FlightSafety International Merges Its Visual Systems in St. Louis, Missouri, and Displays in Austin, Texas

NEW YORK (April 3, 2014) – FlightSafety International announces that its Visual Systems in St. Louis, Missouri and Displays in Austin, Texas have merged. Jon Hester assumes overall responsibility as General Manager, Visual Systems.

“Combining FlightSafety’s Visual Systems and Displays under Jon Hester will ensure that our Customers receive the best overall solution to their visual needs,” said John Van Maren, Vice President, Simulation. “This will also further enhance FlightSafety’s ability to design manufacture, and support new and innovative world leading visual solutions that meet the current and future needs of our military and commercial Customers.”

The design, manufacture, and support of FlightSafety’s highly successful VITAL visual system product line takes place in St. Louis. Well over 1,000 VITAL visual systems have been delivered to Customers in 42 countries since 1972. FlightSafety introduced the VITAL 1100 visual system in September 2013. To date, twenty three VITAL 1100 systems have been delivered or are on order. Five simulators equipped with VITAL 1100 have been qualified to Level D by the United States Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Agency.

The displays FlightSafety offers for simulation applications and massive optics are developed and produced in Austin. These products and systems include the Wide Angle Single Pilot (WASP) display designed for use with military aircraft simulators and the new CrewView glass collimated optical display system. CrewView displays are the largest collimated systems currently available. They have been produced with continuous field-of-view configurations up to 300 degrees horizontal and 60 degrees vertical. Over 57 CrewView displays have been delivered or are currently on order.

“The Visual Systems team of over 200 engineers, systems specialists, and service and support professionals based in St. Louis and Austin will now work more closely together to provide world leading visual products,” said Jon Hester, General Manager, Visual Systems. “Customers will benefit from our ability to provide integrated turn-key solutions. This includes the installation of complete visual systems and individual subsystems such as display components and image generators. We also complete upgrades to image generators or projectors and retrofit displays.”

FlightSafety International is the world’s premier professional aviation training company and supplier of flight simulators, visual systems and displays to commercial, government and military organizations. The company provides more than a million hours of training each year to pilots, technicians and other aviation professionals from 167 countries and independent territories. FlightSafety operates the world’s largest fleet of advanced full flight simulators at Learning Centers and training locations in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Japan, South Africa, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.