The Hindu : CTE plans to acquire two more Airbus simulators

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 21, 2003

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CTE plans to acquire two more Airbus simulators

By Y. Mallikarjun

HYDERABAD Aug. 20. Plans are afoot to acquire two more A-320 Airbus simulators by the Hyderabad-based Central Training Establishment (CTE) of Indian Airlines (IA), stated to be the best equipped facility of its kind in South Asia, offering hands-on learning to pilots and others in all aspects of civil aviation.

Established 45 years ago on a 20-acre campus, the CTE with its state-of-the-art facilities has grown into an internationally reputed institution and is proposed to be developed into an Air University. Apart from pilots, the others who undergo training at the CTE are flight engineers, cabin crew, ground engineers, ground support staff and commercial officers.

It is now equipped with four latest generation six axis flight simulators — an Airbus A 300 simulator, two A-320 simulators and a Boeing 737 simulator — providing high-quality training in various flight procedures, including the handling of emergency situations without actually flying the aircraft.

In order to meet the future needs and in view of the proposals to augment the existing fleet of IA by acquiring Airbus family aircraft, the CTE is planning to acquire two Airbus A-320 flight simulators, A. K. Malhotra, Director, Training, and Chief Executive of CTE, told The Hindu here on Wednesday. He said a committee had suggested that the fleet should be augmented by acquiring Airbus A 319, A-320 and A 321 types of aircraft to meet the aviation requirements up to 2008.

"As and when the order for new aircraft is placed with the manufacturer, we will be going for two new A-320 simulators.'' Even if A-319 and A-321 were acquired, the training could be imparted in A-320 simulator as the cockpit layout was the same for all the three.

He said that among the new aircraft to be acquired, A-319 would be leased to Alliance Air, while the rest would be with IA. The existing A-320 simulators had been upgraded and pilots had been trained under the Category-three system (a precision instrument approach). This would enable the pilots to land in poor visibility during winter in Delhi where the equipment with auto-landing facility had been installed.

He said that apart from meeting the training commitments of IA, the state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities with highest international standards, had enabled the CTE to offer simulator facilities to several private and foreign airlines, including British Airways, Air Lanka, Zambia Airways, Air Tanzania, Royal Nepal Airlines, Bangladesh Biman, Ariana and Yemenia and earn considerable revenue in foreign exchange. The CTE would be giving training next month to flight engineers and pilots of Ariana Afghan Airlines who had taken three A-300 aircraft on lease from Air India. The CTE, which was declared as an independent profit centre in 1995, had earned $15,000 in the last three months.

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