Baby boomers may recall the Terry Toons Mighty Mouse theme song, sung by a squeaky little mouse in a superhero costume: "Here I come to save the day! Mighty Mouse is on his way."
Give yourself a chance to feel the same way. Depending on which package you buy, United Services, a division of United Airlines, now offers pilots and nonpilots alike a chance to fly one of its $20 million full-motion simulators. Just for entertainment. (Yes, you can log it.) The three-year-old program is called Pilot for a Day. One nonpilot, a man whose medical condition has kept him from his dream of flying, has flown every type of aircraft represented among the 36 full-motion simulators.
AOPA Pilot had the opportunity to experience the $1,750 Boeing 777 Gold package. The Gold package includes a tour of the United Airlines Training Center, one hour of ground instruction, two hours of simulator time, and a 30-minute debriefing to answer your questions. The least expensive package is $650 and provides an hour of time in a Boeing 727/737 simulator, with pre- and postflight briefings. But you don't tour the Flight Center.
Not to worry. The northeast Denver training center is housed in a building on the former Stapleton Airport that is so large you'll take a tour just getting to your simulator. The airport is closed and will be redeveloped soon. Its most important function at the moment is to serve as a park-and-ride for morning commuters.
The training center teams up with line pilots getting trained in new aircraft, or passing recurrent training checks in the model they now fly. A secured hallway flooded with identical black crew suitcases means a new training class is somewhere nearby.
Account Representative Jill Anderson introduced me to my lord of the sims for the day, Capt. Buzz Wright. Perfect. The only way it could have been better is if his last name had been spelled Right. Or Doright. My goal was the same burning question most of you have: Could I — as a regularly ticketed passenger and with no training in type — land the 777 in an emergency? After both pilots become incapacitated?
Wright, a Boeing 777 captain and instructor, explained shortly after arriving in the briefing room that he expected me to land it without difficulty. The twin-engine 777 is the nation's premier glass-cockpit airplane, capable of a fully automated landing. It even brakes to a stop on the centerline afterward. United Airlines was the launch customer for the aircraft.
Pilots transitioning to it from steam-gauge airplanes are challenged to learn all the tricks of this flying computer known as the 777, and copilots leaving it to captain a lesser aircraft face the task of learning the older and much different technology.
You want to know how to fly a Boeing 777? The aircraft computer puts cross hairs with a square box at the exact point on the attitude indicator that will give the required performance. As you are aware, attitude indicators have two wings and a dot in the middle. Move the controls until the dot is in the box. Questions? OK, there is a little more to it. You must still select speeds and sometimes headings by twisting one of two autopilot knobs.
Oh, sure, you'll need 35 hours of transition training to learn all the systems that will keep your 321 passengers safe and the aircraft's 624,700 pounds under control. Those actually sitting in the left seat of a Boeing 777 make about $225,000 a year. But this is entertainment. You don't have to sweat the details when you are Pilot for a Day.
The 777 offers an amazing demonstration to the neophyte. During my preflight briefing, Wright reviewed the aircraft's capabilities. It will climb directly to 39,000 feet with a full load; to heck with the step climb that requires leveling off from time to time to burn off fuel and thus become lighter. Don't need it. It cruises along as fast as Mach 0.84 or slightly better, and it has enough fuel to reach the Pacific Rim from the United States. The center tank is not even needed for flights to Europe.
Once the briefing was completed, Wright and I descended a short flight of stairs to the simulator bay and walked the gangplank that leads to the simulator.
The scenario began to unfold as I had outlined it on the telephone to Anderson before flying to Denver. After the pilots become incapacitated, the flight attendant calmly asks on the public address system if there are any "company pilots" on board. Hearing from none, the following announcement asks for "any general aviation pilots on board." Why, yes, I'd be pleased to help out. Straightening my tie and tugging at my cuffs so that the cuff links show, I saunter toward the front. The anxious, yet adoring eyes of women, children, and businessmen follow me through the wide-body cabin.
Up front where the real window seats are found, I check my ticket stub, looking for the flight number, and key the mic. "Any ATC facility, this is a passenger on United 925." After explaining the situation, ATC finds another 777 pilot and brings him on frequency.
Wright, the 777 pilot now on frequency, has decided that this first attempt will be without autoland, just to see if a GA pilot can do it. We're going to land it at the nearest airport with the most facilities.
For the descent, Wright directs me to turn a dial on the autopilot to set the desired speed. Headings are selected by turning another dial. Both are located on the panel beneath the glareshield and are easy to locate. When it is time for flaps, Wright tells me over the radio to lift the flap handle and pull it back a notch, and then "box the speed" using the airspeed selector on the autopilot. That simply means to turn the speed knob until a box on the tape-like airspeed indicator centers over the flap setting. Now, the computer knows how fast to fly the airplane for the selected flap setting. It will work out to about 140 knots. Wright guides me through the process of entering the ILS frequency, but the radios aren't all that different from those used in general aviation. No problem. Now it's up to me and my ability to play dot-in-the-box.
