Airbus's Rs. 260-crore flight school to take off in Delhi.

Airbus will invest Rs. 260 crore in setting up a pilot and engineer training centre in Delhi. The centre will come up by end-2017, Airbus announced recently.

The centre will house four A320 aircraft simulators in the first phase and will be used for command training and refresher courses, among others.

The centre will have capacity to train 8,000 pilots and 2,000 maintenance engineers over 10 years. Currently, Airbus trains maintenance engineers at Bengaluru and has so far trained 2,750.

There are 210 Airbus aircraft in service in India and the plane maker has a backlog of more than 520 planes. IndiGo is the largest customer, with an order size of 430 A320 planes.

The plane maker estimates India will require 1,600 planes over next 20 years, making it critical for airlines to have adequate number of trained pilots and engineers. The centre in Delhi will help that purpose. Also, training staff in India will help the airlines in saving costs incurred in sending them abroad.

'We are committed to support India in aviation and aerospace ecosystem,' said Airbus India president Srinivasan Dwarakanath.

'On average, one Airbus aircraft per week is expected to be delivered to Indian carriers over the next 10 years. The need for top-quality training will be perpetual,' he added.

He said that Airbus decided Delhi as its location for training centre, keeping in mind customer requirements. Delhi is a key base for Air India, IndiGo, and Vistara.

The European plane maker has pilot training centres at Toulouse (France), Miami, China, and Singapore.

BS