Wicat Systems, Inc, based in Provo Utah, recently announced that they have been awarded a contract to develop and a large number of computer-based training (CBT) courses for use in Saudi Arabian Airlines, (Saudia) new state-of-the-art training center. The award calls for Wicat to develop and deliver CBT courses for flight crew trensition, recurrent, and refresher training as well as courses for safety procedures and dispatcher . All of these courses will then be delivered on a network of in excess of 200 CBT optimised workstations together with the necessary network and cabling infrastructure for the new building.
Worth in excess of $6.6 million, Wicats contract is the largest single contract ever awarded to them in their 15+ year history.
Wicat will deliver the CBT products and services as part of a much larger contract agreement between Saudian and Thomson Training and Simulation (TTS) of France to supply flight training solutions for Saudia’s new fleet expansion program. This TTS contract, worth in excess of $85 million- their largest ever for civil aviation training equipment, covers five new high level simulators, updates to existing simulators and three flight training devises.
"The evaluation process was long, thorough and very comprehensive. In the end, it came down to quality, innovation and trust," according to Mick Gordon, Wicat’s agent for the Middle East.
“Wicat have been innovators and pioneers in the production of aviation CBT since their inception. We have the most comprehensive range of off-the-shelf aviation CBT in the industry, and a solid reputation with the world’s biggest airline training centers for reliability and quality. We also have a very compelling story to tell as to our initiatives within the developing field of e-training, which also seemed to be very important to the Saudia team."
As part of the contract, Wicat develop and deliver new flight training courses for the Boeing 747-400 and additionally, Wicat will deliver customization services for flight CBT already in use at Saudia.
"Eighteen months ago, we installed $3 million worth of equipment for the Saudia maintenance training center which now provides CBT maintenance training courses as to all of the aircraft types within Saudia’s fleet," said Gordan.
"We are now delighted to be addressing Saudia’s Operations Training requirements in such a big way. After this implementation has been completed, Saudia will have one of the most sophisticated and comprehensive commercial aviation training facilities in the world."
E-TRAINING
Wicat also recently launched Wicat.com, a new Internet portal created specifically for the aviation training industry. (We Based Training, WBT)
"E-training is a very strategically important and exciting part of Wicats business model," continued Mick Gordon.
"Being able to provide the best-of-class aviation training content over the web is definitely where a large part of Wicats future lies. It basically means that our valued cutomers will be able world at any time. A very interesting prospect for international airlines, given the tendency of so many of them to have training centers in many different geographical locations, across many different time zones. WBT enables training to be scheduled, conducted, monitored and reported from anywhere there is an internet connection -- Albawaba.com
