InterGlobe, CAE set up India's largest pilot simulation training centre

The two firms have invested $25 mn to set up facility, have started training for Airbus A320s

To cater to the rising demand for aviation training facilities in India, InterGlobe Enterprises and CAE, a Canadian civil and military aviation simulation training company, on Saturday launched the country’s largest pilot simulation training facility in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

The two partners in CAE Simulation Training Pvt Ltd (CSTPL), a 50:50 joint venture, have together invested $25 million to set up the centre. Simulation programmes on Airbus A320s for IndiGo pilots had already been started in July. Come December, pilots from GoAir will also be trained at the facility.

InterGlobe Enterprises Group MD Rahul Bhatia said: “India is projected to become the world’s third-largest aviation market by the end of the decade. There is a growing need for trained pilots. This centre will help address the requirement.”

At present, there are five aviation training centres in the country — one in Greater Noida — that offer simulation modules for pilots. The largest one so far was in Rae Bareli. According to the Directorate of Civil Aviation, in 2011-12, the country’s airlines employed 4,734 pilots, of whom 764 worked for IndiGo and 121 for GoAir. Given that these carriers are to add 500 aircraft by 2020, it is estimated there will an additional requirement for 5,000 pilots by that year.

According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (Capa), an aviation consultancy firm, the total number of operational staff — pilots, engineers and cabin crew — is set to grow nearly three-fold from 32,000 in 2009 to over 90,000 by 2020.

A flight simulator is a machine that represents an actual aircraft cockpit in its original form and function and can also emulate real crisis, such as bad weather, engine failure and other technical glitches that might arise during a flight.

While CSTPL will initially provide simulation training modules only for A320s, plans are afoot to later add simulators for other aircraft types from the Boeing family. CAE President & CEO Marc Parent said: “We have started operations with two simulators for A320s. Eventually, we will have simulators for other aircraft types — civil and military.” CAE and InterGlobe will add four more simulators at the facility in Greater Noida by 2017. Once all six simulator bays are in place, the centre will have the capacity to train over 5,000 pilots every year, compared with the current annual capacity if 1,000 pilots.

Until 2009, there were no third-party flight simulator facilities available in the country. Air India and Jet Airways had in-house facilities, but the only option for other carriers was frequently sending their pilots abroad. This doubled the training expense due to travel cost and increased time away from duties.

“The pressure on India’s education and training capacity could be even greater because it could be argued the infrastructure available today is not sufficient to even meet the current requirements. And, this is without considering the requirements stemming from the latent potential India has — of becoming a regional aviation/aerospace hub. In-country education and training would be more cost-effective and supportive of the industry than relying on offshore resources, as has been the case to date,” Capa said in a report titled ‘Overcoming the Skills Crisis in Indian Aviation’.

The report added: “If the required scale and the quality of education and training cannot be achieved, either the industry’s growth will be capped and operating costs increase, or we could have unsafe skies.”