Lufthansa, Innovative Training Giant

By Rick Adams, FRAeS

From aspiring cadets to astronauts and simulators to digital twins, Lufthansa Aviation Training has breadth and vision.

I was not surprised to see a Swiss International Airlines A321neo overhead as it descended to land on Runway 34 at Flughafen Zurich (ZRH). I was on Cherstrasse, searching for a place to park near the Lufthansa Aviation Training (LAT) facility in Opfikon, Switzerland. What I saw next, though, caused a double-take as I turned at Sägereistrasse: a couple of armored personal carriers and several Swiss Army soldiers standing guard with automatic weapons.

What they were guarding, I did not know – the Italian restaurant? the electric vehicle charging station? perhaps one of the several datacenters at that intersection?; did not stop to ask. Possibly just a training drill. I discreetly turned around and parked in the bank garage at the bottom of the hill.

The Lufthansa Group – the largest non-US airline conglomerate with about $40 billion in revenue and 100,000 people in over 90 countries - is recruiting around 10,000 new employees in 2025: more than 2,000 flight attendants, 1,400 ground staff, 1,300 technical experts,1,200 employees, and 800 pilots. Over the past three years, they onboarded more than 30,000 personnel. The Group receives about 350,000 applications annually.

The 11,000-square-meter steel-and-glass LAT facility in Zurich/ Opfikon, built about five years ago, is part of a network of 12 Lufthansa training facilities in the Deutsch-speaking countries of Austria, Switzerland and Germany, as well as Belgium and the US. With about 1,000 employees and more than 70 full-flight simulators, Lufthansa Aviation Training is the largest airline-managed pilot and cabin crew training organization in the world.

Lufthansa Aviation Training is much more than routine type-rating and recurrent courses and sim scenarios. Post-Covid, their offerings include an ab initio academy, upset prevention and recovery training, the first EASA-approved ATO, training of military, helicopter and business aircraft pilots, even astronauts, a foray into eVTOL, ‘fear of flying’ courses, and application of lessons learned for hospital personnel and business managers.

Despite the organization’s scale, they are often also at the forefront of training innovation. Current explorations include virtual- and mixed-reality applications, a nascent collaboration on artificial intelligence, digital twins, electric aircraft, and sustainable fuels.

“We certainly have the approach to remain in the forefront of innovation, to invest in innovation and to offer high-quality products to our customer with new technologies,” LAT Switzerland Managing Director and CEO Manuel Meier told me. He is also responsible for safety and service training for the whole of Lufthansa Group.

“We have four fields of business activities,” said Meier. “The first field is the pilot school. Then pilot training. The third field of activity is safety service. And the fourth area is so-called ‘beyond aviation’.”

EUROPEAN FLIGHT ACADEMY

Lufthansa’s ab-initio school, European Flight Academy (EFA), ‘re-launched’ in 2022, offers the possibility of ‘priority access’ to Lufthansa Group cockpits – including AeroLogic, Air Dolomiti, Austrian, Brussels, Deutsch Lufthansa, Discover, Edelweiss, Eurowings, Eurowings Europe, ITA, Lufthansa Cargo, Lufthansa City, Sun Express, and Swiss.

Lufthansa cadet training – which dates to 1955 - had to be terminated in March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. Subsequently, Lufthansa sold its Goodyear, Arizona, US campus to United Aviate Academy and agreed to purchase training services from UAA.

Meier told me, “We have a capacity of about 80, 90 students per year. Also in Switzerland we train all the Swiss Air Force pilots.” (Perhaps the soldiers on the street were waiting on their mates?)

EFA theoretical training is conducted in Zurich or Bremen, Germany. The single-engine phase of practical training, using Cirrus SR20s, is in Goodyear, as is the UPRT phase. Twin-engine training is back in Europe at either Rostock-Laage, Germany or Grenchen, Switzerland. The final four-week Multi-Crew Cooperation (MCC) phase uses simulators in Frankfurt/ Main, Berlin or Zurich. Having passed all exams, graduating cadets receive the ‘frozen’ ATPL (Airline Transport Pilot License) certified by EASA, i.e. a CPL(A)/IR.

