Making India a Centre of excellence pilot training: Simaero CEO Nicolas Moute

Indian aviation market is growing very fast but majority of the airlines send their pilots abroad for training, making us look for setting up full-flight simulators in the country at 30% less price, said Simaero CEO Nicolas Moute.

Simaero, headquartered in Paris, is one of the world’s leading providers of pilot training on full-flight simulators and simulation engineering solutions. The company will invest $100 million in India to train up to 5,000 pilots over the next five years.

The firm will bring in the investment in a phased manner to create training infrastructure and install flight simulators to meet the growing demand for pilot training in India and the South Asian region.

Simaero India opened its first A320 NEO full-flight simulator in Gurgaon and plans to take it to eight in the next five years.  

“India has been a long-standing strategic priority for us as we can see the importance of the Indian markets. And in this segment, the Airbus A320 is probably the most successful segment in the Indian market. In the past, there wasn't enough good quality training capacity in India and it was happening outside,” says Moute.

He further explains that company’s vision for India is that it should be a centre of excellence.

“And not only should all the Indian pilots be trained in India, but also India should be a centre of excellence attracting pilots from the region. So, if you combine the growth in traffic and the reversal of this export to import kind of training, then you see that there is a significant need for increased training capacity in India,” he said.

A lot of the training capacity in India was made for A320 CEO, the older generation, but the India fleet has now more new generation aircrafts A320 Neos. Simaero Group incorporated Simaero India Pvt Ltd, based in New Delhi, India in 2023.