Given the unprecedented wave of airliner orders of recent years, strong demand for simulators is unsurprising. CAE, which claims the top slot in civil simulation equipment sales, ended its financial year on 31 March having sold 41 full-flight simulators (FFS), the second-highest total ever, after 2013-2014’s record of 48 (the latest year’s number did not include a further 11 deployed to CAE’s own training centres.)
The Canadian company is in the unusual position of both selling its simulators to airlines, but then competing with them in the third-party training market through its own training centres. CAE’s group president, civil simulation and training Nick Leontidis acknowledged the potential conflict of interest during the World Aviation Training Conference and Tradeshow (WATS) in Orlando, Florida, in April, but takes the view that “If we don’t sell [simulators], someone else will.”
CAE has a close relationship with fellow Canadian company Bombardier over its much-delayed CSeries regional jet, which is approaching service entry.
“We have a dual relationship with CAE and Lufthansa Flight Training (LFT),” explains Firas Saleh, Bombardier’s director, aircraft training. “CAE manufactures the Bombardier CSeries simulators, while CAE and LFT have created a joint venture, Flight Training Alliance, which is Bombardier Commercial Aircraft’s authorised training provider and essentially trains our CSeries customers on Bombardier’s behalf, using our syllabus and methodology.
“Usually for any new programme, the simulator needs to be ready to support the aircraft certification and ops-evaluation of the regulatory authorities such as Transport Canada, the FAA [US Federal Aviation Administration] and EASA, which would come and fly the plane and the simulator to test the fidelity of the simulator. The aircraft certification is expected by the end of this year.”
The CSeries flightdeck, and thus CAE’s simulator, will have a radically different look to previous Bombardier products.
“On the CSeries we’ve had the luxury of starting from scratch; we’re not writing the design of the CSeries to achieve commonality [with other Bombardier aircraft],” says CSeries programme director Sebastien Mullot. “We really went for the best technologies available, so we weren’t encumbered by anything.
“This is the first time we’ve used sidesticks on an aircraft and it’s the first FBW [fly-by-wire] aircraft for us. The big benefit of sidesticks is that they don’t take up space in the cockpit, so we can have large display screens; we have a really large LCD, 5in by 15.1in, much larger than anything to date.
“We have a simulator demonstrator that’s been around since 2005 to develop the control laws."
However, the lack of commonality with previous Bombardier products will mean that “a full initial [training] course” on a simulator will be required for any pilot, says Saleh. “There will be no ‘credits’ given. Whether a pilot comes from Airbus or Embraer etc, that pilot will still have to do a full initial course, the length of which is still subject to approval by the authorities.” Currently, Bombardier is looking at eight, 4h simulator sessions, plus a check ride of 4-5h.
“Our plan is to have one CSeries simulator in Montreal. We are also using the CAE/LFT training network to access the market globally and bring training closer to our customers.”
Meanwhile, a new name in the civil simulator marketplace is Lockheed Martin Commercial Flight Training (LMCFT).
Lockheed Martin, which has had long experience in providing military simulators, acquired Sassenheim, Netherlands-based Sim-Industries in 2011, rebranding it earlier this year.
LMCFT produces simulators for the Boeing 737, 767, 777 and 787, as well as the Airbus A320, A330/340 and is developing one for the A350. It has two commercial aviation training centres at Incheon in South Korea, and at Sao Paulo in Brazil, where its primary partner GOL Airlines has trained more than 1,700 pilots.
LMCFT believes there are several factors that will help it compete in a crowded marketplace, notably shared investment and technology read-across between its military and civil simulator sectors. Combining OEM cockpit equipment and commercial-off-the-shelf products also gives its devices a modular design that takes advantage of commonality and thus easier maintenance and lower life-cycle costs, it argues.
The new generation of airliners that will increasingly enter service in the next few years has created an unprecedented situation for simulator manufacturers.
Increasingly, the aircraft manufacturers are taking a larger role on simulators for new designs such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787. “Prior to that, we would get block diagrams and information…and our engineering team would write our own software,” says John Van Maren, Flight Safety International’s (FSI) vice-president, simulation.
“With the A350, however, we’re getting software ‘black boxes’ [from Airbus].” This means that the task for simulator manufacturers such as FSI is shifting, from engineering to integration.
“It’s a paradigm shift,” says Van Maren. If something goes wrong with one of the black boxes, “We have to have very close ties to the OEM and take it back to them; we can’t fix it ourselves.” The situation is analogous to that of modern cars, whose complexity takes all but the most basic maintenance tasks beyond the owner’s capabilities.
This change has both positives and negatives, he says.
“A major ‘pro’ is that we are using the software that’s deployed in the actual aircraft, or modified by the OEM, so we know it’s accurate. A ‘con’ is that the engineer does not know enough about the internal workings of the module, since there’s no visibility into what the module is doing.
“I think the OEMs are seeing an opportunity to better protect their intellectual property (IP), instead of handing over block diagrams that show their internal workings.”
LMCFT says it believes that Lockheed Martin’s legacy as a systems integrator will help it cope with this trend.
For its part, Airbus says it is developing more of the software for simulators partly because of the increasing complexity of aircraft such as the A350 and A380, but also because of export control limitations. The simulator manufacturers appreciate receiving a "plug and play" system from the OEM, believes Antoine Renaud, head of Airbus’s simulator data group.