It's hands-on flying, but keeping the dot where it belongs proves not to be difficult. The glideslope is held — with small variations — by keeping the pitch angle at 2.5 degrees nose up. Gentle turns keep us aligned with the localizer; tracking the localizer is facilitated by the fact that 312 tons of airplane don't easily move off course. There's too much mass and inertia. The radar altimeter is watching the descent now; there's 50 feet. Rotate. Raise the dot to 5 degrees nose up and just wait. It will be all right.
But I don't quite get the attitude adjusted to 5 degrees nose up and am still pulling at the moment of touchdown. The aircraft does what any general aviation aircraft would do if the angle of attack is increased at touchdown: It skips, and because I am still pulling, the nose rises dramatically, going well past 5 degrees. But the second bounce is the final landing, and there was no tail strike. It must have been close, but the touchdown was safe. Obviously, it's not over yet.
Now it's time to put the nose down and pull up the thrust-reverser levers on the back of the two throttles. The throttles remain at idle position as this is done. As the speed drops through 100 kt, gentle braking brings the aircraft to a stop.
Could the average pilot do it? One just did. But I learned my lesson about over-rotating for the flare, and I made satisfying, if not perfect, landings from then on.
Wright resets the computer, and we land at Washington Dulles International Airport in a blinding snowstorm, using autoland all the way. (Because of the snow, I lose sight of the taxiway and take a shortcut across the snow-covered grass to the gate.) Then San Francisco. Then Hong Kong. After a few landings, Wright goes to the back of the simulator and says, "Get us out of here."
I feel as nervous, and as thrilled, as I did on my first solo. Me? This big thing? With all those people? I use the tiller, a handle on the left shaped like a boat-rudder handle, to tighten the radius of the nosewheel steering. The rudder pedals alone provide only 7 degrees of side-to-side movement of the nosewheel, which is 12 feet behind me.
Wright has to take over the taxiing at Hong Kong, lest we plummet down an embankment and into the ocean just a few feet away. I could not get used to putting the nose of the aircraft nearly over the water beside the taxiway and turned too soon — nearly putting the main gear in the mud. The main gear, by the way, is 138 feet behind the cockpit. We're as high above the taxiway as the cockpit of a Boeing 747.
At San Francisco, Wright has me do a single-engine landing. The autorudder removes all necessity for leg-straining force on the rudder pedal. I ask that the autorudder be turned off and discover that the force required is quite a workout. That is followed by a single-engine takeoff, just for fun, with Wright handling the throttle so that power is not applied too quickly. Otherwise, we'd go off the runway.
At Dulles, Wright directs that I look into my lap for a little IFR unusual-attitude training. When my eyes rise to the primary flight display's attitude indicator, there appears there a horrible sight: all blue. Nothing but blue. Wright has pitched the aircraft 60 degrees nose up and sent all the serving carts rumbling toward the lavatories. The stall is building; the stick is shaking. What is a GA pilot to do?
Past general-aviation training indicated that when the nose is high and speed is deteriorating, add power. But for some reason (overwhelmed?) I just sit there. I wait for the nose to drop, knowing that if I push the nose down, the aircraft could be structurally damaged and passengers could be injured by negative Gs.
I try to roll the aircraft toward the horizon to dump lift, which would allow the nose to drop. But of course, there is no horizon on the display to be found. Once the nose is on the horizon, I could right the aircraft and recover to level flight without excessive Gs. But the aircraft is already in a stall. As I turn to the right, the left wing slaps down and the nose is rapidly dropping to and through the horizon. Left aileron is applied, and that results in the right wing immediately flopping down 70 degrees. The aircraft is going the opposite of my aileron inputs. I have now lost almost 3,000 feet and am getting angry at the simulator. Wright is enjoying the show.
"You want to go right? Fine. Stay there," I tell the simulator. I can hear Wright chuckling in the back. I have a plan, one from my aerobatic training days. That response, essentially doing nothing with the ailerons, proves to be the right one. I mash the left rudder pedal to the floor and hold it there to bring the nose up. The right wing slowly comes up, but the nose is now down 10 to 15 degrees. Slowly, I bring the nose up, adding power only as the nose nears the horizon; I have saved the day, thanks in part to having adequate altitude for recovery.
Finally, landing back at Dulles, I taxi up to the gate. There, the brakes are held with toe pressure while a lever at my lower right on the center console is raised to lock the brakes. The flights have been without accident, thanks to all the automation.
Saving the day was what the game was all about. But it didn't seem like a game. I was sweating. The realism of the simulator makes it easy to believe that you are really in the air.
"Most pilots say the simulator flies just like the airplane," Wright said. "With the 777, we say the airplane flies just like the simulator. They even use the same software."
Want to be Pilot for a Day? Give Dawn Thompson a call at 303/780-3627, or send an e-mail ( [email protected]). She'll have you signed up before you can sing the Mighty Mouse theme song.
For information on programs offered by UAL Services, visit the Web ( www.ualservices.com/flight_training/). Links to additional information about flight simulation can be found on AOPA Online ( www.aopa.org/pilot/links/links9912.shtml). E-mail the author at [email protected].
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