TAM, Brazil’s largest airline company, inaugurated this week the new training mock-ups in the Commander Rolim Adolfo Amaro Services Academy in São Paulo, in the Brazilian Southeast.
With a US$ 2 million investment in equipment and facilities, the new simulators reproduce the environment of an aircraft and will be aimed at training flight attendants and pilots.
With the conclusion of one more stage, the Commander Rolim Amaro Academy has become Latin America’s largest and most modern aviation training center.
Mock-ups were installed in a 1,200 square meters area. In addition to an aircraft replica and a training room for service and on-board assistance, for professional qualification and recycling courses, there is also a swimming pool for seamanship classes.
This course will be a point of differentiation offered by the company, as it is not mandatory by regulating bodies in periodic recycling courses.
The center will have a training capacity of at least 100 professionals (pilots and flight attendants) per day. On average, each TAM flight attendant takes one recycling course per year lasting 15 days.
The qualification training courses last 30 days and are taught full-time in the Services Academy. The company currently has 9,669 employees, including 3,500 pilots and flight attendants.
With the expansion of the Academy and installation of mock-ups, TAM could systematically offer courses to other airline companies. Since last year, it has increasingly offered training courses to pilots, mechanics, flight dispatchers and flight attendants of other companies, mainly Canadian and Latin American and Brazilian regional and air taxi companies.
"TAM’s philosophy, based on the spirit of serving, is to provide passengers with the highest service quality available. This is why we invest in training our professionals," says Ruy Amparo, operational-technical vice president.
In 2005, 32,000 training courses were offered. This year, that figure might reach 40,000, once employees take several courses over the year.
The undertaking works as a Corporate University and tries to develop human and technical knowledge aimed at the corporation. Last year, TAM’s investment in training at the Academy surpassed US$ 14 million.
"The idea of creating a Services Academy was to centralize our courses in a place specially built to ensure the highest training quality standard," says Roberto Hobeika, Human Resources officer.
TAM has been a leader in the Brazilian domestic market for two years and it had a 44.4% market share in February 2006. TAM operates regular flights to 46 destinations throughout Brazil. It serves 73 different cities in the domestic market through regional alliances.
Additionally, it maintains code-share agreements with international airlines that allow it to serve other destinations throughout the world. TAM was the first Brazilian airline company to launch a loyalty program. The program currently has 3 million subscribers and has awarded more than 3.3 million tickets.
TAM – www.tam.com.br