The Canadian Coast Guard helps keep Canada’s waters safe, clean, and more accessible to keep our economy moving. In support of these missions, the Coast Guard operates a fleet of 22 helicopters. These helicopters and pilots provide support to ships engaged in critical maritime work including aids to navigation, environmental response, icebreaking operations, and in support of search and rescue as needed.

Coast Guard helicopters are often required to operate in challenging and harsh conditions such as landing on icebreakers at sea, operating in remote coastal areas, Arctic flight operations, and supporting search and rescue operations led by Coast Guard ships, necessitating expert training for pilots.

To strengthen pilot training, today, the Honourable Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, and Mario Pelletier, Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, welcomed the delivery and acceptance of a new full-flight helicopter simulator.

Designed and built by CAE Inc. in Montreal, Quebec, this new helicopter simulator will be the main training tool for Coast Guard helicopter pilots. Equipped with a revolutionary roll-on/roll-off cockpit conversion system, the full-flight simulator is equipped to provide training on Coast Guard’s two different helicopter types making it a first of its kind helicopter simulator in North America.

The new full-flight simulator allows the Coast Guard to offer helicopter pilots training opportunities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve while training in an aircraft. The simulator is designed to offer experienced pilots alike an immersive simulated flight experience, and can replicate a variety of flight and weather conditions faced when flying a Coast Guard helicopter in various parts of the country. The simulator will allow Coast Guard helicopter pilots to train for the sometimes difficult flight conditions experienced such as inclement weather, missions on top of a mountain, sling load operations, Arctic operations, as well as search and rescue.

The simulator will be based at the Transport Canada Training Centre at the Ottawa International Airport, where helicopter pilots will be able to complete training in an innovative and cutting-edge environment.