Barcelona-based airline Volotea has chosen Airbus to train all its pilots following the signing of an exclusive five-year contract. The training, which will commence in January 2020, includes type-rating as well as long-term recurrent training linked to Volotea’s growing fleet of Airbus A319s – which will exceed 50 aircraft in 2023. The organization of the training plan is currently on-going, paving the way for the “go-live” next year.
Volotea’s trainees will benefit from long-term use of Airbus’ full-flight simulators – located throughout Airbus’ training center network – and will be taught by a pool of expert pilot instructors, drawn from both Airbus and Volotea. The flexible training scheme will benefit from the cross-fertilization of both Volotea’s and Airbus’ respective expertise and standards. To this end, the airline is initially inducting four of its pilot instructors into Airbus’ training regime, while in parallel, Airbus is aligning around 20 of its own instructors in collaboration with Volotea’s operational requirements. As the airline progressively expands its A319 fleet, the size of the joint instructor pool is expected to commensurably increase. Volotea has selected the Airbus A319 as the model for its planned fleet expansion.
