Emirates Aviation College (EAC)-Crew Training has reported a record-breaking year for 2014, with over 33,000 attendees in various training courses — some crew members attending multiple courses in a year.

Covering different disciplines from safety and emergency procedures, medical training, service and cabin crew image, the training college caters to both new cabin crew recruits as well as existing crew.

In 2014, Emirates invested over AED73 million in cabin crew training, which saw a total of 4,280 new cabin crew or ab-initios graduating from the facility.

As many as 4,136 existing crew trained for a cabin upgrade, 534 cabin crew graduated to be pursers and 17,650 crew participated in their recurrent training — a mandatory course crew undertake every year.

EAC-Crew Training operated at an average of 17 hours per day conducting 3,994 courses equivalent to 245,262 training days to meet the training demand.

“The depth and diversity of our training operations is fundamental to the great service that we offer on Emirates, and it is something that we will always invest in. 2014 has been a busy year for the cabin crew training team and it reflects the exponential growth of Emirates. We finished the year with a team of nearly 20,000 cabin crew,” said Catherine Baird, SVP, cabin crew training, Emirates.

“Emirates has become the airline of choice for those who dream of pursuing a career as cabin crew and other exciting roles in aviation. This year we have had up to 120 new recruits joining us each week,” Baird added.

Opened in 2007, the EAC-Crew Training facility supports training in a number of key learning areas for new recruits, the ab-initios, who undergo an intense seven and half weeks of training. It houses a variety of specialized training rooms and equipment to support learning.