system offers unprecedented fidelity for a wide variety of uses with full-flight simulators and a complete range of other advanced training devices. It significantly enhances training by providing highly detailed mission specific imagery and exceptional environmental effects. Pilots also benefit from photo-realistic imagery up to 40-million-pixel-resolution, and wide field of views designed to enhance training.
FlightSafety’s CrewView glass-mirror displays deliver the greatest level of realism with superior optical performance, and sharper image clarity. The true collimated images presented are free of visible distortions and artifacts out to mirror edge.