Last year, the school expanded its fleet of training aircraft with three new Diamond DA-42NG-VI twin-engine aircraft, adding to five DA-40NG and three DA-42NG-VI models in Grenchen, as well as two DA-40NG and seven DA-42NG in Rostock.

EFA would like to incorporate mixed-reality training for the Diamond aircraft using a Novasim motion-based MR trainer developed by Brunner Elektronik, which has its headquarters just down the road in Hittnau, Switzerland. However, there is currently no regulatory credit for MR-driven devices. Novasim is equipped with FlightSafety International’s MR flight technology, integrating the VITAL 1150 image generator with a Varjo XR-4 MR headset. LAT Zurich has a Novasim DA-42 on site for evaluation.

EFA and LAT are also embracing electric aircraft and sustainable fuel initiatives. Last year, Diamond Aircraft and Lufthansa conducted operational evaluations on the all-electric eDA40 and are exploring how to best operate a mixed training fleet of eDA40s and conventional jet-fuel powered DA40 NGs. In Bremen, a DA42-VI powered with Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) was the kickoff for tests with blended SAF, which is claimed to generate up to 80 percent less CO2 emissions than conventional kerosene.

A couple of interesting academy financing notes for prospective pilots:

For German students, the total cost of 120,000 Euros ($US 125,778) (recently increased from 110,000 Euros) is spaced out over the six steps of training. Swiss students pay 35,000 CHF ($US 38,848) up front and receive a loan of 45,000 CHF, to be repaid from their eventual pilot salary. The Swiss government subsidizes an additional 60,000 CHF.

And, as part of its ‘Take-off-Promise,’ if EFA graduates do not receive an offer for a job in the cockpit of a Lufthansa Group airline – within 24 months - the student will be reimbursed for 50% of the training costs.

AIRLINE WET AND DRY

“We have about 200 airlines worldwide which are doing pilot training with us,” noted Meier. “We just recently had Qantas, who sent their trainers for instructor training.”

In November 2024, LAT became the first to receive Approved Training Organization (ATO) certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). In effect, EASA took over the supervisory role previously held by national aviation authorities (NAAs), enabling new programs to be implemented more rapidly across all LAT locations.

Meier explained: “Our German pilot training branch was moved mid-November to EASA level, and the Swiss part will join first quarter 2025 to have the first EASA multinational ATO solution. So that reflects our strength of having high-quality instructors in various locations and flexibility across the countries and locations to bring the right resources on the right place.”

The EASA pilot training designation is a bit James Bond-ish: ATO 0007.

The LAT network features upwards of 200 training devices for pilots and cabin crew, including Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer models.

Among the latest deployments:

• A Boeing 787-9 (Dreamliner) CAE 7000XR FFS in Vienna in January, the first long-haul model at this location to support Austrian Airlines’ growing fleet. The first Dreamliner 787-9 FFS, in Frankfurt, was delivered by L3Harris.
• An Airbus A350 FFS, also CAE, also in January, at Zurich Airport to support Swiss, Edelweiss and other customers, as well as cabin trainers.
• Flight Training Alliance (FTA), a joint venture between LAT and CAE, installed an Airbus (née Bombardier) A220 FFS at Rome Fiumicino International Airport.
• As further evidence of its OEM-agnostic approach, LAT has an Embraer E190-2 FFS, procedure trainer and advanced doortrainer from FlightSafety to service customer Helvetic Airways.
• Modernization of 21 full-flight simulators across Europe (Berlin-Schönefeld, Essen, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, Zurich) across five years, including image generator and visual system projector upgrades from CAE and Collins Aerospace.

