Slightly OT but hopefully some of you will find this trip interesting. I was lucky enough to receive an hour in the BA 747 full motion simulator at their flight training school. I have done it once before when they were based in Cranebank but the new facility is simply amazing.
On arrival at Vanguard House we were issued two security passes and tried to find our way to the simulators. With not much help from security we ended up on floor 1 of TBC. This was not only the wrong floor but the wrong building. Trainee cabin crew everywhere and quite a lot of cabin mockups:
We finally tracked down my instructor, an ex-BA 747 Captain, and we went into the simulator ‘room’. It’s huge. All together there are 16 full motion and 2 fixed based. Out of the 16, 4 were the B747 and the rest were made up of: B767, B777, B787, A320 and the A380. Quite an impressive view. One of B787 sims belongs to VS and they even have their own instructor room there with the BA logo in the corner; looked a tad strange!
This was my particular toy for 90 minutes:
If you have any interest in aviation I highly recommend. It really is so much fun and realistic. I spent my time mainly concentrating on my landings as I wanted to perfect my flare. Here’s a little video of us in action. This is my sidestep landing at Heathrow.
https://youtu.be/kIquJ1s8-D8
On arrival at Vanguard House we were issued two security passes and tried to find our way to the simulators. With not much help from security we ended up on floor 1 of TBC. This was not only the wrong floor but the wrong building. Trainee cabin crew everywhere and quite a lot of cabin mockups:
We finally tracked down my instructor, an ex-BA 747 Captain, and we went into the simulator ‘room’. It’s huge. All together there are 16 full motion and 2 fixed based. Out of the 16, 4 were the B747 and the rest were made up of: B767, B777, B787, A320 and the A380. Quite an impressive view. One of B787 sims belongs to VS and they even have their own instructor room there with the BA logo in the corner; looked a tad strange!
This was my particular toy for 90 minutes:
If you have any interest in aviation I highly recommend. It really is so much fun and realistic. I spent my time mainly concentrating on my landings as I wanted to perfect my flare. Here’s a little video of us in action. This is my sidestep landing at Heathrow.
https://youtu.be/kIquJ1s8-D8