Flight training simulator

At one point or another, we may have all seen those movie clips or those TV skits in which the pilot of a 747 jumbo jet passes out, dies of a heart attack, gets knocked unconscious, or gets killed by the bad guys during a flight.

Now there is nobody in the cockpit left who can fly the airplane. So the stewardesses grill the passengers to see if anyone on board who has any type of flight experience, who might be able to take the controls of the airplane, so that Air Traffic Control can talk them through guiding the plane to come down for a safe landing.

Is it just me, or why does it always seem like the one guy who has any type of flight experience, always happens to be the one whose only experience with flying airplanes is with the few hours he spent tinkering with a flight training simulator game for his computer at home?

The above scenario may sound like the stuff that TV sitcoms or made-for-TV movie dramas are made of, but there is a certain sense of ironic truth to it. Is this scenario really all that far-fetched as it seems?

The fact of the matter is that piloting an airplane in a flight training simulator is an extremely true-to-life experience. The computer software engineering that goes into designing today's modern flight training simulator software has evolved to the point that it has literally blurred the lines between simulation and reality.

So by becoming proficient at piloting an aircraft in a flight training simulator you will have acquired enough familiarity to bridge the gap between the simulator and its real-world counterpart.

And, in the hopefully unlikely event that such an emergency as described in the nightmare scenario above were to ever happen, you would be in a position to fly that airplane safely down onto the runway, using nothing more than the knowledge and experience you acquired by flying the simulator.