Ever wondered what it’s like to pilot a passenger jet? For many of us, wondering is as close as we’ll ever get but a new facility recently opened by Mutahida Simulators at Al Bateen Executive airport offers us mere mortals the opportunity to pilot a full-size Boeing simulator. Abu Dhabi Week just couldn’t resist ...
We were met by the simulation station manager Anas Elmourad who quickly settled us in. While not being full motion the cockpit is very impressive – in fact a number of the major controls are taken from actual airliners.
Anas took us through the basic flight controls, some basic do’s and don’ts and asked us where we wanted to fly: we opted to start with a short hop from Al Bateen to Dubai.
Aircraft information is shown on two glass screens directly in front of each pilot. These are called primary flight displays and include everything from speed and navigation to check lists and warnings.
Once lined up on Al Bateen’s runway we advanced the throttles and were soon airborne. Turning right over Aldar HQ we climbed to 7,000 feet and settled into the flight. Take off was the easy part but it was surprisingly difficult to maintain height and direction and we seemed to be constantly correcting ourselves.
With Jebel Ali on the horizon the on-board computers instructed us to slow down and descend to 2,000 feet. Overreacting slightly, we descend too quickly and with the computers screaming PULL UP, PULL UP at the same time as the aircraft was slowing down we stalled and fell out of the sky into Dubai port.
But we were unharmed, so we re-position to London Gatwick for a short trip to Heathrow. Again take off was fairly easy and we managed to maintain height and speed without too much difficulty. However, while attempting a descending turn to line up for the runway, we managed to crash time and time again.
Flying the simulator was huge fun for an hour. We’re somewhat comforted that it’s actually quite hard to do as this means the pilots in charge of our next flight not only look cool in their snappy uniforms but are some of the best trained professionals with years of experience under their belts.
