A friend of mine was doing recurrent 737 sim training with a local airline a few years back. At the completion of their sim late one night, they asked what was in the big America West hangar. The instructor, who happened to be an AW instructor, mentioned the hangar housed their 757 and Airbus sims. Interested in the 757, my friend asked if they could stop by and see the cockpit. "Sure," said the instructor.
The two students wandered over to the hangar and found the 757 sim. Peeking inside they found it unoccupied. While they were peeking in the door, a sim instructor walked up and asked them if they were here for a sim ride. They told him they were doing contract 737 training and wanted to see the 757. "Fly it if you want, just don't go on-motion," said the instructor. "We don't know jack about the 75," said my friend. "Simple" said the instructor and with a few simple instructions, left them to start up a dead cold aircraft by themselves. (I secretly believe the sim instructor went down to the lab to watch the screens remotely to have a good laugh!)
In a few minutes they had the engines running and got the busses powered. Using reverse, they backed away from the LAX gate and found their way to the runway. They took off and commenced to fly 3-4 touch and gos each with quite decent landings each (according to them!!!). When done, they taxiied back to a jetway and shut the aircraft down.
Pretty neat for having no training in the aircraft type.
PT
