Five-Year Support Program Helps Airline Maintain Highest Levels Of Flight Crew Training

A a five-year Long-Term Support Agreement (LTSA) has been signed by CAE and US Airways through which CAE will assist the airline with simulator planning and engineering for six Airbus A320 and A330 full-flight simulators located in the United States in Charlotte, North Carolina and Phoenix, Arizona.

CAE's new efficiency-oriented solution enables airline simulator training centers to improve schedule predictability in planning multi-year updates and reduce life-cycle training costs by lowering execution risks. The LTSA can include spares, repairs, updates, upgrades, technical training and other engineering support. The CAE LTSA features price protection that covers all included updates and services for the duration of the agreement.

"This innovative program will enable more effective use of customer and CAE engineering management expertise, minimize training schedule impacts from necessary simulator updates, and save significant related costs," said Jeff Roberts, CAE's Group President, Civil Simulation Products, Training and Services. "The LTSA program can establish a long-term horizon for managing simulator support, including a predictive planning environment and roadmap. It leverages the technology advantage of CAE's systems-level design and manufacturing experience as well as supply chain efficiencies from working with hundreds of airline customers and our own global network of more than 160 simulators."

"Our flight simulators are the backbone of our safety-oriented training program, and we employ them at high-utilization rates. We routinely update them over their life cycle to reflect aircraft equipage changes and regulatory-driven modifications to maintain the highest levels of flight crew training," said Capt. Bob Skinner, Managing Director, US Airways Flight Training & Standards. "The Long-Term Support Agreement combines our knowledge base with CAE's data for simulator fleets worldwide to establish an optimal, integrated life-cycle plan for our equipment that will help us control our costs, maximize our training schedule and improve safety by providing our crews with the most realistic training scenarios possible."

US Airways recently purchased a new A320 full-flight simulator from CAE for its Charlotte training facility. The simulator is currently undergoing FAA certification and is expected to be in service early next year. The move comes as the airline replaces its fleet of Boeing B737-300 and -400 series aircraft with new Airbus A320 family equipment by the end of 2014.

FMI: www.cae.com, www.usairways.com