Advantages of the Flight Simulator

'Interesting Situations' .....

The advantages over conventional training methods are enormous.

Dangerous and very difficult situations can easily be set up in a simulator thus enabling the trainee to practise the skills needed to deal with them effectively should they ever arise in real life. Such 'interesting' situations can NEVER be practised during training in the real aircraft for safety reasons.

** Click on the photographs for a larger image **

The Best Environment for Learning

The cockpit of an aeroplane is probably the last place on earth that is conducive to trying to learn a new skill.

There's just too much adrenalin flying around, with the brain very much locked into the 'beta' state and many times it becomes overwhelmed and locked-up at critical moments. It's been well proven that humans learn best when the brain is in a relaxed state. A relaxed state is just NOT possible in an aeroplane cockpit!

A simulator is a far more relaxed arena for learning new skills and situations can be PAUSED at critical moments for discussion or a 'dangerous' situation can be allowed to develop right through to a crash in absolute safety.

It's also a well known fact that we all learn by our mistakes and this way, because the student can be allowed to have total control by flying 'solo' in a perfectly safe yet realistic environment, physical and mental skills are achieved in a fraction of the time that would be needed in the real aircraft. Training costs can thus be drastically reduced also.

Base Leg for Runway 03 at Popham

There isn't an exercise in the syllabus that the simulator can't deal with as effectively - or even more so - as the real aeroplane so our instructors can effectively teach all the basic flight training manoeuvres. The realism is so good in fact that we could teach you to fly right up to solo standard and then put you into the real aeroplane for your first solo flight!

'Illegal' Fun Flying at Gatwick

But even though learning the basics of flying is tremendous fun and a real challenge, because it's a simulator we can do things that would be totally illegal (and dangerous) but even MORE fun! And because these 'illegal' exercises are very challenging, they're a great learning experience too. Things like Flying THROUGH the control tower at Gatwick

and then swooping down to fly underneath where the passengers board the jets.

Or you might try to handle a 50kt headwind 20degrees off the runway heading or even more difficult try to hover INSIDE the control tower in a 50kt wind ..... what you can do is limited only by your imagination.