Training centre
The airline's facility with door and slide trainers, cabin mock-ups, fire and pool rigs where initial and recurrent training take place.
Definition
A training centre is the airline's — or a contracted provider's — facility for cabin crew training: classrooms plus cabin mock-ups of each aircraft type, door trainers, an evacuation slide, a fire trainer, a ditching pool, a smoke chamber and first-aid rooms. Regulators approve the facility and the courses run in it, so initial, type conversion and recurrent training all happen here. Large carriers build their own; smaller ones rent time at another airline's or an independent academy.
What it means for you
You will spend your first weeks here and come back every year for recurrent, so its location shapes your life: a training centre at the base is a commute, one in another city is weeks in a hotel. During initial training the centre is also where you are assessed continuously, and failing a module twice usually ends the contract. Ask where the centre is and how long the course runs before you accept an offer.
In practice
Emirates trains at the Emirates Aviation College in Dubai, Turkish Airlines at its Aviation Academy in Istanbul, IndiGo at ifly, American Airlines at its Dallas training center for six-plus weeks, and Ethiopian at the Ethiopian Aviation Academy in Addis Ababa, one of the largest in Africa.
Go deeper
Related terms
4 terms- Initial trainingSafety & trainingThe four-to-eight-week course that turns a successful candidate into a licensed, type-qualified cabin crew member.
- Recurrent trainingSafety & trainingThe mandatory yearly refresher and check that keeps your SEP, first-aid and type qualifications valid.
- Wet drillSafety & trainingPractical ditching training in a pool: life jackets, slide-rafts, righting a raft and survival after a water landing.
- Fire trainingSafety & trainingHands-on training to find and fight fires on board — galley, lavatory, lithium battery — using extinguishers and a smoke hood.