Loft Dynamics, a provider of virtual reality (VR) pilot training, has announced that Kawasaki Heavy Industries (Kawasaki) will become the first organisation in the Asia Pacific region to adopt its newly released H145 multi-pilot VR simulator, bringing immersive H145 VR training to the region for the first time.

For nearly five decades, Kawasaki has contributed to the development, manufacturing and support of the Airbus BK117/H145 family. The company also provides Airbus Helicopters-approved H145 training to operators across Japan and the wider Asia-Pacific region.

Kawasaki's investment comes just weeks after the commercial launch of the H145 multi-pilot VR simulator and extends the platform's early adoption from Europe to Asia Pacific.

“Kawasaki has long been a central industrial and training force in the H145 programme in Asia,” says Sebastien Borel, CEO of Loft Dynamics. “Its decision to deploy our H145 multi-pilot VR simulator marks an important step in bringing aircraft-specific, multi-crew VR training to Asia Pacific. It also reflects a much larger shift: VR is changing how pilots and crews build proficiency, and it is on its way to becoming a standard part of aviation training worldwide.”

The simulator will be installed at the Kawasaki Training Centre in Gifu, one of the leading H145/BK117 training centres in the world. Kawasaki will use it to support initial type ratings, instrument training, multi-crew cooperation, recurrent training and checking for operators in emergency medical services, law enforcement, disaster response and other mission-critical sectors.

“As an Airbus Helicopters-approved training centre, our responsibility is to provide operators with the highest standard of H145 training available,” says Hitoshi Kawaguchi, head of the BK117/H145 programme at Kawasaki. “Loft Dynamics' H145 multi-pilot VR simulator significantly expands our ability to do just that. By combining immersive multi-crew training with OEM-provided aircraft data, we can give pilots more opportunities to build proficiency, prepare for complex missions and train using the same procedures they use in the aircraft. Adding this capability to our training centre advances our long-term plans for advanced H145/BK117 training and allows us to serve more operators across Japan and the wider Asia Pacific region.”

Developed in close collaboration with Airbus Helicopters, the H145 multi-pilot VR simulator will allow pilots and crew members to rehearse normal, abnormal and emergency procedures together in a shared virtual environment. The simulator uses flight dynamics, systems data and helicopter software provided directly by Airbus Helicopters. It reproduces the aircraft's handling and performance characteristics so crews can train according to the procedures used in flight operations.

The system combines a six-degree-of-freedom full-motion platform, a virtual full-scale cockpit and a 360-degree panoramic field of view. Kawasaki will be able to repeat demanding scenarios that would be difficult, costly or impractical to conduct in an aircraft, giving pilots and crews more opportunities to build proficiency across a range of H145 operations.

Kawasaki's planned deployment follows Loft Dynamics' previous simulator installation in Japan and expands the company's support for two widely operated Airbus Helicopters platforms in the country.