Airbus plans to station A350 simulators close to its customers’ location, which is why an early location will be Singapore, which may eventually have up to four such machines. “This is the place where we believe we have to be,” says Renaud. The first is scheduled to be in place by the end of this year.
Boeing Flight Services, meanwhile, reports that demand for simulator training is busier than ever. “We’re going gangbusters,” says Sherry Carbary, vice-president, Boeing Flight Services. “We’re actually turning customers away on a daily basis.”
Boeing Flight Services operates 17 training campuses worldwide, with three offering advanced Boeing 787 training suites for both flight and maintenance technician training. Three 787 simulators are based at London Gatwick, with two apiece at Miami and Singapore. One simulator has also been placed in Shanghai, specifically for Boeing’s Chinese customers.
“We’re always looking at what makes sense in terms of more capacity. We’ve added multiple devices across the network and we keep adding them,” says Carbary.
“If you’re a new customer or you’re operating a new Boeing aircraft type and need training, you will always get your training time.
“But it’s the case that we’re sometimes so full that if someone calls us and says ‘I’d like to get 20 crews [trained] on the 777’, we have to sometimes say: ‘We can’t do it.’”
To get round this problem, Boeing sometimes refers the customer to airlines with which it has a close relationship and which may have spare simulator capacity.
Like Airbus, Boeing is moving towards a situation where it has more input into simulators, notably those for the 787. “The simulator will still be produced by the simulator manufacturer,” says Carbary, “but the Boeing component has grown quite a bit.” As well as the data packages it traditionally supplied to the simulator manufacturers, Boeing now provides hardware: “All the stuff that will be on the flightdeck.”
New features are starting to be incorporated into the latest generation of simulators. Following a series of loss of control in flight (LOC-I) accidents in recent years that have made it the world’s primary cause of airline fatalities, the phenomenon is starting to be tackled in simulators.
At WATS, CAE announced it had qualified the world’s first simulators equipped with Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPRT) instructor stations approved by both the FAA and EASA. New FAA regulations to enhance training to tackle LOC-I are on the way, but the move by CAE pre-empts these.
UPRT “is a very hot topic in the industry”, confirms Dr Nidal Sammur, director, engineering, at FSI. Software is being developed to allow stall manoeuvres and recovery to be performed.
FSI’s recovery programme has been demonstrated to a number of major flight operations departments and has been “extremely well received”, says the company. (Its first such programme has been developed not for an airliner but the Gulfstream G550 executive jet, with training now underway in Savannah.)
Among other developments from FSI is a new software module that gives greater fidelity for taxiing practice. That is being installed on new-build simulators and will be available for retrofitting.
FSI operates a fleet of some 300 simulators in 40 "learning centres" around the world. The company has primarily focused on providing simulators for the regional airliner market but, like many airlines, is up-gauging.
“We have an Airbus A350 simulator in test today,” says Van Maren. Currently, he believes the only operational A350 simulator is at Airbus’s Toulouse plant, although “I know one or two others have been delivered". FSI’s example is completing its testing procedures but he cannot at this stage say for which customer it is destined.
Boeing is placing emphasis on the relatively short time required to convert from other types in its range to the 787. A 777 pilot, for example, would require just five days to move over to the more modern design, two in the classroom and three in an FFS.
It is aiming for similarly short conversion times to its latest aircraft, the 737 Max and the 777X. “In the Max development, we’re counting on pilots coming off the [737] New Generation on to a Max with very little additional training needed,” says Carbary. The details are still being worked through, and the regulator will have to get involved to certify the required training period. “A similarly small jump is the goal with the 777X.”
Airbus, too, is emphasising the short time required for conversions. The A330 and A350 will have a common type rating. Converting to the new generation twin-jet will take eight days – four working on systems knowledge in the classroom, followed by another four in the simulator – although the simulator in this case need not be an FFS Level D machine, on which hours spent are accorded the same credit as flying the real aircraft. It will, instead, be a fixed-base Level Two machine.
Meanwhile, new materials and technologies are being pressed into service to improve the appearance of simulator visuals. FSI’s vice-president, visual systems, Jon Hester, points to the increasing use of glass, rather than the metallised plastic Mylar, as mirrors within simulators.
For maximum visual fidelity, the surface onto which images are projected should be as close to spherical as possible. “What the industry does now is take a metallised plastic, stretch it over a frame and pull it into shape with a vacuum. This isn’t a precise spherical surface; use glass and you get a better picture. You’ve also got a very smooth surface, whereas with plastic you get micro-cracks in it because of the vacuum.” This gives a less crisp image.
Mylar is also more susceptible to damage: “Somebody can accidentally poke a hole through it with a screwdriver.”
Advances are also afoot in the type of projectors used. The FAA has certified the first laser phosphor projector, which gives a crisper image and whose considerably longer life-cycle compared to its predecessors eases the pressure on maintenance teams from having to swap out lamps in the increasingly restricted down-time allocated to simulators. With airlines racing to train enough crews for their growing fleets, it is becoming increasingly common for simulators to be operating 20h out of every 24h.
Source: Flight International
