Simulator II

So what does it look like “inside the box,” inside the flight simulator?

You walk into a rectangular room, about ten feet wide and five feet deep. On the right is the instructor’s chair and console. The console consists of a simple desk where he puts his notes underneath one of those snake lights. Two flat-screen computer monitors, one atop the other, face him (and me). These are touch-operated. Tapping about the monitors he’s able to control everything from weather conditions to sounds and lighting to failure events.

My chair, the observer’s seat, is off to the immediate left, but it can slide forward so I can observe the action. I am slightly disturbed that it does not appear to have seat belts, what with all the discussion of kill switches.

Just forward of us is the cockpit, actual size. Steve and his co-pilot for the exercise squeeze into their chairs, don their headsets and mikes, and immediately start running through their pre-flight checklist. His particular aircraft has the yoke and foot pedals, but also a row of switches horizontally across chest-height. Below that are two notebook-sized computer screens. Around them are – no, not dials, but next-generation dials, electronic thingies yielding all sorts of telemetry about the plane. Between the two pilots is a panel of more switches and lighted thingies, about four-foot long and a foot wide. The throttle is here, as is the emergency brake.

The instructor, who they can’t see unless they physically turn their heads around, taps some weather conditions into the computer. The cockpit has three windows: a large, wide forward window about a foot in height, which wraps around both sides to form side windows. Now … I can’t believe my eyes, because it’s snowing outside, and it’s nighttime.

Whoa. I have the odd sensation of being inside an aircraft, looking out the window and seeing flakes of snow drift lazily by. Steve turns on the aircraft’s forward outside lights, so I can see those direction markers you see on runways. “What do you think?” the instructor asks me. “Amazing,” is the only reply I can make, awestruck by the realism.

Then Steve powers up the plane. You know when you’re buckled in your seat on your plane, waiting for something to happen, and you hear that low-pitch whine suddenly get louder, and the aircraft starts to move? Well, that’s exactly what I hear. The air starts circulating about like you’re in an actual plane. Steve releases the emergency brake and I feel a thud and then forward motion as the plane starts rolling. He taxis on to the runway.

“Challenger-300,” the instructor says in our headphones, “all clear for take-off.” Steve begins accelerating. I’m thrown back in my chair. The plane speeds up on the snowy runway. I can’t believe how lifelike this all feels; I must have a huge grin on my face because, yes, it feels just like it always feels when I’m in a plane taking off. We pick up speed; I know this because I see the yellow arrows on the runway ahead shooting by faster and faster, and I’m pushed back harder and harder in my seat.

Then, disaster.

Four quick bumps; it sounds as if the aircraft ran over speed bumps. A second later we’re spinning to the right, almost off the runway, then sharp back left, then right, then left. “Abort!” Steve shouts to his co-pilot, and he’s flicking switches all over the cockpit. We’re braking hard and while I’m not quite thrown forward, it’s probably because I’m white-knuckling the two handrails. My heart’s racing as Steve brings us sliding to a halt on the ice and slush.

It’s judged a success; he kept the plane on the runway.

The instructor laughs. He told Steve in the pre-briefing that he’d throw something at him early to “get his blood going.”

Then, everything’s reset. Steve lines up and takes off, ostensibly on a flight from JFK to Boston. The next series of exercises will test his airmanship. If what I gleaned from the pre-briefing is correct, he’s going to go up to 10,000 feet, make a series of turns maintaining certain angles and altitudes, and then follow a prescribed holding pattern and do a landing. We take off, which is still thrill-inducing, then it gets a little boring. We’re up in the clouds, and the window just shows a hazy blue-gray dispersion of light. It gives me a chance to observe things.

I’m very interested in this program the instructor is running. By tapping this and that he can program in little or big bugs for Steve to handle. One screen is a list of malfunctions: this is what I’m interested in. He can punch in anything from hydraulic problems (landing gear or rudder stuff, I guess) to foil malfunctions to engine failure to miscellaneous smoke and fire.

And don’t you know it, the instructor starts coughing. “It’s starting to get smoky back here,” he says to Steve. A light beeps somewhere. Steve asks his co-pilot to get more info. Apparently, there’s smoke coming in from the vents – oily smoke. Uh oh. We’ll have to do an emergency landing. I forget what the actually cause was, but there was much deductive reasoning going on. I’m thinking it was an engine fire, but maybe not. That strikes me as something more serious.

Steve receives clearance to land and executes a perfect landing. At least, I think it’s perfect. The plane isn’t destroyed or anything. Nobody dies of smoke inhalation.

The final exercise involves a twilight take-off at JFK. We see a beautiful sunset behind the Manhattan skyline. Steve is supposed to fly a particular pattern over the airport and land visually. There’s a power plant that gives him a visual cue on what to do and where to go. Everything goes swimmingly until he’s cleared for final approach.

Suddenly we hear – and, I swear, feel – a sharp, loud bang from somewhere underneath the plane. Steve and his co-pilot look at each other. “Maybe a big chunk of ice fell off the plane,” the co-pilot says with a laugh. I don’t know – maybe the landing gear fell off! But I know better, because I was watching the instructor. He tapped onto the malfunction menu and selected “FOIL.” Now, I’m not sure what it means, but it was damn well noisy and scary.

However, we’re able to land without further incident. It’s really amazing to watch a plane landing from the cockpit (or a few feet behind it). So smooth, yet a little unnerving. Probably because you’re going so fast and you just have to float this humongous mechanical machine gently down onto the runway. The brakes kick in, I go forward a little bit in my chair, and we’re stopped and the simulation is over.

Two hours in the box. Seemed like only twenty minutes.

Afterwards, I thank the instructor for letting me sit in. He and the co-pilot want to know my impressions. I tell them about white-knuckling it during the aborted take-off and how I think I now have jet lag.

A short debriefing follows. The instructor picked up on a few minor things for Steve to mull over. Nothing earth-shattering; he did well in the sim (this is his third day of training). Just some human-error human-judgment type-stuff that are every pilot’s weakness. Then they go over tomorrow’s exercise, broadly.

All-in-all, a fascinating experience. Quite different from fiddling around with Microsoft Flight Simulator, circa 2003. I’m kinda glad our pilots go through sessions like these, even if it’s only once a year. I think of the countless numbers of people whose lives will be saved because of them.