Eurocopter, the world’s leading helicopter manufacturer on the civil and parapublic markets, and Héli-Union, the leading French civil helicopter operator, celebrate today the inauguration of a new simulator for the Dauphin AS365 N3/N3+ developed and built in partnership with Thales. The simulator certified last February is operational at Héli-Union’s training center in Angoulême, in the Charente region of France.
 
Angoulême,  19 June 2012
“We are proud, thanks to this new collaboration, to accompany Héli-Union in their most demanding missions and to exploit completely the tremendous capacities of the Dauphin N3 in higher safety and efficiency conditions”, said Philippe Crespo, Eurocopter Vice-President for worldwide Training services and Simulation. “This simulator for the Dauphin N3 is also in line with Eurocopter training policy to offer to the customers the most adapted solution.”
 
“Thanks to the successful cooperation with Eurocopter and Thales, the new simulator which we are inaugurating will help us keep our pilots’ qualifications up-to-date in order to meet our customers’ needs as well as that of the market in terms of safety” said Héli-Union Chairman & CEO Jean- Christophe Schmitt The new flight simulator is owned by Héli-Union Training Center. It has a double qualification: Full Flight Simulator (FFS) level B and Level 3 Flight Training Device. The objective is to progressively reach a 3000-hour yearly rate of training for Héli-Union and other civil and military customers “We particularly appreciate the renewed trust that Héli-Union has shown towards us and the collaborative work with Eurocopter on this new simulator”, said Jean-Jacques Guittard, Vice President Training & Simulation business at Thales. “Reality H, Thales’s state-of-the-art simulator, is based on the new generation of Thales products, designed to maximize training capacity and availability while offering greater ease of installation, operation and maintenance”. The simulator will allow operators to perform several types of training, ranging from ab initio and recurrent training to specific programs covering failure procedures, instrument flight rules (IFR), offshore and rescue operations, night flight (night vision goggles), flights over mountainous regions and low altitude navigation.
 
Since the aircraft was launched in 1975, more than 1000 helicopters from the Dauphin range have been sold in 70 countries. Some 300 customers operate the Dauphin today, including the U.S. Coast Guards, the French Navy, the Brazilian Army and many offshore operators. The aircraft’s fantastic reliability, multi-purpose capability and continuously improved state-of-the-art technology make it an automatic choice for a wide range of civil, parapublic and military missions, including oil & gas operations, search & rescue (SAR) assignments, anti-submarine warfare, as well as troop and VIP/corporate passenger transport.
 
Around the world, Eurocopter’s 21 training centers provide a complete range of services for civilian and military pilots, technicians and aeronautics experts. Courses offered include ab-initio and recurrent training, type rating and mission training via a variety of flexible training solutions, including web-based training, Computer Aided Instruction (CAI), Virtual Cockpit Procedure Trainers (VCPT), Avionics Trainers (AVT), Flight Training Devices (FTD) and Full Flight Simulators (FFS). As part of its commitment to improve overall fleet safety, Eurocopter is deploying FFS all over the world in close proximity to customers to enhance the quantity, quality and cost-effectiveness of the training solutions available to them. Eurocopter will reach 20 FFS by the end of 2012.

Source: Eurocopter