Lufthansa is also testing the waters of business aviation training by supporting a Bombardier Challenger 650 FFS in Zurich, acquired through AXIS Flight Simulation for training of Rega air-ambulance pilots. (See my feature, Rega to the Rescue - Rega to the Rescue | Halldale Group). “We are interested in this market,” said Meier, “and we stepped in now with the Challenger.”

Rega/ LAT also have a multi-cockpit helicopter FFS in Zurich, supplied by Reiser Simulation and Training. They recently qualified the five-bladed version of the Airbus H145D3 to complement H145D2 and H125 cockpits. In Frankfurt, LAT offers H145 and H135 training on a Reiser device with a third crew member station with virtual reality technology and virtual helicopter hoist operation.

And LAT has dabbled in the emerging eVTOL market, agreeing four years ago to help Lilium develop a sourcing and training program to qualify pilots to fly the Lilium Jet. Alas, Lilium has been struggling with financing and appears about to, finally, go bankrupt.

In the virtual reality realm, LAT has integrated the Airbus Virtual Procedure Trainer (VPT) into its training environment, a full immersion for the flight crews within a digitized cockpit to train Airbus Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

“Regulation and technology is not that far that it can fully replace current simulators,” Meier opined. “However, certainly we are already there to complement the quality training with VR and mixed reality.”

LAT is also collaborating with the major technical university in Switzerland, ETH Zurich, on ways to incorporate artificial intelligence. ETH boasts the largest AI competence center outside the US “with about 100 professors and always ranked in the top ten for technical universities,” according to Meier. “That's a very good partner, as Lufthansa Group, to team up to move on AI methods.”

CABIN SAFETY SERVICE

For cabin crew, LAT is using Apple’s Vision Pro and 3spin Learning to focus on soft skills training.
A de-escalation scenario allows for the simulation of situational passenger behavior while considering the reactions of the crews. The ultimate goal is to promote the required competencies of the crews, and through AI no two trainings are alike.

LAT and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) also launched a research project last year to create a ‘digital twin’ of a CEET (Cabin Emergency Evacuation Trainer). The data model is intended to enable fully immersive training in VR and additionally as an ICAO-compliant tablet-based application. Eye tracking and physiological sensors will enable researchers to draw conclusions about the cognitive load on the trainees and the effectiveness of the training.

BEYOND AVIATION

“Aviation brings a lot of know-how and experience on various methodologies,” Meier explained. “Beyond Aviation is a broad baseline where we train a lot of customers from many industries, but always with the core of aviation competencies: human factors, service customer orientation...”

“So we are quite successful in bringing aviation competencies into other industries. For example, we train hospitals, we train luxury brands, we train Swiss television. We even train all astronauts for ESA, the European Space Agency.”

Lufthansa Aviation Training and Airbus Defence and Space are cooperating on the planned Starlab commercial space station to develop the training infrastructure for crew and ground personnel. Starlab is a global joint venture between Voyager Space, Airbus, Mitsubishi Corporation and MDA Space with the goal of launching a new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) space station before the International Space Station (ISS) is decommissioned. Since 2000, LAT has also been involved in the training of ESA astronauts for the ISS and leads the European consortium of companies for training services.

For doctors who fly, LAT offers a unique continuing education program. “Doctors, at least in Switzerland,” said Meier, “need to get some credits for further education every year. We have a program where they can learn how to deal with medical situations on board.” Considering that conditions on an aircraft such as unfamiliar equipment, cramped quarters, noise, language and cultural barriers can make treatment difficult, doctors can learn the basics of aviation medicine, legal aspects, the equipment on board and BLS-AED (Basic Life Support/ Automated External Defibrillator) training.

And for non-medical passengers, LAT offers group seminars on overcoming fear of flying, a one-day intensive or two-day weekend seminar, complemented by an ‘accompanied’ training flight. Research shows that a third of all people feel uncomfortable on an aircraft, and around 15 per cent suffer from severe fear of flying.