Helicopter hoist operators are crewmembers that use a winch to hoist objects or persons during a range of operations from utility tasks to emergency situations. Hoist operators are often required to perform these missions in unpredictable and dangerous environments necessitating the development of expert technical skills . Current hoist training methods are strongly reliant on live flight, costly and do not allow for training under high-risk conditions required of operations. Bluedrop Training & Simulation Inc. has developed a helicopter hoist mission training system to advance effective hoisting skills in a mission relevant context. We aimed to differentiate gaze behavior (safety scanning) for experienced and novice hoist operators during virtual reality (VR) hoist simulation training to facilitate adaptive feedback in simulation training. Head direction was used to reflect the hoist operator’s gaze. The experienced group (12) were active military hoist operators. The novice group (11) were from the general population. A mock helicopter fuselage equipped with HTC Vive headset created an immersive environment that was matched 1:1 with the real world. The location of a participant’s scanning was recorded in meters at 600 Hz according to the orientation of the headset. Convex hull and path length were calculated from a scanning heatmap of gaze data. ANOVA showed that the gaze of experienced hoist operators covered more area than novices (8019 vs. 3290 m2), had a longer path length (4133 vs. 1784 m) and completed the mission faster than novices (146.2 sec vs. 243.9 sec). It was also clear from heatmaps that experienced hoist operators adopted a different scanning pattern than novices.  This data suggests that experts are scanning more space than novices which would indicate better situational awareness. This contributes to the validation of the simulator fidelity and will be used as a source of dynamic feedback in training novices.