Once you’ve decided to complete a pilot education, you will sooner or later have to step into a flight simulator. Flight simulators realistically recreate aircraft flight, enabling you to train all kinds of flight situations. Aspiring pilots as well as fully trained ones thus practice and simulate various aspects of a flight. Read more about what a flight simulator looks like, what can be simulated and how it works …
We visited the Austrian Training Center and talked to one of Austrian’s pilots and a Training Manager to get all the answers to your questions about flying in a flight simulator.
What is a flight simulator? And how does it work?
A simulator is a moving device. It contains an aircraft cockpit replication and an electrical motion system designed to realistically replicate movement, forces and situations that may occur during a flight.
“Through the windows you can see a realistic view of the outside world, generated by a visual system. What you see depends on the flight situation simulated at that moment. All larger airports or those difficult to approach, such as London City Airport, are displayed in great detail. You can see everything, the city, mountains, power lines, and so on. It is all recreated with the help of photographs that serve as our basis for replicating view and terrain.”
Which situations can be replicated in a flight simulator?
Here the answer was a quick and unanimous „Anything!“ from both of them! The main focus is on simulating difficult and challenging flight situations. Should they occur in a real aircraft, captain and co-pilot will be able to handle such situations successfully.
„… still, simulating an entire flight is rather the exception, not the rule. In general, one deals with particular elements of a flight. For instance, you do not simulate “flying straight ahead” by sitting in the simulator for an hour.”
The complexity of the tasks rises with each training unit. .“From Low Visibility Take-off to System Failures to Smoke on Board, all situations can be replicated.”
One can also do „Flight Freeze“ (or „pause“!). Things stop moving then. The screens freeze …. and you can discuss the situation. But you can crash, too. If you mess up your flight and collide with a mountain, you get a crash scenario – the monitor will read ‘Crash’ and that’s it then!”
So this is how pilots are prepared for all situations during their education. Fully trained pilots, too, have to complete training units in the simulator twice a year. In our next redblog we will have a closer look at those training units and the special features of the flight simulator Dash 8-Q400 – don’t miss it!
