As a colleague of Boeing Boy I have to disagree. Whilst these PC games are good and realistic to the point of being able to teach the fundamentals of using this equipment I am certain that anyone with no experience of the flight deck of a heavy jet (or any commercial a/c) would not be able to put their 'computer skills' to use without also having some experience in the actual cockpit.
I have no doubt that the murderers who commited these massacres had some training in a heavy jet simulator. A heavy jet travelling at about 250-300 knots at low level, if you have never sat in the seat of one is a daunting place and as anyone of you who can remember as far back as the first time you sat in that seat how complicated it all seemed.
Like anything, with many months or years of practice and day to day operating these jets we become comfortable with the layout and operation of the many controls. Unless these barbarians were already airline pilots, which I find almost impossible to comprehend as possible, they must have had some basic sim training, even if only a few hours to be able to direct these a/c into their targets.
I was upset by a reporter, on C4 I think, yesterday who had a PC flight sim, and sitting smugly in his chair, legs crossed and talking to camera, showed how 'easy' it was with his experience of the computer program to guide the computer a/c into the WTC using his piddly little handheld joystick. Just typical piece of pathetic tabloid type 'news' with the reporter trying to impress his gullible viewers of how easy it really was... NOT.
These heinous killers received some training from someone, probably unwittingly, and all the 'know it all' wantabes who have never experienced the control of a heavy jet but believe that they could do it becuase of their computer skills should wind their necks in as it is increasingly angering the rest of us who do this for real and are mourning the loss of colleagues under exceptional circumstances.
Those who can do. Those who can't pretend they can.
