United Airlines Expands World’s Largest Flight Training Center
- Joe Breitfeller
- Feb 23, 2024
- 2 min read
United Airlines has opened a new 150,000 square-foot building at their Flight Training Center in Denver, already the largest training center of its type in the world. The new facility will house 12 more full-motion flight simulators, six of which have already been delivered.
On Thursday (February 22, 2024), United Airlines announced the opening of a new 150,000 square-foot building at their Flight Training Center in Denver, which was already the largest facility of its kind in the world. The new building will house 12 full-motion flights simulators, of which, six have already been delivered. United hired over 2,300 pilots in 2023, and has also already hired 300 more this year. The new facility will have the potential to train up to 240 more pilots per day, adding even more training capacity for the carrier’s 16,000 pilots.
In Thursday’s announcement, United Airlines’ Chief Executive Officer, Scott Kirby, said,
“We’re growing faster than any airline in the industry and our investments in our pilots and their training are critical to support the unprecedented number of new aircraft United will add to our fleet in the decades ahead. United pilots are the best aviators in the world and the way we recruit, hire and train directly supports that high standard of excellence.”
In total, United’s Flight Training Center, which is located in the Central Park neighborhood of Denver, spans 23 acres and now has eight buildings and over 700,000 square feet of training space. The facility currently houses 46 state-of-the-art full-motion flight simulators, as well as 21 fixed training devices. The addition of the new building expands the center’s capacity to accommodate up to 52 full-motion flight simulators, and the ability to conduct over 32,000 training events annually, training up to 860 pilots daily. United’s Denver Flight Training Center is open 24/7 362 days per year.
Representing an investment of over $145 million, the opening of the new building is expected to lead to more that 370 new jobs. Over 1,600 of United’s more than 10,000 Denver-based team members work at the Flight Training Center, representing 24 different departments, including flight instructing, flight evaluating, scheduling, pilot hiring, human resources, and flight standards. The center was originally constructed between 1966 and 1968 as part of the Denver Stapleton Airport complex, and has served as the carrier’s main pilot training facility since that time. Since 2016, the company has invested a total of $370 million in the Flight Training Center.
Source: United Airlines
