United Airlines is growing its Denver training operation, adding more room for its pilots to practice flying without ever leaving the ground.
The airline on Thursday celebrated the of a major expansion at its Denver Flight Training Center, adding 40 new since 2022, including full-motion and fixed flight training simulators.
The event drew a packed room inside one of the site’s buildings at 7500 E. 35th Ave., with towering flight simulators on either side of the crowd.
United and CAE executives, members of the media and U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper attended as United CEO Scott Kirby and CAE President and CEO Matthew Bromberg spoke about the expansion.
“This expansion reflects the strength of a partnership built over more than four decades,” Bromberg said.
“We’re proud to support United with the training technology, expertise and reliability needed to prepare pilots at scale and we look forward to supporting its training needs for years to come.”
The expansion brings the center to eight buildings and nearly 700,000 square feet of training space, roughly the size of 12 football fields. It now has 86 CAE training devices, including 52 full-motion flight simulators and 34 fixed training devices.
The center can train up to 860 pilots a day. United has nearly 18,000 pilots, and all of them complete required simulator training at the Denver facility. Newly hired pilots also train there.
Pilots complete simulator training when they first qualify to fly for United and return every nine months for additional training and evaluations.
The 22-acre facility can conduct more than 32,000 training sessions a year and operates 24 hours a day, 362 days a year.
“United pilots are the best aviators in the world, and the pace at which our team has completed this project is an example of making investments that support our high standard of excellence,” Kirby said. Kirby said the simulators give pilots the most realistic experience possible and prepares them to handle unlikely situations if they occur.
“We can put them through the most stress that you could possibly imagine — this is the safest thing that you can do for training because you can put pilots in situations that they’re unlikely to ever see,” he said.
But United isn’t done expanding its training center.
The airline expects to break ground in 2027 on a second training facility on two parcels of undeveloped land near Denver International Airport. The new facility is expected to open around 2030 and will operate along with the current center.
United bought the land in 2023 for $33 million. In July, the Denver City Council approved the airline’s request to rezone the properties, and United has started developing formal site plans for the new facility.
Kirby said even though the current training center is the “biggest facility in the world,” the new one will include more flight simulators.
United’s Flight Training Center was was built between 1966 and 1968 as part of the former Stapleton International Airport complex. It has served as United’s main pilot training facility since then. Since 2016, the airline has invested $370 million in the flight training center overall.
The expansion milestone also comes as United continues to grow its Denver operation.
The airline has invested nearly $1 billion at DIA since 2021, including new gates, United Club locations and a new check-in lobby. United hired more than 1,400 people in Denver last year and plans to hire more than 1,300 in 2026.
Kirby also hinted to reporters that the airline will announce “the most exciting” new international route the entire United network has had next week.
United operates more flights and carries more passengers in Colorado than any other airline, according to a Thursday news release. This summer, it is averaging 570 daily departures from DIA and serving more than 200 destinations, including more than 20 international locations.
