Training - Flight Simulators

Remarkable developments in computing and display technology have combined to make the simulator almost more real than real and it is now unthinkable to have a modern aircraft without a simulator to train its crew. The Flight Simulator has now become a vital and indispensable component of aviation training.

The wright brothers would be hugely surprised at the shape their creation has metamorphosed into in just a century. And even more to see that much of the challenging part of training required to fly a complex commercial aircraft today is carried out on the ground and not in the air. The Flight Simulator has now become a vital and indispensable component of aviation training.

Modern commercial aircraft are expensive to operate and too unaffordable to be exclusively used for pilot training. At the same time, increasingly complex aircraft systems as well as the operating environment demand higher levels of training and proficiency. Also, there is enhanced focus on safety and efficiency which are sought to be achieved through stringent legislative measures.

The Flight Simulator helps meet all these requirements effectively and at a substantially lower cost. Today there are authoritative guidelines on the quantum of mandatory simulator training, type of simulators required and the range of exercises trainee pilots must undergo.

A new milestone was crossed sometime in the last decade with the concept of Zero Flight Time Training. A licensed and experienced commercial pilot, on completion of the prescribed quantum of simulator training, can step into the cockpit of a passenger aircraft as a crew member carrying passengers for his very first flight on the type! This was unthinkable twenty years ago and even now pilots of the old school are worried about this. Further jolts to this mindset are in the offing. In case the new Multi-crew Pilot’s License (MPL) concept is implemented, a young and inexperienced co-pilot would have flown a drastically reduced syllabus on any aircraft, not just on the Commercial Transport type., That such a situation is being discussed at all is a tribute to the distance covered by aviation related Simulation Technology in the last few years.