The first six Qatar Emiri Air Force (QEAF) pilots have completed phase IV of the advanced training/LIFT program at the International Flight Training School (IFTS), launched a year ago at the 61st Wing of the Italian Air Force base in Lecce-Galatina (Italy).
The International Flight Training School (IFTS) is an advanced flight training center for air force pilots from all over the world, the result of a collaboration between the Italian Air Force and Leonardo.
This collaboration has allowed to double the current training offer, through the creation of a new center distributed between the Galatina base, where the Italian Air Force will continue to develop its basic training activities, and the Decimomannu Air Base, in Sardinia, where a new advanced pilot training campus is being created.
Aimed at pilots destined to fly latest-generation fighter planes, like the Eurofighter or the F-35, the IFTS courses are conducted by military and civilian instructors and are based on the advanced T-346 ITS (Integrated Training System), Leonardo’s M-346, named T-346A by the Italian Air Force.
Leonardo reported that on June 1, the newly graduated Qatari pilots returned to their home country after nearly a year of intensive training, which was made even more difficult by the pandemic.
On the 1st of June, the newly qualified Qatari pilots returned to their home country after almost a year’s intensive training, which was made even more challenging by the pandemic. The training course, which began with an initial phase designed to bring the pilots (all with a turboprop background) up-to-speed with the requirements of the phase IV programme, covered the standard fighter pilot training syllabus. This allowed trainees to practice flying in every modern operating scenario, handling the most sophisticated sensors and the various types of mission systems currently in use (both in the air and on the ground), completing a total of approximately 150 simulator and real flight training sessions.
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The Galatina air base is currently training two additional cohorts of Qatari pilots, while the technical collaboration agreement foresees the delivery of further QEAF courses at the new campus in Decimomannu, Sardinia.
