Hard on the heels of its selection by Boeing to supply the first 787 training devices, Thales has won its second Airbus A380 flight simulator contract. Malaysia Airlines has ordered an A380 full-flight simulator and systems trainer for delivery in September 2006. Thales’s first A380 customer was Singapore Airlines.

The Malaysian simulator will feature Thales’s new electro-hydraulic motion system and an Evans & Sutherland EP-1000CT visual system with LaserWide projectors. In additional to the three-dimensional systems trainer, the airline has an option for a two-dimensional version.

Thales’s only simulator rival on the A380 is CAE, which has already landed two A380 airline customers – Emirates and Qantas – as well as Airbus for its Toulouse training facility.

Thales has also sold a Boeing 777-300ER full-flight simulator to Air France, and will upgrade the airline’s existing 777-200ER machine to also represent the -300ER.

CAE, meanwhile, has sold two simulators for the Embraer 170 and 190 to Air Canada. The E-170 machine will be installed in Toronto in the first quarter of next year, and the E-190 in the third quarter. Both machines will have CAE visuals. Air Canada has also ordered two three-dimensional trainers and four desktop trainers for the E-170.

CAE has also sold a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 simulator to All Nippon Airways (ANA), for installation at ANA’s Haneda airport, Tokyo, training centre in the fourth quarter of next year.

  •  Boeing subsidiary Alteon Training is to place a 737-700/800 flight simulator and a training device for the 737 and 777 twinjets in Aeromexico’s Mexico City facility.

GRAHAM WARWICK/WASHINGTON DC

Source: Flight International

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