Pacific Flight Services is opening a dedicated flight simulator centre as part of its growing campus at Bankstown Airport.
The new building will house two new state-of-the-art simulators, a CR-12 and an A320 procedural trainer. The CR-12 is aimed at students looking to undertake or renew instrument ratings, while the A320 is a procedural trainer for the popular Airbus airliner.
The A320 procedural trainer has come from the now defunct Proflite Australia Flight Training Centre, which recently closed its Bankstown operation.
Pacific Flight Services’ simulator instructor Jonathan Garside says the new flight sim centre is being developed after a lack of quality simulators in the Sydney pilot training market was identified.
“We have called the new project ‘PilotCentre’,” Garside explains. “The problem for anyone wanting to get an instrument rating was that all the simulators on [Bankstown] Airport were about 30 years old.”
“It’s just what the airport needs to stimulate growth in 2010,” Pacific Flight Services Regional Manager Rod Crane added.
The new CR-12 is a fully digital machine with an immersive visual system and modern avionics including Garmin 430 GPS and full autopilot, while the A320 procedural trainer is a facsimile of the real Airbus airliner’s cockpit.
Pacific Flight Services expects to receive CASA approval for the CR-12 over the next two weeks, but bookings on the sim are currently being taken. For more information on Pacific Flight Services’ new flight sim centre click here.