Region plays the Sim Card

Boeing predicts that between now and 2030 the Middle East will need more than 36,000 pilots simply to crew airliners on order for the region.

The figures speak for themselves yet, whatever their interest in helping satisfy the future demand, training solution providers are quick to note they are hardly newcomers to the Middle East.

“We’ve been in the UAE since 1995,” said Camille Mariamo, regional leader for the Middle East and India, commercial training and simulations for Montreal-based CAE, which provides flight simulators emulating today’s latest Airbus and Boeing airliners. “We were the first to sell full flight simulators [FFS] to airlines in the region.”

CAE’s joint venture with the Emirates Group to create Emirates-CAE Flight Training (ECFT) was another regional milestone, establishing the first FAA and JAA-certified commercial training facility in the Middle East in 2003.

Today the ECFT centre in Dubai’s ‘silicon oasis’ offers more than 14 programmes for aircraft type ratings and recurrency training, as well as training for ground crews. But CAE recognises it will take new pilots, not simply type ratings and recurrency training, to meet the needs of tomorrow’s Middle East airline fleets.

“In the Gulf states, the market has traditionally been served by experienced pilots hired from abroad,” said Mariamo. “We believe in the future that there will be demand for the ab initio market  – training for students with no flight experience – and for the Middle East to rely on ab initio graduates.”

CAE is already serving the ab initio market through its CAE Global Academy (CGA), which provides “cadet to captain” training, earning graduates a commercial pilot license, airline transport pilot license or multidrug pilot license.

With some 1,800 annual CGA graduates from its network of 11 facilities, CAE claims to be the largest ab initio training provider in the world.

Though none of these facilities are in the Middle East, Mariamo noted that prospective pilots from the region on an airline career path usually attend one of the three CGA facilities in India. “Once they graduate from Global Academy they can move into type rating for a specific aircraft,” Mariamo said.

Simulator manufacturer Frasca International of Urbana, Illinois, has historically been focused on the ab initio market and, likewise, has long-standing, if less public, ties to the Middle East. “We’ve been in the region for decades, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, mostly supporting the customers and being available to them,” said Victor Velpze, a Frasca sales representative.

Frasca, which makes FFS for piston and turbine fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, has its training devices installed in several universities in the region that offer primary, or basic, pilot training.

Velpze said Frasca has recently seen “an increase in questions and demands” from these customers, but said the company is taking a more deliberate approach to increasing its sales in the region.

“We’re not simply selling the devices but sitting down and offering suggestions on how to run the [training] programme holistically,” Velpze said. “Simulators tend to be an afterthought, that’s what we’re trying to change.”

Indeed, the kinds of discussions Frasca is having about its core concept of “transfer of learning” could help determine the shape of primary flight training in the region for the next generation.

Velpze noted that a single Frasca simulator could emulate five different airplanes. “But you have to make so many compromises, not all are simulated effectively,” he pointed out. “If the instructor has to keep saying, ‘Push this button here [in the simulator], and push another in the airplane,’ what has been accomplished?

“If the airplane has a certain avionics configuration, the simulator should have the same configuration to a very high level,” Velpze continued. “You have to teach things accurately in the simulator so that knowledge gets transferred back to the airplane. I’ve seen situations in universities where half the students flunk check rides because they’re pushing the wrong buttons. One simulator that can do five different airplanes looks good on paper, but in reality it doesn’t get the job done.”

The shortage of qualified pilots will affect business aviation as well as airline operations, experts say. But flight training providers see business aircraft training as distinct from airline crew training for two reasons: business jet operators don’t cultivate and train pilots en masse as airlines do, and the training centres needn’t be in the same location the crew calls home. As Mariamo said: “Business aviation is not a regional market, it’s more of a global market.”

No training provider is more focused on the business aviation market than FlightSafety International (FSI) of Flushing, New York, which provides type ratings and recurrency training for fixed and rotor wing business aircraft made by 17 OEMs.

FSI provided “well over” 2,000 training events to customers from the Middle East in the past year, according to Steve Phillips, vice president, communications, with the greatest increase in demand coming from operators based in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

But, as with CAE’s ab initio programmes, most of FSI’s training is conducted outside the region, primarily at its learning centres in Farnborough and Paris, which between them offer 25 full flight Level D qualified simulators, mimicking Bombardier, Cessna, Dassault, Embraer, Hawker Beechcraft, Gulfstream, and Sikorsky aircraft.

FSI will add Level D simulators for the Bombardier Challenger 605 in Farnborough and the Dassault Falcon 7X in Paris this year.

Asked about any plans for an FSI facility in the Middle East, Phillips said: “As with all regions of the world, we continuously measure the current and expected future demand for our training services and add new programmes and locations as appropriate to ensure that we offer access to conveniently located, high-quality training programmes and services that meet the specific needs of our customers.”

CAE, meanwhile, will open a second ECFT facility in Dubai in the third quarter of this year, with flydubai as the launch customer. The new facility will initially have four full flight simulator bays for crew training for the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families, and may expand to up to ten bays.

CAE also recently became the first provider in the region to offer a helicopter flight-training programme, focusing on the Bell 412. “That shows our commitment to regional needs,” Mariamo said. “Oil and gas platforms rely heavily on helicopters. We’re the first to come in and invest in that segment.”

Yet, whatever the training solution suppliers can and will provide, addressing the looming pilot shortfall will also require commitment from the leadership of the region’s aircraft operators. And that’s a commitment some training providers question.

“I know there’s a significant pilot shortage,” said Velpze. “Emerging markets are not very good at understanding how long it takes to ramp up something. You can sound the alarms as much as you want but until airplanes are parked on the ramps because you don’t have pilots, the need for training usually does not make it up very high in the management chain.”