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Volocopter and CAE to develop global training programme for future eVTOL aircraft pilots

Volo­copter has part­nered with CAE to devel­op, cer­ti­fy, and deploy a pilot train­ing pro­gramme for eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions, which will see the Ger­man start­up pur­chase a sim­u­la­tor to be used in its pilot train­ing pro­gram cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The aim of this new part­ner­ship will be to help devel­op the pilot work­force of the future and ensure the safe intro­duc­tion of eVTOL oper­a­tions across the world, by lever­ag­ing CAE’s tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, vir­tu­al real­i­ty and mixed real­i­ty. This will also include data ana­lyt­ics and Volo­copter’s under­stand­ing of the require­ments need­ed for inte­gra­tion into the urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem.

CAE will also cre­ate new, stu­dent-cen­tric course­ware specif­i­cal­ly designed for the pilots of the future as Volocopter’s course­ware provider, and will also offer pilot trainees cus­tomised resources to enable faster, more effi­cient pilot train­ing.  

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO of Volo­copter, said: “As we scale our UAM ser­vices in cities around the world, spe­cif­ic pilot train­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tion for our Volo­copters will be an impor­tant ele­ment. We are proud to be part­ner­ing with CAE, who have a track record in devel­op­ing best-in-class, inno­v­a­tive pilot train­ing solu­tions for new air­craft pro­grams. It will great­ly ben­e­fit Volo­copter’s entry-into-ser­vice time­line and scale.

“We are excit­ed about CAE’s endorse­ment and look for­ward to col­lab­o­rate as part­ners focused on com­bin­ing future-ori­ent­ed tech­nolo­gies to ensure avi­a­tion safe­ty.” 

CAE is regard­ed as a glob­al leader in avi­a­tion train­ing and has com­mit­ted to expand­ing its world­wide train­ing net­work with a fore­cast­ed invest­ment of up to $40 mil­lion to meet Volocopter’s pro­ject­ed pilot demand in the ear­ly years of oper­a­tion. CAE will be deploy­ing train­ing equip­ment and instruc­tors in lock­step with Volocopter’s growth.

As out­lined in CAE’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty white paper pub­lished this month, advanced air mobil­i­ty will cre­ate an addi­tion­al surge in the demand for pilots, with an esti­mat­ed 60,000 pilots need­ed with­in the first decade of oper­a­tion. Volo­copter and CAE will work close­ly togeth­er to obtain reg­u­la­to­ry approval for their pilot train­ing pro­gram of the future.

Nick Leon­tidis, CAE’s Group Pres­i­dent, Civ­il Avi­a­tion Train­ing Solu­tions, added: “As a high-tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny and the indus­try leader in pilot train­ing, we con­tin­u­ous­ly look at pro­vid­ing solu­tions that make the world a safer place.

“We are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing Volocopter’s inspir­ing vision and we look for­ward to lead­ing in the design of UAM pilot train­ing that pri­ori­tis­es safe­ty of oper­a­tions through our data-dri­ven solu­tions, world-class pilot train­ing expe­ri­ence, and long­stand­ing rela­tion­ships with civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties across the globe.” 

Volo­copter’s fam­i­ly of elec­tric air­craft con­sist of those trans­port­ing peo­ple (VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect) and prod­ucts (Volo­Drone). The company’s first com­mer­cial eVTOL air­craft, the VoloC­i­ty, is well into its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme with EASA and posi­tioned to launch first ser­vices in time for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Ear­li­er this week, it announced it had acquired DG Flugzeubau’s man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions and secures Pro­duc­tion Organ­i­sa­tion Approval from EASA. This makes the com­pa­ny the only one to hold both POA and Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approvals to advance its air­craft towards com­mer­cial launch.

Through exist­ing agree­ments and part­ner­ships with glob­al lead­ers, such as Daim­ler, Aéro­ports de Paris, Microsoft Azure, Volo­copter plans to launch its ser­vices in a num­ber of cities glob­al­ly with­in the next five years. Volo­copter is com­mit­ted to seek­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with the high­est glob­al safe­ty stan­dards for air­craft and oper­a­tions. 

CAE was the lat­est guest in the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s lat­est eVTOL Writ­ers Group Inter­view, which took place yes­ter­day (Wednes­day). The pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tured Chris Court­ney, Direc­tor of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, and Tim Schoe­nauer, Direc­tor of Glob­al Train­ing Solu­tions.

You can watch the full inter­view by click­ing here.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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