Things to Do in Denver …

United Airlines has announced plans to expand its flight training center to facilitate the carrier’s plans to hire 10,000 more pilots by 2030. The expansion will see a new, four-story building and 12 new, full-motion flight simulators added to the airline’s 23-acre campus in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood.

Currently, the campus features seven buildings comprising 550,000 square feet of space, 39 full-motion simulators, and 15 fixed training devices.

According to United, once construction is finished and all of the equipment is delivered, the site will boast a total of 52 full-motion simulators representing every type of mainline aircraft United operates, and 28 fixed training stations.

United expects the expansion to help keep its operation running smoothly by providing sufficient capacity to keep pilots current, thereby avoiding the training log-jams that plague the industry.

Captain Marc Champion, Managing Director of United’s flight training center states, “We’ve got a lot of growth planned over the next five-plus years, and we anticipate that we’re not really gonna have much surplus time to be able to make available to other carriers out there … we anticipate using most everything available to us.”

United recently purchased and began operating its own flight academy, taking prospective pilots with potentially no flying experience and training them before offering them a pipeline to jobs at one of the carrier’s regional airlines—followed by guaranteed placement with the mainline carrier. The airline has said it plans to hire and train 5,000 pilots, or half of its overall goal, through that program. United said it expects to hire 2,000 pilots in 2022.

FMI: www.united.com/en/us