Mark Huber is an aviation industry veteran who has worked in the flight training, aircraft sales, aircraft component, and airport development businesses. He has flight time in more than 50 different and diverse aircraft, including helicopters, aerobatic aircraft, vintage warbirds, jet fighters, business jets and turboprops, and transport-category aircraft. He has jumped out of several of these—on purpose—with a parachute. His defense and aviation journalism has been published in a variety of national and international periodicals.

Contributor

Mark Huber

Two years ago, FlightSafety International nearly doubled the size of its Dallas Learning Center at DFW. The company’s largest campus, founded in 2000, has grown to 210,000 sq ft and now features 24 simulator pads, more classrooms and an engine shop, allowing FlightSafety to add several new programs. The Dallas center has 250 employees (125 of them instructors) and graduates 10,500 students annually. One-third of those students are from outside the U.S. “Dallas is just a great place to get to with direct flights, and that helps a lot,” said center manager Dan MacLellan.


And when the rigors of training become overly stressful, students can walk down the hall and get a massage.


“We have some niceties in the building. We went out and bought mountain bikes and golf clubs. There’s a barber shop in the building and a massage therapist as well. If you are here for three weeks, you can’t train the whole time,” MacLellan said. Student rental cars are delivered either to their hotels or to the learning center, and there is a luggage check room for arriving and departing students.


The center is continuing to add new programs and recently moved Bell helicopter twin-engine simulators from Bell’s Fort Worth training center to the DFW campus.


Current programs include the entire Dassault Falcon line for pilots and maintenance technicians, all midsize-cabin Gulfstreams and large cabins through the G550, the Pilatus PC-12NG, Bell twins (430, 212, 412), the Eurocopter EC135 and training on 15 Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada different business jet and helicopter engines. “That has been a big area of growth for us; we got that program [P&amp;WC’s 30-hour OEM maintenance course] 18 months ago,” MacLellan said. The engine course consists of 22 hours of classroom instruction and eight hours of hands-on training in the high-tech engine shop. Images from a borescope inspection are transmitted to a large display screen for the benefit of the entire class.


The center also offers cabin attendant emergency training in a mockup, complete with real smoke, emergency windows that can actually be detached and tossed, and climbing into an aircraft-matched life raft in the pool at the nearby American Airlines training center.


Most of the center’s Level-D simulators have companion FlightSafety-designed graphical flight simulators for remediation and familiarization. The newer Level-D sims feature full-electric motor function as opposed to the old-style, more complex and expensive hydraulic actuators that have traditionally been used to provide motion. “It is so quiet and so smooth,” MacLellan said of the new electric simulator technology.


All simulator flight data is captured for replay and review through a video data system. “By filming the crew you get the CRM piece as well,” says MacLellan.


&nbsp;

News about simulators and training procedures, as well as workforce.

FlightSafety Showcases Dallas Expansion

2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

Charles Alcock

News and issues regarding all manner of civil and military rotorcraft and their powerplants, including helicopters, tilt rotors and unmanned air vehicles.

News and information on safety procedures and concerns.

News and issues relating to business, corporate and private aviation, primarily regarding turbine-engine-powered airplanes and helicopters. Subjects include aircraft, engines, maintenance, operations, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security, and training.

Austrian manufacturer has yet to say which rotorcraft types it will support 

Axis Announces Plans for Helicopter Training Systems

AIN Staff

In a Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit (CALS) roundtable on retention, an aviation staffing expert and flight department leaders traded hard-won lessons on money, culture, and knowing who you’re really competing with.

The Retention Stool Has Four Legs: What Flight Departments Get Wrong about Keeping Talent

Across three separate CALS sessions, flight department leaders worked through the same hard questions about earning trust, leading individuals, and holding the line.

Leadership from the Cockpit to the Department: What Three Days of Roundtables Revealed

News and developments about airplanes, helicopters and unmanned air vehicles used in all varieties of operations, including airlines, military, business, commercial, general aviation and private.

News and issues relating to the aerospace industry that are related to the science, engineering and business of flight in space involving civil, industrial and military applications, and similar topics related to flight in the atmosphere of the Earth that are not covered more directly by other AINonline subject channels. In other words, both astronautical and aeronautical subjects, except for those aeronautical topics that are specifically covered elsewhere on this website.

The lack of 3D data is holding back some aspects of manufacturing 

Tapping Data to Safely Drive Up Aerospace Productivity

Matt Thurber

Draper to stay until the end of the year to smooth the transition

Rohloff New Textron Aviation CEO as Ron Draper Retires

News and issues concerning the aviation charter and fractional-ownership industries and markets, including company announcements, regulations, new developments and labor issues.

More In Training and Workforce

Axis Announces Plans for Helicopter Training Systems

Austrian manufacturer has yet to say which rotorcraft types it will support

The Retention Stool Has Four Legs: What Flight Departments Get Wrong about Keeping Talent

In a Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit (CALS) roundtable on retention, an aviation staffing expert and flight department leaders traded hard-won lessons on money, culture, and knowing who you’re really competing with.

Leadership from the Cockpit to the Department: What Three Days of Roundtables Revealed

Across three separate CALS sessions, flight department leaders worked through the same hard questions about earning trust, leading individuals, and holding the line.

Tapping Data to Safely Drive Up Aerospace Productivity

The lack of 3D data is holding back some aspects of manufacturing

Rohloff New Textron Aviation CEO as Ron Draper Retires

Draper to stay until the end of the year to smooth the transition

Air Charter Association Expands NextGen Group

Saxon Air executive Rachel Harvey chairs the group for young charter professionals

AINsight: Your Team Is Always Recruiting

Building recruiting reputations for your company long before a job is posted

Kawasaki To Deploy 1st Asia-Pac Loft H145 VR Simulator

Virtual-reality device allows pilots and crew to practice realistic emergency scenarios

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN