Canadian avionics firm to enter India

The booming civil aviation market in India has turned fertile for companies that provide simulators for pilot training. CAE, a leader in simulation and modelling technologies for civil aviation and military customers, is looking at expanding its footprints in India. The Quebec-based company with annual revenue of more than Canadian $1 billion has already sold nine flight simulators to major air carriers in India. Air India leads with three, while Indian Airlines (Indian), Jet Airways and Air Deccan have acquired two each. Six of these have already been installed three will be done in 2007. The company is now looking at the emerging airlines like SpiceJet, GoAir, Paramount Airways, Indigo and Kingfisher Airlines to supply simulators and pilot training services. A simulator is a flight training device which perfectly reproduces the cockpit of an aircraft, where a pilot can simulate the conditions he encounters during an actual flight. Looking at the growing need of simulators in India, CAE has recently doubled the number of its engineers to 100 at its development centre in Bangalore. The engineers mainly develop the visuals for customising the simulators for a local market.

"India is definitely a growing market for us and we are very happy to be a part of this growth. We are in discussion with each potential customer in India, who have placed orders for new aircraft during the last two years," Nathalie Bourque, vice president, Global Communication, CAE said. Bourque was part of a high-level delegation from Quebec, which had come to explore possibilities of further strengthening their presence in the Indian aviation market. The Canadian province houses almost 60 per cent of the country's leading aviation companies like Pratt & Whitney Canada, Bell Helicopter, Textron Canada, Bombardier and Alta Precision. CAE presently manufactures about 20-30 simulators in a year. Globally, the company has about 3,500 customers including airlines, OEMs like Airbus and Boeing and people who own business aircraft. Normally, if an airline buys between 20-30 aircraft, it needs a flight simulator for pilot training and those who own fewer aircraft, usually, send their pilots to training centres twice a year. The price of a simulator varies between $10 million and $ 50 million, depending upon the features and services companies intend to buy. Presently, many companies including Kingfisher send their pilots to the CAE training centre in Dubai, which is a joint venture between CAE and the Emirates. CAE runs 22 pilot training centres across the globe. Globally, CAE competes with Thales, a European company, and FSI, which is owned by Warren Edward Buffet, in the commercial simulator space for pilot training.

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