Despite the economic downturn that has dampened the aircraft delivery schedules for most airframers over the past year, FlightSafety International’s two European training centers remain busy. “The overall trend we’ve seen is growth outside North America, and that is certainly the case in Europe,” Eric Hinson, FSI’s executive vice president told AIN. “We continue to see a larger percentage of our business coming from outside North America both as a result of the investment that we made in Farnborough and Le Bourget, but also with respect to the number of non-North American customers that we are seeing in the U.S.”
The New York-based company, which opened its Paris facility at Le Bourget in 1976, vastly augmented its capacity in 2005 with its Farnborough center. Since then FSI (Booth No. 1643) has seen its total European business aviation training grow by 50 percent based on the number of training courses it provides, according to Hinson. “Because we were already growing in the region and still adding some simulators, particularly at Farnborough, the net of our European businesses, even despite the recession, is actually up and was up in 2009 versus 2008,” he said.
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