Andrzej Jeziorski/BERLIN
LUFTHANSA AND British Aerospace have established a new joint-venture company to run Avro RJ85 regional-jet simulator and classroom training at Lufthansa's Flight Training Centre at Berlin-Schonefeld Airport.
The company, established on 12 December as City Line Avro Simulator and Training, will offer training for pilots of Lufthansa City Line, as well as for operators such as Crossair, Sabena and Turkish Airlines, says the company.
City Line now operates ten 80-seat RJ85s. It plans to expand its fleet to 15 aircraft by the end of 1996. Ownership of the new joint venture is divided evenly between Lufthansa City Line and Frankfurt-based BAe subsidiary British Aerospace Deutschland.
City Line Avro will receive its RJ85 simulator in February 1996, and expects it to be operational by 1 April. The simulator is a Reflectone-built Level D full-flight simulator with six-axis motion system and a 180° field-of-view MaxVue visual system from CAE.
The Schonefeld training centre already offers Canadair Regional Jet training on a CAE-built full-flight simulator operated by a similar joint venture - City Line Canadair Simulator and Training - owned jointly by City Line (50%), Bombardier (35%) and CAE (15%). A second Regional Jet simulator is to enter service in mid-May 1996. The total investment in the expansion of the training centre amounts to some DM50 million ($34.5 million), says City Line.
The Berlin centre also offers Airbus A310 training for pilots from Lufthansa and other airlines.
Lufthansa is to take on 268 new pilots for ab initio training in 1996, with demand remaining high at 270 in 1997, and 200 in 1998. The company also plans to employ 1,800 new cabin staff in the coming year.
Lufthansa will, furthermore, take on 75-100 ready-entry candidates from the available market, of qualified pilots in the coming year, to fill the gap while the new pilots are being trained. These will mostly be from the German market, although negotiations are still continuing with European airlines such as Alitalia, Iberia and Swissair over the possibility of employing their excess cockpit crews.
Lufthansa's flight-training division is to be spun off in 1997 to become a subsidiary of the parent airline. It will be called Lufthansa Flight Training.
Source: Flight International
