Board Simulation Sessions: Fill & Download for Free

Highly unlikely scenario:Both pilots on an A380 become incapacitated.Option A: Our hero, a 747–400 pilot is on board. He / she is the only hope for a successful outcome.Option B: Our hero, an A320 pilot is on board. He / she is the only hope for a successful outcome.I’ll choose Option B.The A320 pilot will feel like a fish in the water. He / she will seat in a very familiar cockpit.The 747 pilot, however, will have a hard time trying to come to grips with the “Airbus philosophy.”Normal transition scenario:To fly an A380, a B747 pilot needs a full type rating course. This includes:“CBT” (Computer Based Training) to learn the A380 systems from scratch.A number of FTD (Flight Training Device) sessions, to get familiar with the A380 procedures.A320 FTD (Image credit: cat.cz)Several simulator sessions, including a sim exam and touch-and-go practice.A350 simulatorLine training. Normal commercial flights with an instructor, followed by a line check.To fly an A380, an A320 pilot just needs a short CCQ (Cross Cockpit Qualification) course:A few days on the CBT just to learn the system differences.One or two FTD sessions. The cockpit procedures are almost identical.4 simulator sessions also to highlight the differences system differences, plus an exam and touch-and-go practice.6 line training sectors, including the line check.

B-2. How’s good does it sound to “fly” and 18 hour long simulator session? Or a 36 hour long mission sitting in an ejection seat with no bathroom or galley in board? The only rest facility is a collapsing beach chair you bought at Walmart to put between the seats and “rest” while you fly from Missouri to Kosovo, air refuel twice, punch in some coordinates and press a button, then fly back and land and the same runway you departed from a day and a half ago. No thanks.

Do pilots know what absolutely every single button and switch in the cockpit does?A friend of mine recently stopped flying the Q400 as he changed fleets to a different aircraft type, and so he was giving away some of the stuff he had accumulated from his Q400 type rating (not the checklists, because they are electronic on his iPad and are proprietary copyright to the company he flies for).One of those things is a big A2 sized poster of the Q400 cockpit with every switch, indicator, screen and lightbulb in the Q400 cockpit. It looks a little bit like this:After several weeks of ground school (think lecture rooms with 22 - 55 year old pilots in uniform, sitting at desks, facing a big whiteboard, with a senior ground school pilot who has an instructor rating for the aircraft type, describing every system and its function, and the operations methods the airline uses, in a classroom for a few days), they would do quizzes on each function of each item in the cockpit, and the systems which drive them. This is all flight manual/book/computer based training knowledge.I’m sure by now, most people in any workforce has seen some kind of computer-based training. An app or website usually these days, or a CD-ROM for old school. That you get up on your laptop or PC at work or home with a collection of paragraphs written out, or audio/visual clips that say some stuff, that you then need to complete a multiple choice questionnaire at the end to move onto the next stage.Only after they are already familiar with the aircraft’s controls and their relative locations, do the student pilots get let lose on a bona fide actual flight simulator.The flight simulator cockpit might only be driving a computer program, but all the cockpit controls are the same. They are often the same physical parts that go in the real aircraft. Even the seats and cup holders are the same ones from the real aircraft. Yes, even the oxygen masks work. Including delivering oxygen.A simulator session can go for hours. It won’t be a smooth ride. The instructor at the back is there to test you, and test you they will. Obscure emergencies and systems failures galore. Multiple failures that stack up. Interrupted flows with ATC requests that come at inopportune moments, and cabin crew dealing with passenger problems (simulated via acting) from medical emergencies. Even the ‘other pilot’ in the cockpit being briefed in secret to deliberately miss things or fly badly or to fall unconscious (acting).When you fly in a simulator for training purposes, you can guarantee that by the time you’re landing, you’ll be landing at an arrival airport you hadn’t briefed on before takeoff, there will be a passenger having a heart attack, an engine that was on fire, a pressurization problem and electrical transfer bus failure before you roll out onto final and find out that the ILS system at the airport has a failed glideslope that ATC only found out about 3 minutes ago, meaning that the A380 in front of you slowed down early and now you’re at the minimum wake turbulence separation distance and getting jostled around in rotational turbulence with one engine shut down and half the electricals failed and an ambulance waiting for you at the end of the runway because the passenger suffered a heart attack 20 minutes ago, and is deteriorating.So after passing their tests and check rides, and being signed off by an instructor as competent, then it’s time to hit Initial Operating Experience. The new pilot is paired off with an experienced senior captain who will give them the opportunity to fly and learn, while ensuring everything is safe for the paying passengers on board. A month or 3 of that mentorship, with someone who knows the plane inside-out. With the kind of expert knowledge that only experience can teach, being put into the situation of observing the new pilot negotiate the real flying world.And another check ride in the sim, focusing on any weaknesses the senior captain noticed. Once they have proved themselves confident in the opinion of people who are experts at flying the aircraft, your new pilot finally gets tasked with flying normal trips with whoever crew scheduling needs to pair them up with.By that time, the pilot should know what everything in their cockpit does, and even a good idea on how it does it. And more importantly, how and when to use it at the appropriate time in concert with the other pilot, as should be the goal under crew resource management (CRM) procedures.And every 6 months, even if they have been flying perfectly without as much as a manager or captain raising an eyebrow at them, they will be back in the simulator, proving to an instructor that they still know everything. And it’s high stress. Not only because any time you step into a simulator, you know something will break (simulated intentionally by the instructor), but your career is on the line. Fail a test, and you don’t get to fly again till you can pass.