September 2005
New Simulator for Police and Utility Operators

Flying Training at Specialist Aviation Services has received a major boost with the introduction of its new mobile Helicopter Flight Training Device which will be on show at Helitech 2005.

The company is now able to undertake mandatory instrument flying training for Police Air Operations at a fraction of the cost of using its own aircraft and it is also able to offer significant savings on IR courses to other utility helicopter operators and pilots.

The Flight Navigation Procedural Trainer is the first of its type in the UK and it has recently achieved a Level 2 qualification. This means that most of the flying can now be done in the simulator, rather than in the air. The company’s Full IR course, previously required a minimum of 40 hours in the air. Now, with the new simulator, this figure is down to only 10 hours.

For Police operations, pilots require 4 hours of instrument flying to be conducted per aircraft type each year. SAS can now carry out three of the four hours in the simulator. In addition, the device can be towed to the operating base and pilots can be trained whilst on ‘standby’. Hence, there is no need to double-up on rosters in order to keep the operation on-line.