Lufthansa Flight Training places four new simulators in service
November 11, 2004
Expansion of its simulator fleet is aimed primarily at the open market
By the end of the year Lufthansa Flight Training (LFT) will have placed in service four new full-flight simulators. This represents a further enlargement particularly of its location and company headquarters in Frankfurt. An Airbus A320 simulator and an A330-300 enhanced simulator are already in operation. Training has recently begun on the new Boeing 747-400 unit. Another Boeing 737-800 simulator is to be installed at the training center of LFT's Berlin subsidiary at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport.

With this expansion of its simulator capacity Lufthansa Flight Training seeks primarily to attract customers from the open market, i.e., from outside the Lufthansa Group. "While our acquisition of the A330 simulator has been in response to Lufthansa's introduction of that aircraft type, our acquisition of especially the Boeing 747-400 and 737-800 units responds to a growing need in the open market for training on those airliner types," explains Dr. Norbert Wiesner, head of simulator department at Lufthansa Flight Training. "The demand for training on simulators of those two widely used jetliners will continue to grow and is not all that dependent on the ups and downs of general business conditions in the aviation industry."

LFT is thus placing in operation simulators intended for use mainly or even exclusively by customers outside the Lufthansa Group. The Boeing 737-800, for example, is not flown by Lufthansa at all. The simulators built by CAE and by Thales Training & Simulation have received JAR-STD 1A Level D certification and are state-of-the-art in all respects. "This enables us to fulfill the configuration wishes of the most varied customers. In particular, we are able to meet quickly and flexibly the various configurations of the flight-warning and flight-management systems as in line operation for the different airlines," Dr. Wiesner adds.

Lufthansa Flight Training now has a fleet of 31 cockpit simulators at three locations, 19 of them in Frankfurt alone. LFT is currently marketing about half of its simulator hours in the open market to airlines from all over the world.

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