CAE Inc.

CAE started in Montreal in 1947 as Canadian Aviation Electronics, and the company that grew out of it is now the name most associated with the full-motion flight simulator. It runs on two main legs. Civil Aviation builds and operates the training devices airlines and business jet operators use to qualify pilots, a business that includes the CAE Oxford Aviation Academy network and more than 50 training centers worldwide, plus flight simulators sold under the 7000XR, 5000, 3000, and 500XR model lines. Defence and Security is the other half, and it got considerably bigger in 2021 when CAE bought L3Harris's military training arm, folding in decades of simulator programs for fixed-wing, rotary, and naval platforms. CAE builds and supports training devices tied to aircraft it does not manufacture itself, working from partnerships with the platform makers, and its footprint spans NATO's flying schools, national air forces, and navies that need ship-handling and combat-system trainers as much as pilots need cockpits.

The company is the prime contractor for NATO Flying Training in Canada, running the ground school, simulators, and live flying instruction that produces pilots for multiple allied air forces. In the UK it supports the Military Flying Training System as a subcontractor to the Ascent partnership, providing Phenom 100 simulators and rotary-wing training devices for the Airbus H135 and H145 helicopter fleet. It also holds long-running work upgrading and sustaining the US Navy's P-8A Poseidon operational flight trainers under contracts with Boeing. Beyond aircraft, CAE's defense business has pushed into broader mission areas: land and maritime simulation, cyber ranges, space operations training, and public safety exercises, reflecting a shift from selling boxes that mimic cockpits to selling entire synthetic training programs spanning multiple domains. A third, smaller line, CAE's aviation software business built around the Flightscape platform acquired from Sabre in 2022, helps airlines manage flight operations data.

CAE divested its healthcare simulation business, which built patient manikins for medical training, to Madison Industries in 2023, narrowing the portfolio back toward its aviation and defense core. Roughly a quarter of CAE's revenue now comes from defense customers, with the rest split between civil pilot training and the software arm. The company trades on both the Toronto and New York exchanges and employs around 13,000 people globally, most of them tied to its dozens of training centers rather than a single manufacturing site. Its defense customer list runs from the US and Canadian militaries through European air forces to partners in the Middle East, Australia, and Asia, and its simulators sit behind the training pipeline for aircraft built by nearly every major Western manufacturer.