Overview:

Flight simulator provides artificially re-created flight environment for both commercial and military purposes. Growing need for cost effective pilot training is a key factor, positively impacting the flight simulator market growth. This factor is set to increase its adoption in both military and civilian verticals. Thus, with consistently growing pilot training needs, the market would continue exhibiting promising growth over the forecast period.  

Flight simulator manufacturers are focusing more on R&D activities to develop cost effective and reliable solution. Some flight simulators provide Advanced Synthetic Environment (ADS), offering realistic environment including actual war fighting and weapon systems integrated in computer models. Moreover, technological advancements and growing capabilities of AI positively impacting flight simulator market growth. Additionally, technological enhancements such as 3D graphics, high resolution display and real time interaction are some other factors influencing market demand for flight simulators.

The need to ensure aviation safety in flight handling, including situation awareness and skill competency also promote the flight simulation market growth. R&D efforts directed towards virtual reality and artificial intelligence advancements has resulted in highly naturalistic flight simulators, thus offering navigation and motion control mechanism. Similarly, development of realistic aircraft system logic coupled with ECAM displays, significantly growing market demand for flight simulator market.  

High manufacturing and maintenance cost coupled with high complexity are some of the factors, hampering flight simulator market growth. Difficulty for manufacturers to keep pace with the growing aviation industry is also one of the restraining factors for market growth.

Based on Applications, flight simulator market is segmented into commercial and military segments. The commercial flight simulator (especially, Full Flight Simulator) segment is expected to witness incremental growth during the forecast period, owing to the rising training needs for commercial pilots.

North America led flight simulator market in 2017 and it’s expected to continue its dominance throughout the forecast period. Asia Pacific flight simulator market is also projected to grow owing to high demand for air travels. Similarly, Middle East, Latin America and Africa too have positively contributed to the overall market for military flight simulators on account of ongoing threat of terrorism. Moreover, China on account of its recent territorial disputes with its neighboring countries such as India and Japan, is expected to witness incremental growth in procurement of military aircraft simulators in the years to come.  

Major factors driving the market of flight simulator:

• Rising need for new pilots over the aerospace segment  
• Increasing adoption of virtual training to ensure safety
• Gradually increasing fuel prices
• Cost-cutting in pilot training

The global flight simulator market is segmented on the following basis:

• Vehicle Class
  • Fixed wing
  • Rotary wing
  • Unmanned Aircraft
• Application
  • Military application
  • bCommercial application
• Type
  • Full Flight Simulator (FFS)
  • Full Mission Simulator (FMS)
  • Flight Training Devices (FTD)
  • Fixed Base Simulator (FBS)
• Geography
  • North America
    • U.S.
    • Rest of North America
  • Europe
    • U.K.
    • Germany
    • France
    • Rest of Europe
  • Asia Pacific
    • Japan
    • China
    • India
    • Rest of Asia Pacific
  • Rest of the World (RoW)
    • Middle East & Africa (MEA)
    • Latin America

Key players identified for flight simulator market include but are not limited to:

CAE, Inc., FlightSafety International, Inc., Thales Group, Cubic Corporation, Boeing International Corporation Pvt. Ltd., Elbit Systems Ltd., Alsim Flight Training Solutions and Bluedrop Performance Learning, Inc. among others.