CAE/Japan airlines

The Friday 22 April, we had the honor to visit the center of information of CAE/JAL, a subdivision of CAE company which located in Tokyo. CAE, Canadian Aviation Electronics, is one of the biggest manufactures of the simulator with formation complete. Their products did not cover only the sector of civil aviation, but also the sector of defense, the security and the health.

Once we arrived, we had been received very gently by the company and we had been invited directly to the conference room to begin the meeting. First, CAE introduced globally their company and the JAL (Japan Airlines), a Japanese national airline company, which has a long term relationship with CAE. This information center offers the formations for the civil airplane platform like Boeing 737, Boeing 767, Boeing 777 and Boeing 787. Presently, there were 8 simulators which were installed in the center to give the formation to the pilots. And they aim to have 4 more simulators at the center in the coming years.

After, they presented the importance of the flight simulators for the pilots and the airline companies. A flight simulator is relatively cheaper than the training in an aircraft and its lifecycle is around 25 years depending on the frequency of use. A flight simulator is capable to realize almost all of the troubles that a pilot could face during the flight. It is also being used to test the operation of aircraft before the fabrication. Based on the data from the mathematical calculations of the aircraft, the flight simulator is able to reproduce almost perfectly the aircraft to detect potential defects that design might contain.

Immediately after the presentation, we were invited to try their flight simulator. Once the simulator is started, it is difficult to convince that we are on a flight simulator because it is so realistic. To show that the simulator is consistent with a plane, the simulator must pass at least a hundred tests to prove that it is ready. So it was very interesting to see all the work behind these huge devices.