Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Airport airside simulators for a city that never sleeps
The Adolfo Suárez Madrid – Barajas International Airport is, without a doubt, the most important airport in Spain, and is also one of the airports with the highest number of international passengers in the world.
Despite the economic crisis, this airport ranks fifth in Europe in terms of passenger numbers (with 49,653,055 per year) and the number of operations (according to the ACI), only surpassed by London-Heathrow, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam. It is ranked 15th in the world.
This airport has won the world's most important architectural awards such as the Stirling Award from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the International RIBA European Awards and has a range of characteristics that make it unique.
It is the airport with the largest terminal area on the planet. It also has the longest civil runway on Earth, 18R-36L.
These amazing figures undoubtedly give us a rough idea of the complicated network of operations that must be carried out in order for this city to function with the utmost guarantees of safety and optimum performance.
The professionals who work in the airfield also have to cope with its large dimensions and demanding level of service. For this reason, the airport operator AENA now has an innovative driving simulator for training airside personnel that closely replicates the airport's infrastructure and its operations. The simulator allows them to train and evaluate staff, in order to improve airport orientation and communications, among other things.
After the installation and commissioning of the first simulators in Alicante, Ibiza, Palma de Mallorca, Valencia, and Malaga, the development of the Madrid Barajas simulator has been a truly remarkable milestone. A challenge for the LANDER team that, on completing it, has made the whole team proud and has delighted those in charge of the Operations Area. After the recent installation, they can now provide the training they had planned.
The development of the simulators for Barcelona El Prat, Bilbao, Gran Canaria, Tenerife South, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and Seville is currently underway. This equipment is expected to be installed before the end of this year, thereby completing the first LANDER Airports macro project in collaboration with AENA.
