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Emirates Is Preparing To Build A $135 Million Pilot-Training Facility
The new center will have six full-flight simulator bays for the airline’s future Airbus A350 and Boeing 777X aircraft.
After the pandemic caused a global tourism slump, the travel sector is now well on the road to recovery. Strong demand for air travel means that key industry players are scrambling to hire fresh cabin staff and pilots. To tackle the problem, Emirates has just announced that it intends to build a new training facility, which will span 5,882 square meters and open in March 2024.
The new high-tech center will be equipped with six flight simulator bays and fully-customizable cockpit environments for the new Airbus A350 and Boeing 777X aircraft, also arriving in 2024.
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“The building will be equipped with the latest, technologically advanced simulators to provide the best training for pilots while using solar power to reduce energy consumption,” says Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and CEO of Emirates Airline and Group.
According to Emirates, flight training capacity will be increased by 54% annually with the addition of the new center, and the airline plans to hire 400 pilots and up to 6,000 cabin crew by mid-2023.
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Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.
Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.
The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.
Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc
— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026
“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.
Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.
Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget
The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.
Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
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