Before this thread gets carted off to IMHO…
I don’t know who said you can’t learn from a simulator, it’s part of the process. As others have answered, simulator time does count toward an ATP license or type rating. However, Microsoft Flight Sim on a desktop != FAA-rated simulator. There’s a world of difference between a $50 game on a $1500 computer versus a multi-million dollar, six-axis full-motion simulator. About the only thing the computer programs are good for is building familiarity with instruments and basic procedures.
I don’t know for sure but I have heard that sim time is considered sufficient for at least some aspects of getting and/or maintaining a pilot’s license.
That said I don’t care how good a sim is because they all fail in one very important aspect…the prospect of flaming death if you screw up.
It is one thing to be sitting in a sim, even a ‘perfect’ one, knowing that if you get it wrong you can reset and try again. It is quite another thing to see how a person responds when the knowledge that they have zero margin for error and only one chance becuase the ground will be completely unforgiving.
That is why training in a really good simulator is BETTER than training in a real plane in many ways. I am not saying the advantage is that it prevents you from crashing for real although that is ceratinly important.
To become a good pilot, you need to constantly push your skills and the capabilities of the aircraft as far as you can without stepping over the line that gets you into real trouble. You can train for much more difficult situations in a simulator than you could in the real airplane because it would be too dangerous. An example would be learning to fly precision approaches to landing with zero visibility and a high crosswind. If you were in a real plane, you couldn’t even try it and you would be diverted to another airport. Pushing these skills in a simulator will make you a better and safer pilot even when conditions are not so bad and may even save your lunch in an emergency.
Other examples include emergency simulations like multiple systems failures that can only be approximated poorly in the real aircraft. Simulators are far superior for training for these types of situations and may save your life some day.
Also, simulators allow you to run the same scenarios over and over again until you get it right. In a real plane, it may take too long to set up that exat scenerio more than a couple of times, the weather may not be present, or it may cost too much.
Another great benefit is that sims probably help your instrument scan out. I’ve never done any PC sim stuff, but I can’t imagine you’re spending much time scanning for traffic and checking for landmarks. Maybe someone who’s done a lot of PC simming can clue me in.
With all that said, I still don’t think a novice (with PC sim time under his belt) could land an airliner.
Sorry…I was by no means saying a simulator is worthless. Far from it. They are excellent for all of the reasons you listed. A pilot can practice anything and not worry about trashing an expensive plane or more importantly killing him/herself or anyone else.
All I was trying to point out that all the sim time in the world still doesn’t quite live up to actually getting behing the yoke of a real plane and having at it. Sooner or later actual air time needs to be put in. I also maintain that if the shit ever does hit the fan in real life a sim may have better prepared you for whatever contingencies you face in the mechanical sense of flying the plane but how you psychologically respond (work under real pressure) is anyone’s guess (although I suppose a sim may mitigate some of that if you know that what needs to be done can be done thus giving you some hope).
It is interesting to note in the Gimli Glider story the pilot becomes so absorbed in the mechanical detail of flying the plane that he doesn’t even notice he’s about to land on a runway filled with people. The co-pilot notices but realizes they are committed anyway and doesn’t bother to inform the pilot as he was obviously busy enough that he didn’t need to be bothered with something new to distract him. I wonder if those pilots even had time to be scared (excpet for the first 10 seconds when they realize what is going on and before they dive into the business of surviving).
Those Gimli pilots were about as cool under pressure as you can get. I wonder if anyone sued the bejebus out of Air Canada. Is it possible to land with no wheels down?, has Boeing or Airbus taken that into consideration with the design of their planes? Would a pilot dump fuel before going in to minimize the chance of an explosion?
Yes, it is possible to land with no wheels down. Gear-Up landings happen all the time on smaller retractables. I saw one myself at Hansom AFB in Bedford, MA one day. It causes tremendous damage to the belly of the plane but is generally not fatal. Boeing and Airbus take these scenarios into account as well although I can’t imagine that they would happen because there are so many backup hydraulic systems to get the gear down. A more likely scenerio is that one of the wheels comes down and fails to lock in place. You would certainly want to jettison fuel before you put a commercial airliner on its belly to make it as light as possible and minimize the risk of explosion. You also want to touch down as slowly and as gently as possible.
My brother was aboard an airliner landing in San Francisco that had to do a belly landing. It was a long time ago (late 70’s I think) and it has been a long time since I heard the story but IIRC one of the back landing gear wouldn’t come down (or wouldn’t lock or something). In their case the plane didn’t dump fuel as such. Instead it kept circling till most of its fuel was used up. The reason for this was the flight crew kept attempting to fix the problem till they were forced to land. I’m not sure if they landed on one set of landing gear or if they retracted all the gear and did a belly landing. Does anyone know whether landing on one set of gear is preferrable (possibly causing the wingtip to hit the ground and cause the plane to cartwheel) or would they rather do a no gear down landing in this instance?
FWIW there were no injuries save for some twisted ankles coming down the escape slides.
Glad to hear your brother wasn’t hurt. Are their safer models of planes, in terms of design? IIRC it seemed like a DC-10 was crashing every other week back in the 80’s. What ever happened to the Tri-star?, that was such a cool plane.
Doh!
there
“Tremendous damage” is a bit of an overstatement. It’s all in how the lands. A light plane could land gear up and just get light sheet metal damage to the underside (along with a bent prop and possible engine damage, but we’re talking about belly damage here). Remember, the weight of the plane is distributed along the entire belly at this point, so the psi is fairly low. I’ve seen it where the aircraft just needed a new propellor, a bit of paint on the belly, and it was up flying again (there was no problem with the gear, the pilot just forgot to put it down).
Now how about this!!:
What about a fighter pilot? Someone who flys f-16’s and such. Even with their high level of training, would it just be too different flying an airliner?
Before the modern, full-motion simulator… yeah, they took up passenger jets on training flights. Very expensive. Of course, the full-motion simulators are expensive, too, but they don’t crash into flaming balls of twisted metal when a student screws up, either.
There are simulators that reproduce the experience of flying a jet so well that yes, they do count towards a license, type rating, or recurency. They also cost about as much an hour to run as a real jet. But, as Shagnasty pointed out, for some things a simulator is better than a real plane, allowing you to train for emergencies far too dangerous to simulate in real flight.
So, when you learn to fly passenger jets you spend a lot of time in the simulator. Such time is recorded as “sim time”, just as time with an instructor is recorded as “dual” and time as second in command is “SIC” and time as pilot in command is “PIC”. But it’s all considered “real” time.