Leonardo Helicopters opens $80 million training facility in Northeast Philly

A new $80 million helicopter training academy opened at Leonardo Helicopters' Northeast Philadelphia campus.

The company announced the opening of the state-of-the-art facility on its existing Philly campus to meet the growing demand for pilots, cabin crews and maintenance technicians across North and South America.

It will feature mission-specific ground, flight and maintenance training for several aircrafts, and is modeled after Leonardo's training academy in Sesto-Calende, Italy, their website states.

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The facility includes rooms where technicians learn how to repair and maintain Leonardo's helicopters, 10 multimedia classrooms for pilot training and three full-flight motion simulators to give pilots a sense of flying during different weather.

"Our new U.S. Training Academy will help to serve the largest market for helicopters in the global industry, and will be part of a continued process to guarantee customer proximity and expand our range of offer," said Gian Piero Cutillo, managing director of Leonardo Helicopters MD.

Other features include a debriefing room for simulated missions and maintenance training simulator bays. 

All pilots that fly Leonardo helicopters need to train on that specific type of aircraft, become certified and follow up with recurring sessions.

The new facility is estimated to draw 1,000 students annually, bringing more visitors into the city. It's already up and running.

Leonardo is a global company that has been in Philadelphia since 1980 and houses production, support and administrative functions for the United States. 

The first Leonardo Helicopter Training Academy opened in Sesto-Calende, Italy, in 2006 and provides training to an average of 10,000 students annually across its global campuses in the United Kingdom, Poland and Malaysia.