A United Airlines passenger plane prepares to exit its gate and taxi to the runway at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California.
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United Airlines plans to break ground on an expansion of its training center in Denver on Wednesday, an initiative aimed at preparing thousands of pilots to fly passengers while the airline goes on a hiring spree.
The project will cost around $100 million. The new four-story building at its training campus will allow United to add six new flight simulators. The airline plans to add another six simulators later, although the location has yet to be determined. It currently offers space for 40 simulators.
The new simulators will train pilots on the Boeing 737 Max and Airbus jetliners following a massive order last year, as well as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Marc Champion, chief executive of the flight training center, told CNBC.
The airline expects the project to be completed before the end of next year. Champion said the training center expansion project has been in the works for about a year.
Like other airlines, United faces intense competition for pilots as the industry recovers from the Covid pandemic. The airline plans to hire about 10,000 pilots by the end of the decade, Champion said. The Chicago-based airline expects to add about 2,000 pilots this year.
Last year, United began teaching the first students at its new flight school, United Aviate Academy, in Goodyear, Arizona. By 2030, 5,000 pilots are to be trained there.
Fleet changes and idle pilots during the pandemic left airlines with massive training backlogs as many airmen switched to new aircraft or waited for slots to complete federally mandated recurrent training.
American Airlines, for example, decided last year to keep a pilot training center open in Charlotte, North Carolina, to handle the volume. However, United retained much of its fleet and, early in the pandemic, reached an agreement with its pilots’ union that helped it upskill many of its pilots.