Airbus inaugurates first Brazil Training Center

Housing a full-suite of A320 pilot training equipment, including one A320 Family Full Flight Simulator and an Airbus Pilot Trainer, the Airbus Brazil Training Center (ABTC) was inaugurated in June in the Azul Training Facilities at UniAzul in Campinas, São Paulo. It has been training Azul pilots since November 2016.

The vision for the ABTC is ambitious and regional in scope. With a capacity for more than 600 trainees annually, the ABTC is designed to offer flight crew training to Airbus operators not only in Brazil but across the region, and will ultimately serve as a Center of Excellence for South America.

By bringing training and maintenance centers to its South American customers’ backyards, Airbus is helping its customers optimize their operating costs and save crew and pilot travel time and out of pocket travel expenses. The ABTC was designed with Latin America’s aircraft family of choice in mind: the A320. And rightfully so, considering the region’s burgeoning low cost carrier business model generating new competition in the domestic and intra-regional travel market. Pioneering LCCs such as Azul, Interjet, VivaAerobus, and Volaris, and new kids on the block Viva Colombia, Sky Airline, Viva Air Peru and JetSMART are expanding and modernizing their fleets with the A320 Family, and they will need to count on Airbus to keep pace with training requirements for the nearly 450 single-aisle aircraft yet to be delivered in the region.

With the doubling of commercial fleet predicted in the next 20 years generating a need for 530,000 new pilots and 550,000 new maintenance engineers worldwide,* a huge growth opportunity lies ahead for the aviation services business. It’s understandable why Airbus is bullish on expanding its training and services footprint, growing its global network of training locations from five to 16 in only three years. Latin America is no exception to this trend. Pilot demand in the region is expected to grow at 4.7 percent annually between today and 2035, creating an region-wide opportunity to train more than 80,000 new pilots and technicians in the next two decades. Airbus has responded rapidly, with the opening of the ABTC less than a year after the inauguration of the Airbus Mexico City Training Center, the first center of its kind in the region.

*Per the latest Airbus Global Market Forecast 2017-2036.

For more information please contact:
Lindsy Caballero
Communication Specialist - Airbus Latin America & Caribbean
lindsy.caballero@airbus.com