Leonardo inaugura a Sesto Calende il nuovo hub mondiale per l'addestramento sugli elicotteri

A sprawling new building has opened at Leonardo's Sesto Calende facility in northern Italy—over 6,000 square meters of floor space designed to do one thing: build the flight simulators that train the world's helicopter pilots. The inauguration marks a deliberate consolidation of what was once scattered across the plant: engineering, design, production, assembly, integration, and testing all now happen under one roof. The facility can house up to five simulators at once, and the first systems built here will ship to operators in Italy and across Asia.

This investment arrives two decades after Leonardo established its Training Academy "A. Marchetti" at the site in 2006. The new building represents a fundamental shift in how the company thinks about helicopter training—no longer something that follows aircraft design, but something that develops alongside it. Giovanni Cecchelli, who oversees customer support and training worldwide for Leonardo Helicopters, describes Sesto Calende as a calling card for the region. International clients often encounter Leonardo's training operation here first. Across the company's training academies globally, more than 16,000 people pass through annually. Sesto Calende alone handles roughly 13,000 of them, drawn from a global fleet of approximately 5,000 helicopters in service.

The site has become the standard-setter for the entire organization. Fabrizio Peano, who leads training and simulation for Leonardo Helicopters, explains that Sesto Calende is where training protocols originate and where quality benchmarks are defined. A pilot course taught in the United States must be identical to one taught in Italy—same standards, same rigor. The new building exists to strengthen this ecosystem by consolidating and streamlining operations that had been distributed across different areas of the plant. The numbers underscore why: between 2023 and 2025, customer support, services, and training represented roughly 42 percent of the Helicopters division's revenue. Flight simulation alone generates millions of euros annually.

The simulators themselves range from sophisticated to cutting-edge. Data collected during helicopter development and flight testing flows directly to the engineers designing the training systems. Pilots, technicians, and mission specialists learn on full-motion platforms or fixed cockpit reproductions surrounded by panoramic projection domes. Mission-specific simulators and maintenance trainers complement these, alongside virtual reality solutions. Training is tailored to the pilot's experience level, the aircraft type, and the operational role. One simulator hour counts as one flight hour—a one-to-one equivalency. But Peano notes that simulator training often exceeds flight training in value because emergency procedures can be practiced repeatedly without exposing crew or aircraft to actual risk. Equipment failures and critical scenarios can be drilled endlessly in a controlled environment.

Artificial intelligence and augmented reality are expanding the possibilities further. Cecchelli explains that AI will not replace engineering expertise but will function as an increasingly capable copilot, analyzing the vast streams of data flowing from the global fleet and from simulators themselves to spot trends, detect anomalies, and surface opportunities for improvement. The technology serves a single purpose: making pilots safer and more capable before they ever take the controls of a real aircraft.