BETA Technologies to partner with CAE and create pilot training and maintenance programme for its ALIA eVTOL aircraft

BETA Tech­nolo­gies has select­ed CAE as its part­ner of choice to design and devel­op its pilot and main­te­nance tech­ni­cian train­ing pro­gram for the ALIA eVTOL air­craft.

CAE will lever­age its decades of train­ing exper­tise to devel­op a full suite of inno­v­a­tive, dig­i­tal­ly inte­grat­ed cur­ricu­lum and course­ware solu­tions for the future avi­a­tion work­force. The new train­ing pro­gramme will be built from the ground-up, in par­al­lel with BETA’s air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion jour­ney, tak­ing into account the unique oper­a­tional and mis­sion spe­cif­ic inputs for this air­craft.

In sup­port of the emerg­ing mar­ket, CAE’s ded­i­cat­ed Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty group offers train­ing and oper­a­tional sup­port solu­tions to help inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies such as BETA cer­ti­fy their eVTOL air­craft, train their pilots and main­tain­ers, and scale stan­dard­ised AAM oper­a­tions across glob­al mar­kets.

Kyle Clark, Founder & CEO at BETA, said: “CAE has a rich his­to­ry in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the devel­op­ment and launch of many inno­v­a­tive air­craft. Fly­ing and main­tain­ing elec­tric air­craft requires an under­stand­ing of elec­tric sys­tems and flight dynam­ics that are new to avi­a­tion.

“Our team is thrilled to be bring­ing in CAE’s exper­tise into the fold as we work hand in hand to teach the next gen­er­a­tion of pilots and mechan­ics the unique aspects of fly­ing and main­tain­ing elec­tric air­craft.”

BETA brings a diverse cus­tomer base to the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket. It is the first eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er to receive manned air­wor­thi­ness from the US Air Force and the com­pa­ny has cus­tomers across a suite of indus­tries includ­ing logis­tics (UPS), med­ical (Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics), pas­sen­ger (Blade), and mil­i­tary (U.S. Air Force). BETA has hun­dreds of hours of manned full-scale flight test­ing and recent­ly flew its ALIA air­craft more than 200 miles.

In Novem­ber 2020, CAE released a report on the Pilot Demand Out­look between 2020–2029, which esti­mat­ed an expect­ed glob­al require­ment of 264,000 new pilots in the civ­il avi­a­tion indus­try to sus­tain growth over the next ten years. This does not take into account the addi­tion­al surge in demand for pilots and tech­ni­cians in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.

CAE has sad it is com­mit­ted to lever­ag­ing new dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and devel­op­ing train­ing method­olo­gies designed for a faster, bet­ter, and more effi­cient through­put of high­ly qual­i­fied pilots and main­te­nance tech­ni­cians for this new era of avi­a­tion.

Nick Leon­tidis, CAE’s Group Pres­i­dent, Civ­il Avi­a­tion Train­ing Solu­tions, said: “We are draw­ing on CAE’s close to 75 years of avi­a­tion indus­try thought lead­er­ship to help accel­er­ate the advance­ment of the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try. We are very excit­ed to part­ner in the enable­ment of this new gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tors and tech­ni­cians, who we believe will play a key role in the future suc­cess of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary indus­try.

“This marks the first step to what we believe will be a long-term part­ner­ship with BETA, and anoth­er exam­ple of our com­mit­ment to future avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”