British Airways Flight Training Centre
Bryden Wood transformed the central hall of the heritage-listed East Hangar at Heathrow Airport into the BA Flight Training Centre – 17 simulators, including A380 and B787, delivered within a listed structure that had been unused for several years.
Bryden Wood was commissioned by British Airways, working with Vinci, to bring the East Hangar back into use – a heritage-listed building at Heathrow that had stood empty for several years. Before design could begin, the structural and services condition of the building required careful assessment. The constraints of the listed structure shaped every design decision that followed.
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By holding architecture, structural and civil engineering, and M&E within a single team, Bryden Wood was able to manage the interfaces between the listed building fabric, the simulator installation, and the specialist equipment providers – without the coordination gaps a fragmented delivery model would have introduced.
The completed facility houses 17 flight simulators – including new A380 and B787 simulators – alongside supporting corporate and teaching areas. The scale and technical complexity of the simulator installation required precise coordination between the building fabric and British Airways' specialist equipment providers throughout design and construction.
The corporate areas provide a workplace environment that reflects British Airways' standards – a counterpoint to the industrial scale of the simulator hall, and evidence that the heritage structure could serve both functions within the same building.
A heritage-listed hangar at Heathrow, unused for years, is now one of the world's most advanced flight training environments.
