CAE and easyJet inaugurate Milan training centre

CAE and easyJet have opened its newtraining centre near the Milan Malpensa airport in Lombardy, Italy.

The duo inaugurated the new facility alongside local Italian and Canadian government officials.  It is the third training centre CAE have inaugurated in the last month after ceremonies at London Gatwick and Manchester. The new facilities support the pilot training needs of easyJet across Europe.

"CAE will now have the capacity to train over 35,000 commercial pilots in Europe, including more than 2,000 pilots per year at the new CAE Milan training center," said Nick Leontidis, CAE’s Group President, Civil Aviation Training Solutions.

"The CAE Milan training center is a state-of-the-art facility which features modern debriefing rooms and classrooms and the latest technology."

The centre operates three CAE 7000XR Series Airbus A320 FFSs equipped with the CAE Tropos 6000XR visual system. CAE’s latest 600XR Airbus A320 flight training device (FTD), equipped with CAE Tropos 6000XR collimated visual system and a fully enclosed instructor area, will be added in December.  EasyJet will be the first airline company to train its pilots on it.

Milan training centre

The Milan facility was one of the fundamentals of a long-term training contract that the duo signed at EATS. It is the first training centre dedicated to easyJet pilots outside the UK.

"This represents one of the biggest investments in pilot training in Europe in the last five years," said Johan Lundgren, easyJet CEO.

"We decided to have a dedicated training centre here in Italy as a demonstration of our commitment to the country."

EasyJet employ 1,400 pilots and cabin crew on Italian contracts. It has bases in Milan Malpensa, Naples and Venice.  EasyJet is the third-largest airline in Italy with 34 aircraft based there and almost 19 million passengers carried in the last financial year.