The I'm from the internet may soon become reality as RAF training moves to simulators
 

Most pilot training will be computer based, will that have a knock on effect on flying pay one wonders?

https://epaper.thetimes.co.uk/the-ti...82041920138648

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/m...head-n0kfzzw8w

Probably not. Flying pay isn't linked to how much "flying" one does.

Retention, however, will be another matter.

Will the CAA and airlines accept sim hours?

No, this is probably part of the ‘retention’ scheme!

The bigger question is whether young people will want to go through all the hoops of training to mainly fly a simulator? Perhaps those brought up on virtual reality and video games won’t see it as such a negative.

“Of the 1500 hours of total flight time required, up to 100 hours can be completed in a suitable simulator (FFS or FNPT - but only a maximum of 25 hours may be completed in an FNPT).”

Cut and paste from current CAA ATPL requirements.

In the future, who knows?

What's the recruitment and retention like for RPAS these days? Could be an indicator as to the appetite for sim jocks, and they get the same badge at the end of the day :)

With the expected price of 22.000 £ pr hour, for the F-35A, the Danish Air Force is expecting to do around 4 out of 5 hrs, in the Sim. Real flying is for war, air policing and for pratice of what is trained in the sim. Makes good sense IMHO.

Simulation can replicate the environment and cover the systems operation but not the physical effects of high-G manoeuvring.

Many years ago before I joined the RAF I worked in flight simulation at British Aerospace, when EAP was flying and we were developing what became Typhoon. Flying the sim was easy, pulling 9G turns while looking for the bad guy simple. Having flown the real thing it’s a little less simple! You would need adequate practice in a real aeroplane to develop the stamina to cope, it was a familiar feeling first flight back from leave that your tolerance was not up to scratch and that might only be after an interval of a few weeks. What is the proposed gap between sorties going to be? Centrifuge training will only do so much as there’s a considerable difference between just sitting and straining compared to flying under high G.

You can see where the natural procession is heading, bin the pilot in the cockpit and do it all from the ground.


To get hands on you will all have to become Engineers. :p

Daily Mail hits the spot again!
Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston told a conference in London he wants future RAF pilots to do the vast majority of their students from inside the highly realistic simulators.
How do YOU want to do your student?

I get a mental image of the inflatable autopilot in Airplane! with a smile on his face….

Aww, come on - if it was difficult, the engineers would be doing it in the first place...

Most likely no they won't.

But, I suppose it does start to bring the future timeline for the demise of the Arrows and also BBMF into perspective, as you are not going to have the skills sets to cope with either without enough real stick time in the book.
2030 end of the Reds with T.1 demise seems already likely.....and I suspect BBMF will be sometime in the 2030's...especially with likely additional issues of 100LL availability by then...?

I absolutely believe Wigston is wrong.

I did my 767 conversion on ZFT. My conclusion: That worked as a highly experienced RAF pilot and 737 captain, but after 60 years of flying is that nothing, but nothing totally replaces real airborne time.

Supplement, yes, but the majority, no way !

….but what we would we know ??

Mmmm. That was my instinctive reaction, but having been away from military aviation for 20+ years I have no idea of the capabilities of modern military simulation and so any opinions I may have are just those. I would be interested in a background way of just what is possible in this field these days.

ps. You don’t have to be a very experienced anything to undergo ZFT - 500hrs and a Cat D sim will do it.

That's true. Seen monkeys sitting on top of rockets. Never seen a monkey build a rocket! :)

Well, you're just a very experienced practitioner with many years under your belt. How can you expect to know as much as an "expert" with no real expertise on actually doing anything other than theorising? You have to be realistic here!

RetiredBA/BY
Did you not fully read and comprehend the DM headline? look again - nothing to do with real or simulated flying at all!
(I am not belittling your experience or disagreeing with your view point at all - just poking fun at the mental images raised by the DM headline!)

Wigston's views are so typically fast-jet centric. What about all the other players (AAR, AWACS, GCI) who have to support the FJ world. That all needs regular practice for proficiency, including all the real-life distractions which even the best simulators won't provide.