On the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow, Embraer announced a comprehensive training package for the Swedish Air Force’s incoming C-390 Millennium fleet: a Level D Full Flight Simulator — the highest certification standard for flight simulators — a Cargo Handling Station Trainer developed with Germany’s Rheinmetall, and a computer-based training system produced with ETI. Austria, which is buying the aircraft through the same multinational procurement, will receive a computer-based training package of its own.
For readers of this publication, the announcement matters less for the simulator hardware than for what it confirms: the C-390’s Nordic footprint is deepening, and every new layer of training, logistics and sustainment added to the European fleet strengthens the programme’s industrial anchor on the corridor’s southern end — Portugal.
What Sweden is getting
Sweden selected the C-390 to replace its six-decade-old C-130 Hercules fleet, signing earlier this year for four aircraft through a joint acquisition with the Netherlands and Austria that lets Stockholm ride an existing contract for faster deliveries and lower costs. The first Swedish C-390 is expected to enter service by the end of 2027.
The Level D simulator will let Swedish crews rehearse normal, abnormal and emergency procedures — the system simulates more than 350 malfunctions — alongside military mission profiles, without tying up scarce aircraft. The Rheinmetall-developed cargo trainer recreates the C-390’s cargo compartment virtually for loadmaster instruction. “Together with our partners, we are building a comprehensive training ecosystem that enables Sweden and Austria to maximise the C-390 Millennium’s capabilities, while strengthening their interoperability and commonality,” said Carlos Naufel, President and CEO of Embraer Services & Support.
The European fleet keeps growing
The announcement came days after Embraer delivered the first C-390 to the Czech Air Force, just 20 months after contract signature. The European operator group now spans Portugal, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Slovakia and Lithuania — a list that has grown from one to eight in barely four years, with the type logging more than 15,000 flight hours with the Brazilian Air Force at mission-capability rates of 93 per cent.
Portugal was the C-390’s launch customer in Europe, and that first-mover position has translated into industrial work. OGMA — the Alverca-based aerostructures and MRO company majority-owned by Embraer — completed the first scheduled maintenance of a Hungarian Air Force C-390 in June, the first time any European C-390 went through a heavy check outside Brazil. As this publication has reported, OGMA is positioned as the platform’s European maintenance hub, and Embraer’s Portuguese footprint also includes its two aerostructures plants in Évora.
Why the training layer matters for the corridor
Training ecosystems are sticky. Once Swedish and Dutch crews standardise on common simulators, common courseware and common maintenance procedures, the economics of pooling heavy maintenance at a single European centre become compelling — and today that centre is in Portugal. A Nordic operator flying the same aircraft, trained on the same systems, is a future customer for Portuguese MRO slots, spare pools and engineering services for the two-decade life of the fleet.
It also runs in the other direction. Sweden’s entry into the programme — alongside Saab’s separate and well-documented industrial courtship of Portugal over the Gripen — is knitting the two countries’ defence-aerospace industries together at a pace that would have seemed unlikely three years ago. The C-390 user group gives Portuguese industry recurring Nordic work; the Gripen campaign dangles Swedish work for Portuguese suppliers. Either way, the traffic flows through the same corridor.
What to watch next. Delivery and installation timelines for Sweden’s simulator package; whether Finland converts its long-running C-390 evaluation into an order, which would put the type in every Nordic-adjacent airlift fleet renewal; and whether OGMA’s Hungarian first is followed by maintenance contracts from the newer northern operators as their aircraft reach the 24-month check window.