Vb’s New E-jet & 777 Simulators

E-JET – Built by Flight Safety International, operated by Alteon in Brisbane and launched on May 8, the $10 million E-Jet full motion simulator is dubbed Simhorita, and is the first in Australia to feature electric powered motion instead of hydraulics.

The benefits of electric motion include a smaller floor footprint and a more economical operation, with the simulator said to require 70 per cent less power than hydraulic motion simulators of a similar size.

The visuals outside the simulator cockpit use satellite imagery equivalent to the clarity and level of detail of Google Earth.

“The satellite imagery gives the exact positioning of reference features surrounding the airports,” Captain Paul Considine, Virgin Blue’s E-Jet manager of technical operations, told AA. “Using satellite imagery has allowed the graphics guys to focus more on adding detail to the airport’s runways, aprons and buildings to increase the realism. ” On May 5 Virgin Blue commenced its first Australian based E-Jet flightcrew course, training six new first officers (FOs) for its E-Jets, upgrading two of its 737 FOs to E-Jet captains, and converting four 737 captains to type for check and training captaincy.

Developed by Swiss Aviation Training (SAT), the official training provider to Embraer, in conjunction with Virgin Blue, the six week E‑Jet course has been designed to be self paced.

“The E-Jet course has to cater for a broad level of flying experience. The biggest aircraft some trainees have flown is a Beechcraft Baron with no multi-crew experience, whereas others have thousands of hours on the 737,” said Considine.

During the course trainees will switch between using the FFS (in both full flight and fixed base modes), flight management system trainers (FMSTs) and computer based training (CBT) workstations.

“There are a number of exams throughout the course.

Most are typically two hours in length and are very comprehensive with some requiring 100 per cent to pass – it’s a very thorough course,” said Considine.

Virgin Blue needs to train around 120 E-Jet pilots this year. The airline currently has six E-Jets (three -170s and three -190s) in operation across its domestic network with 13 more due by the end of the year.

The first three weeks of the course is classroom based training using the FMST and CBT workstations.

“They will do a lesson on the FMSTs and CBTs as a whole group first, then will go into the simulator in smaller groups and do an exercise to see how the lesson presents on the screens of the FFS.

“All of the FMST and CBT training is designed to prepare them for flying the FFS so when they’re in the simulator they can concentrate on learning to actually fly it rather than learning the peripheral systems,” said Considine.

The remaining three weeks of the course involves flying 44 hours in the FFS, broken into 22 hours as pilot in command flying and 22 hours as support pilot. A further 10 sessions of varying lengths are done in the FFS with no motion.

The simulator allows Virgin Blue to train flightcrew in Australia rather than sending trainees to SAT’s facilities in Zurich.

“Training in Australia will certainly take out some of the stress for the students because they’re not having to deal with being in a foreign country and away from their families,” said Considine.

“We could have elected to do all our training offshore but we elected to bring it inhouse using SAT instructors and course framework – it’s a good compromise between doing the training yourself and having someone do it for you. ” With a new course starting every three weeks, the E-Jet simulator is fully booked for 20 hours a day over the next two years to meet Virgin’s training schedule. Once Virgin Blue is on top of its own E-Jet training, any unused simulator time will be hired out to other E-Jet operators.

777 – Virgin Blue’s new international offshoot, V Australia unveiled its new full motion 777-300ER simulator at an official commissioning ceremony on May 22 in Sydney.

Situated at CAE’s Silverwater corporate headquarters, the FFS was commissioned just seven months after Virgin Blue announced CAE as its preferred bidder.

“We went through many iterations of agreements and designs, with formal agreement being reached in the first week of October last year,” Peter Redman, CAE Australia’s manager of training operations told AA.

“The simulator itself followed a slightly faster build time, however it was the design and construction of the facility and final installation, integration and testing that was really the rapid part. So, we went from formal notification of the location in October 2007, to certification in a new facility on April 24 2008. ” “It normally takes between nine and 12 months to manufacture a 777 ‘7000 Series’ simulator in Montreal, and then some weeks for transportation to Australia, physical installation, and final integration and testing with the customer and authorities (ie CASA),” he added. “On this occasion we had been in discussion with Virgin Blue re the purchase of the 777 simulator during the second quarter of 2007 and had a simulator on the production line in Montreal. ” With Virgin Blue subsequently announcing Sydney as the base for V Australia, the hunt was then on for a suitable location to house the simulator. “The purchase of the sim was secured before the final location was known,” Redman continued. “We first suggested to them in July 2007 that if they were after a Sydney location we had an option for them to consider at Silverwater. The current simulator bay area was being used for warehousing and as a carpark for staff up until the end of October 2007. The design for the simulator bay, computer room, workshop, classrooms and briefing rooms were all completed in house, and CAE contracted the building, electrical and airconditioning work separately to local subcontractors and managed the entire process in house. ” Interestingly, there is sufficient space in the new wing of CAE’s building for a second simulator bay as well as for additional classrooms and associated facilities, and CAE is in discussion with Virgin Blue and other operators about potentially locating a second sim in the building in the future.

The sim arrived in Australia on January 29, and was installed by a team comprising local technical staff and installation specialists from CAE’s head office in Montreal. It is the first 777 simulator to be installed in Australia, and directly replicates the flight deck of the 777-300ER of which V Australia has seven on order to commence trans-Pacific services from December this year.

“For the first time in our eight year history, Virgin Blue has a crew training facility in NSW to complement our existing 737 and E-Jet training facilities in Brisbane and Melbourne,” said Virgin Blue CEO Brett Godfrey.

The initial cadre of pilots have been drawn from a mix of experienced long haul and relatively new commercial pilots, a move that will give the airline a broad base of experience levels to draw from while ensuring logical and staggered longer term succession planning.

“V Australia pilots will undergo world class training right here in Australia and while it is certainly more convenient for our airline and our pilots than having to fly to Singapore for simulator sessions, it has economic and business spin-off ’s for V Australia’s operational base in NSW,” Godfrey added.

CAE says it expects V Australia to operate the sim at an initial rate of about 4000 hours per year, but there are operational tiers ranging from 2600 to 5800 hours which can be utilised. While V Australia owns the machine and conducts the training, CAE provides the facility as well as maintenance and engineering services to maintain the simulator and its certification.

“The typical maintenance workload has decreased with the introduction of new technologies,” said Peter Redman. “Electric motion and control loading systems, and the introduction of LcOS projectors have enabled all operators to reduce the time required for on-going maintenance over that of the more traditional simulators. ” As with all of Virgin Blue’s aircraft, the new simulator was also given a name.

However, rather than a clever play on a female or place name, it was instead named Jim’s Sim. This is in honour of Jim Tully who, before passing away late last year, had led the effort to select and acquire the sim.