I have bought some of the aircraft add-ons for Flight Sim (737-400/767PIC/A320), and must say, after being on many jumpseats of commercial aircraft and speaking to many pilots, I believe that anyone with a good knowledge of these packages, and some basic flying experience could get one of these aircraft off the ground. The packages simulate the systems onboard very accurately now, and, I'm not saying that someone could become a profficient pilot on one of these, but getting off the ground and being able to point the thing in a desired direction...
ref bucking broncos comments, I agree that you couldn't teach yourself to drive a rally car (maybe on a sega rally arcade machine
) but you can't programme a rally car (maybe one day) to do it's job, a modern day jet, well, follow the proceedures on one of the prementioned packages, and some previous flying experience, and this could be much more possible. Without depth perception and all round view, I actually find it a lot harder to fly the flightsim helicopters than I do the real ones, as is also the case with the cessna's! If anyone out there can get me in a real sim and test my theory, I'd be more than happy to have a go
(anyone from channel 4?????)
