Canada to train Vietnam Airlines’ pilots in HCMC

By Toan Dao July 11, 2016 | 05:10 pm PT

Pilots of huge airplanes, A350 and Boeing 787, will be trained in Vietnam next year.

Canadian CAE Inc. will provide training services for pilots from the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines in Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnamplus reported Monday.

Under a 10-year agreement signed between the two companies recently, CAE will deliver three new full-flight simulators - Airbus A320, A350 and Boeing 787- to install in Vietnam Airlines (VNA) training center in Ho Chi Minh City and support the Vietnamese partner to train teaching and technical staff to operate the simulators. VNA is in charge of supply infrastructure and human resources for the operation of the simulators.

Cooperation with CAE will help VNA to save costs of sending its pilots overseas for training, said the company’s chairman of the Board of Directors Pham Ngoc Minh.

"We are honored that CAE is our training partner of choice, helping us deliver world-class service to our passengers, including the highest standards of quality and safety," Minh said.

Vietnam is the fourth country in Southeast Asia, after Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, to receive training services from CAE, which will begin in mid-2017, Minh added.

The VNA training center in Ho Chi Minh City is capable of holding six full-flight simulators. The firm has already installed a simulator of A320-200 to train pilots of A321 planes as well as one A320 flight training device. VNA began training its pilots of A321 planes at the center in June 2012.

A Vietnam Airlines' Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. Photo by VnExpress/Minh Tri

CAE provides training for the civil aviation, defense and security and healthcare markets worldwide. It has 160 sites and training locations in 35 countries, including joint venture operations, and the world's largest installed base of flight simulators. Each year, CAE trains more than 120,000 civil and defense crewmembers, as well as thousands of healthcare professionals, the Canadian company said.

VNA, which has several modern airplanes including A350 and Boeing 787, plans to carry 20.1 million passengers this year, an increase of 15.5 percent from 2015.

> Vietnam Airlines targets 20 million passengers, $3.4 billion revenue this year