United Airlines has today opened their largest Inflight Training Center in Houston. The newly expanded and renovated 56,000 sq. ft. facility includes classrooms, additional cabin and door trainers and a state-of-the art aquatic center featuring a 125,000 gallon pool.
On Tuesday (January 17, 2023), United Airlines announced the opening of their expanded and newly renovated Global Inflight Training Center in Houston, Texas. The 56,000 square foot facility is now United’s largest Inflight Training Center and features classrooms, additional cabin and door trainers and a state-of-the art aquatic center. For training purposes, the aquatic center includes a 125,000 gallon pool and mock fuselage for cabin crew members to practice a safe evacuation following a water landing or ditching. The $32 million expansion has more than doubled the training space and supports United’s plan to hire and train 15,000 team members in 2023, including 4,000 flight attendants. The carrier plans on training over 600 flight attendants monthly at the Houston facility.
In Today’s announcement, United Airlines’ CEO, Scott Kirby, said,
“The best flight attendants in the industry deserve the best, most modern training facility in the country. This expansion project is yet another example of an investment we made during the depths of the pandemic that will support our employees, further improve our ability to deliver great service and set United up for success in 2023 and beyond.”
New United flight attendants will attend a six and a half week training course at the Houston facility, and will then be required to return every 18 months for recurrent training. The campus also includes inflight training spaces with mock seats, a 400+ seat auditorium and a public address room where trainees can practice their onboard announcements. To ensure the storm resiliency of the facility, United included an underground prefabricated storm detention vault that can hold over 268,000 gallons of water and store stormwater runoff in large underground pipes.
United Airlines’ shared purpose is ‘Connecting People. Uniting the World.’ In 2019, United and United Express® carriers operated over 1.7 million flights carrying over 162 million guests. United Airlines operates the most comprehensive network among North American carriers with mainland U.S. hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Shares in the company’s parent, United Airlines Holdings, Inc., are publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol ‘UAL.’
Source: United Airlines/PRNewswire