The 2,000-square-metre facility near the airline’s largest base can train up to 150 crew members a day in safety, evacuation and service procedures
- Eurowings and Lufthansa Aviation Training have opened their first joint crew training centre near Düsseldorf Airport.
- The 2,000-square-metre facility includes a cabin mock-up, door trainer, Airbus A320 equipment, an evacuation slide tower and outdoor firefighting training.
- Up to 150 trainees a day can be accommodated, with a virtual reality training area scheduled to be added from 2027.
- Eurowings is also introducing a more practice-oriented Ground Recurrent Training concept, following Brussels Airlines within the Lufthansa Group.
(NEWS) DÜSSELDORF, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 2026-Sep-10 — /Travel PR News/ — Eurowings has brought a major part of its recurrent crew training closer to day-to-day flight operations with the opening of a new 2,000-square-metre training centre near Düsseldorf Airport, its largest base.
The facility is the first joint training centre created by Eurowings and Lufthansa Aviation Training (LAT), which operates the site on the airline’s behalf. According to the airline’s September 10 announcement, the centre is designed for both safety and service instruction and will eventually accommodate as many as 150 trainees per day.
Its equipment is focused on the situations crews need to practise repeatedly but rarely encounter in normal operations. A cabin mock-up allows evacuation drills, while a dedicated door trainer is used for aircraft-door procedures. The centre also includes additional Airbus A320 training equipment and an evacuation slide tower for short- and medium-haul aircraft. Outdoor facilities give crews a place to rehearse onboard firefighting procedures.
Virtual reality training will be added in 2027
The physical training infrastructure will be supplemented from 2027 by a virtual reality area for selected scenarios involving both cabin crew and pilots. Eurowings says the VR component will allow crews to rehearse situations in a realistic virtual environment while retaining the practical training already provided through mock-ups and other equipment.
The move reflects a wider shift within aviation training toward combining conventional devices with immersive digital tools. Lufthansa Aviation Training says it already uses virtual-reality methods as part of its training portfolio and operates eight training centres with more than 700 trainers and around 60 full-flight simulators. Its listed locations now include a Lufthansa Aviation Training Center in Düsseldorf.
For Eurowings, however, proximity is as important as technology. Locating the centre beside the airport reduces the travel required for crews based in Düsseldorf and makes recurrent training easier to integrate around operational duties. The airline continues to identify Düsseldorf as its largest base, while its 2026 network planning has also added and expanded routes from the North Rhine-Westphalia capital.
Recurrent training becomes more operations-focused
The new centre also coincides with a change in how Eurowings structures refresher instruction. Its Ground Recurrent Training will increasingly be built around practical situations drawn from everyday flight operations and the competencies crews are expected to apply on board.
Eurowings is the second Lufthansa Group airline to introduce this recurrent-training approach after Brussels Airlines. Rather than treating recurrent instruction primarily as a classroom exercise, the concept places more emphasis on applying procedures and decision-making in realistic operational situations.
Edi Wolfensberger, currently Chief Operating Officer of Eurowings, said the facility creates more efficient training conditions for cockpit and cabin crews while strengthening the airline’s investment in safety and onboard service quality in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Matthias Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa Aviation Training, described the opening as a milestone in expanding training infrastructure in the region and said the centre had been developed specifically around Eurowings’ safety and service requirements.
Opening precedes a leadership handover
The project opens just weeks before those two executives change roles within the Lufthansa Group. Eurowings announced in July that Spohr will become its Chief Operating Officer on October 1, 2026, succeeding Wolfensberger. Wolfensberger is due to move to Swiss leisure airline Edelweiss as Chief Executive on the same date.
That transition gives the Düsseldorf centre an unusual continuity between training provider and airline operations: the executive currently leading LAT will shortly take responsibility at Eurowings for areas including crew operations, flight operations, ground and customer operations, safety, security and compliance monitoring.
The training investment also reinforces Düsseldorf’s role within the carrier’s network. Eurowings has long described the airport as its largest base, and recent schedule developments continue to place the city at the centre of its German operation. For crews, the immediate effect is more straightforward: recurrent safety and service training can now take place close to where many of them begin and end their working days.
More information on the airline’s network and passenger services is available through the Eurowings website.
