THOMSON TRAINING & Simulation (TTS) is to relocate its Orbit Flight Training subsidiary from East Midlands Airport to a site near London Heathrow. As part of the move, planned for early 1998, the independent pilot-training centre has sold its two Boeing 737 simulators to Continental and Southwest Airlines.
The new centre will have six simulator bays and include the TTS-built Airbus A320 and Boeing 777 full-flight simulators now operational at East Midlands. TTS is building an Airbus A340 simulator, which is to enter service at Orbit's new centre early in 1998.
Orbit says that Heathrow is a "much more convenient location" for providing pilot training. Virgin Atlantic Airways has agreed to use Orbit's new A340 simulator for at least five years.
- TTS has received a £60 million ($97 million) contract from British Aerospace to supply training devices for the Royal Air Force's Nimrod 2000 replacement maritime-patrol aircraft. The company will supply two dynamic simulators, two crew trainers, a pilot station and a part-task trainer.
The dynamic simulators are full-flight devices, with visual and motion systems, and can be networked with the fixed-base crew trainers, which simulate aircraft systems. The pilot station, for procedural training, and the part-task trainer, which provides basic training on aircraft-systems operation, are fixed-base machines.
The first training devices - one dynamic simulator, a crew trainer and the part-task trainer - are to be delivered to RAF Kinloss in Scotland between December 2000 and June 2001. The other devices will be delivered by 2004.
Source: Flight International
