Etihad Airways has begun work on a $15.3-million extension of its flight training centre at its headquarters in Abu Dhabi.

The 5,300-sq-m facility will house six flight simulator training bays, classrooms for pilot and cabin crew training, pilots’ briefing and debriefing rooms, a new pilots’ lounge and offices.

Chief operations officer, Captain Richard Hill, said: "This expanded high-tech training and infrastructure facility will be one of the best in the world when completed in November 2013.

"It will be a showpiece for how we train and maintain the skills of our more than 1,200 professional pilots and 3,200 cabin crew, in addition for crew training support to our strategic airline partners.

"We also see this investment in training facilities as a critical piece of infrastructure linked to Etihad Airways’ own organic growth and the arrival of new fleet types in the years ahead, such as the Airbus A380, A350 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner."

Etihad Airways will install flight simulators for all of these new aircraft types in the expanded facility. The UAE flag carrier has more than 90 aircraft on firm order with Airbus and Boeing, and to match this fleet growth, has plans to recruit 1,000 pilots and 9,000 cabin crew by 2020.

The facility has trained more than 1,600 pilots and 4,000 cabin crew since it opened in 2007.