Brussels Airlines and Lufthansa Aviation Training kindly invited us for the official opening of their new training centre in Vilvoorde, near Brussels Airport.

The main incentive for the opening of the new training centre was that the Brussels Airlines current training facilities where rather dispersed throughout the country. After the Sabena bankrupty in 2001 its training facilities where split and sold to different new owners. For example the emergency slides where acquired by Charleroi Airport and thus Brussels Airlines had to use busses to shuttle their trainees to the various training sites throughout Belgium.

As their current training facilities in Brussels Airport had to move anyway as the building is slated for demolition, the idea ripened to build a complete new training facility to centralise all training. This new training centre is also an extra opportunity within the wider Lufthansa Group to optimize training efficiency as other Lufthansa group airlines can use this centre if and when needed.

If you where expecting big moving cockpit simulators you won’t find them on this new site as the training centre is mainly focused on cabin crew and safety trainings, pilot training in the moving simulators is still elsewhere. Also the ditching training will still take place at a public pool, the only training centre with its own pool is the one in Frankfurt.

The centre does however have all the equipment for cabin crew training and safety training.

They went all the way to Spain to acquire old Airbus A320 fuselages and turn them into trainers.

While there is a simple passive mockup for normal cabin service training they also have a fully animated safety training mockup.

In this interactive mockup all windows and doors have projections able to simulate all kinds of outdoor situations, from normal flight to fires and water ditchings. Here the cabin crew will train together with pilots to handle all kinds of emergencies.

The training centre also has door training units for the bigger A330, as well as, surprisingly, the Boeing 737 and 787. Even though Brussels Airlines doesn’t have either type in it’s fleet these are meant for training for TUIfly Belgium which will also make use of these training facilities.

At the far end of the facility where real-life escape slides to be used for training. There was a small A320 series one as well as a big A330 series one that could also be used as a life raft.

Outside in the backyard was a red container, this was the fire trainer. Here they could simulate all kinds of fires and how to extinguish them. They also kindly showed us an example. The fire trainer was provided by TUIfly Belgium as part of their partnership with the training centre.

One of the highlights of the day was the electric van at the entrance. Here they demonstrated the new VR training Lufthansa Aviation Training developed in cooperation with Airbus. Using either a 2D format on a tablet or a very realistic 3D format using a Meta VR headset they will be using this as a base training for pilots getting their type certification after their basic flight training.

A lot of basic tasks can be practised in a more efficient and cost-effective way instead of having to use the expensive full flight simulators or real aircraft. Of course they will still use the big moving simulators for more advanced and complicated training.

I was allowed to test the VR glasses out myself and was very impressed by how well it was executed. You could feel every knob and lever you moved click and twist.

As I used to fly on flight simulator when I was younger I really wished I had such a realistic simulator at home.

By using a normal commercially available Meta headseat this also enables new pilot trainees to invest in one to improve their training at home should they wish to (the trainers emphasized that this will not be a requirement to partake in training and VR headsets in training centre will be provided by the company)

We where very happy to be invited by Brussels Airlines and Lufthansa Aviation Training for this small peek behind the curtain. It was a very informative event and provided some very nice throwbacks to my time in aviation. 

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