N ew York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Seattle, Atlanta and Goose Bay — you know, the airport in Newfoundland and Labrador where airplanes divert in the event of an emergency such as when this Boeing 767-300 aircraft operating as United Airlines flight 958 from Chicago to London had to land there back in June of 2015 — were amongst the destinations on the spontaneous flight itinerary during a solid two hours in an Airbus A350 flight simulator so new that a pilot has yet to be officially trained in it.
Test Piloting a New Airbus A350 Flight Simulator: An Engine Fire as Part of This Teaser
We eventually experienced a fire in Engine 1.
You do not want to see this message next to your gauges on a real flight; but the Airbus A350 seemed to handle the situation well.
Once we “landed”, two fire trucks raced from either side of the airport to meet our aircraft on the runway. The firemen never exited their trucks. Even the flight instructor was amazed at this, as we laughed.
All of our takeoffs and landings had to be visual instead of using instruments because the Instrument Landing System — or ILS — software was not yet calibrated to the hardware.
There are no yokes to be found in the cockpit of this — or other — Airbus aircraft. This cockpit contains for each pilot a joystick; a trackball; a flywheel and even a computer keyboard with which to control the airplane — similar to an expensive video game.
The Airbus A350 flight simulator is quite spacious; and the graphics seen in the “window” are the best yet that I have witnessed — even with cars moving on the highways below. Oh — and we also experienced a snowstorm on one of the flights.
Here is a nice feature: a map of the airport itself — with runways and taxiways — automatically appears on one of the large displays by the gauges once the aircraft has landed.
With greater than 24 gigabytes of photographs and video footage to sort through, selecting the ones to be featured in at least one future article is going to take me some time — but I plan on posting them for you.
Summary
What can be more fun than piloting an authentic flight simulator? How about piloting one where even the flight instructor is not yet completely knowledgeable on it himself?
That does not mean he is inexperienced, as he knows his way around the Boeing flight simulators with years of experience; so we spent an additional 45 minutes or so in a Boeing 777-200LR flight simulator — complete with such unannounced surprises as crosswinds, wind shear, thunderstorms with lightning, and a bird strike which disabled the left engine before the right engine was disabled as well, which forced a landing without power.
I have never been a passenger on an Airbus A350 aircraft; so experience in the cockpit of the flight simulator was quite interesting.
Get your geek on, your questions ready, and your seat belt fastened for what was a memorable series of flights…
All photographs ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
