Airbus's choice of CAE as manufacturer for the first A380 simulator is not surprising given the two companies' co-operation agreement for Airbus-approved instruction to be provided by CAE's 13 training centres worldwide. Shrugging off the suggestion that lessons might be learned from the recent termination of a training partnership between Boeing and FlightSafety, Airbus vice-president training and flight operations support Jean-Michel Roy says that this co-operation has been arranged because Airbus needs to extend its own training capabilities beyond the four centres it operates at Toulouse, Hamburg, Miami and Beijing. Roy says it enables smaller airlines that do not have their own facilities for recurrent training to find closer centres, where its crews can receive Airbus-approved instruction for its own types and training for other manufacturers' aircraft if they operate a mixed fleet. Roy says it is not, under the Airbus Training name, intending to sell training for other manufacturers' types.
Source: Flight International
