Emirates Airline has set its sights on boosting flight crew training capacity for its future Airbus A350 and Boeing 777X widebodies by opening a new facility housing six full-flight simulator bays in March 2024. Coupled with existing colleges at Garhoud in the UAE, the new facility will allow the airline to expand its pilot training capacity by 54 percent, bringing the total to 17 full flight simulator bays offering a capacity of more than 130,000 training hours annually.
The airline has operated the Emirates Flight Training Academy (EFTA) in Dubai South since 2017, offering training for UAE nationals and international cadets. The facility has graduated more than 100 cadets since 2020, an Emirates spokesperson told AIN.
EFTA operates a fleet of 27 training aircraft to train cadets with no previous knowledge of flying. Today, the fleet includes 22 Cirrus SR22 G6 single-engine piston aircraft, three Diamond DA42-VI diesel twin-engine machines, and five Embraer Phenom 100EV very light jets.
The facility offers six full-motion flight simulators, an independent air traffic control tower, and a dedicated 5,900-foot runway. Cadets undergo 53 weeks of ground school, 900 hours of training on simulators, and more than 250 hours on the Cirrus, Diamond, and Phenom aircraft.
According to the U.S-based pilot-employment platform PilotsGlobal, traffic among Middle East carriers in May 2023 had grown by 17.2 percent over May 2019 levels, as measured by revenue passenger kilometers.
“This is by far the best pre-to-post-Covid rate of recovery in any region, with North America the only other region with an increase at 1.8 percent above 2019 levels in terms of international passenger traffic,” PilotsGlobal v-p Gregory Newman told AIN.
According to UAE news reports, Riyadh Air COO Peter Bellew has set a goal to hire 700 pilots for the 39 Boeing 787-9 airliners on order. Newman noted the airline appears on track to meet its hiring target. “If the option to acquire 33 additional widebodies is exercised, the hiring will only go up from there,” he said. “PilotsGlobal has referred over 1,700 pilots to Riyadh Air as of September, and it is our assessment that they will not have any issue hiring their targeted 700 pilots.”
The new Saudi carrier is looking to recruit flight crew at a time when, not only have the mainline carriers fully recovered in terms of demand, but business aviation employers and flight schools in the region are beginning to recruit pilots and instructors again. As of September 30, the PilotsGlobal platform had processed 22,000 pilot referrals across Middle East vacancies, underlining strong interest among the pilot community to work in the region.
PilotsGlobal’s recent estimates—if current aircraft order backlogs in the Middle East ultimately result in a corresponding number of deliveries—foresee a total of roughly 13,500 new pilots needed by the market in the relatively short term, split evenly between widebody and narrowbody aircraft. “This is a new trend in terms of the need for narrowbody aircraft in the Middle East, proving the strong proliferation of low-cost carriers coming into the market in a region that was dominated by widebody aircraft for many years,” he said.
Emirates-CAE Focuses on Business Aviation
Emirates-CAE Flight Training primarily trains business aviation pilots, while FlyDubai accounts for the bulk of its work for scheduled carriers. The airline and the flight training firm entered an agreement to collaborate in 2002, and the relationship led to a 50-50 joint venture in 2006.
According to the company's Dubai-based managing director, Nimrod Mueleman, it now manages a total of 19 simulators and trained a total of about 12,000 pilots a year. Business jet training includes instruction on the Bombardier Global 7500, 6500, and Global Express models, as well as the Challenger 604 and 605.
“We have what we call a Bombardier Center of Excellence here in the Middle East, which is the only one outside of North America,” he told AIN. “Five of the simulators are for scheduled airlines and the rest are for business aviation.”
Mueleman said about 30 percent of the company’s business came from Europe, 30 percent from Middle East customers, 30 percent from Asia, including China, Japan, Australia, and Southeast Asia, and about 10 percent from the Americas. “We have 38 different national authorities that have approved our training center here in Dubai,” he concluded.