Aerosim Flight Academy Featured in Plane and Pilot Magazine

Aerosim Flight Academy “The professional flight-training difference”

By James Wynbrandt

It’s not only general aviation that faces a pilot shortage. With an estimated 30,000 commercial pilots reaching retirement age in the next 10 years, and aircraft orders from Boeing and Airbus alone requiring as many as 18,000 pilots a year for the next decade to crew them, according to the companies, airlines are scrambling to find the first officers and captains of tomorrow. If history is any indication, hundreds of these pilots will come from Aerosim Flight Academy. It was founded as Comair in 1989 and rechristened the Delta Connection Academy after the airline purchased the school in 2003. The school’s name was changed again after Aerosim, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of flight-training systems, bought the company in 2009. Plane & Pilot was invited to Aerosim’s main campus at Sanford International Airport (KSFB) in Orlando, Fla., to see the operation firsthand. (A branch campus is located on Houston’s Ellington Field Airport—KEFD.)

Aerosim Training

Operations at the high-traffic airport, which handles international flights from Europe, is in Class C airspace under Orlando’s Class B veil, immersing students in the busy and dynamic airline environment they’re training for. Taxiing toward Avion FBO after arrival, some of Aerosim’s training fleet, which includes 32 single-engine Cirrus SR20s and 12 twin-engine Piper Seminoles along with a few Cessna 172s and Piper Arrows, were visible on the ramp. Most were out flying.

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