It wasn’t all that long ago that rumors about United Airlines pulling out of Denver International Airport were swirling in the Rocky Mountain air.
After restructuring some of the airport’s debt, DIA and the city leaders tossed a lasso around the airline in 2014, ensuring it would remain a key part of the city’s big circus tent of the skies until at least 2035. Since then, United has grown significantly at DIA, adding 50 new departing flights in 2018 alone to get to 400.
On Tuesday, airline and local leaders came together to celebrate another element of United’s growth in Denver: Its renovated and soon-to-be expanded Flight Training Center at 7500 E. 35th Ave.
CEO Oscar Munoz called Denver “one of the crown jewels of the family,” noting that its central location and a pro-business environment fostered by officials such as Gov. John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock give the hub a lot of potential.
“We are the fastest-growing airline (in the country) and Denver is our fastest growing hub,” he said in a speech before a throng of United employees. “Building infrastructure like this is the proof, not a promise of what we can and should be.”
United has worked out of the 23-acre flight training center since 1968 when it was part of Stapleton Airport. It now features six buildings with a combined 462,000 square feet of space.
The three-year renovation process that just wrapped there cost $150 million and consolidated all of the airline’s pilot training efforts on the campus. Denver beat out Houston and Chicago to serve as the training hub, and now features 32 full flight simulators. Some of those simulators — hydraulic or magnetically powered boxes containing mock cockpits where pilots are exposed to all varieties of emergencies — were transported from Houston during the renovation. Each can cost as much as $25 million, according to Capt. Mike McCasky, United’s managing director of flight training.
A new 100,000-square-foot building is under construction on the campus now. When that building, valued at roughly $40 million, is completed in the fall of next year, it will make room for another eight simulators. Pending federal approval, those simulators could begin hosting pilot training in the first quarter of 2020, Graham Smith, senior project manager for the renovation, said.
The simulators are critically important, not just to United but other airlines that rent training time there.
“Very few things go wrong on an airplane. Everything goes wrong on the simulator,” McCasky said. “The goal for us is to have the pilots respond to any emergency situation exactly the way they were trained.”
The flight training facility employs around 800 people, up from 500 before United consolidated there. All 12,500 of that airline’s pilots visit the training facility at least once a year, McCasky said. The visits mean the center eats up about 130,000 hotel room nights in the Denver area annually.
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Mayor Hancock, in his comments, lauded United’s economic impact on Denver beyond those hotel bookings.
“Denver today is one of the most economically vibrant cities in the country. Denver today has one of the best unemployment rates in the county,” he said. “And I believe that’s happened because we were able to access global markets and it started with United” booking direct flights to international locations.
Gov. Hickenlooper noted United has been a key piece of DIA flight offerings since the airport opened in 1995. It was the first airline to sign a long-term lease there.
DIA is going through a major renovation of its own, with both its main terminal and concourses slated for construction over the next few years. The $1.5 billion in concourse work will add 39 new gates at what is already among the busiest airports in the country. United has claim to 11 of those gates now but is eyeing more, Ankit Gupta, the airline’s vice president of domestic network planning said Tuesday.
“We are the best-suited airline to grow in Denver in terms of cities, destinations, flights — all of our activity,” Gupta said. “We’re in the best position to use those gates most efficiently.”
