Flight Simulator Accident

[zlin77]

If I recall correctly there was a fatality in the old Air New Zealand F27 Sim,the story was passed on to me back in 1984 while doing my Sim training in AKL.
Can any Kiwis confirm or deny?

[Rainboe]

Oh my word, as fast as we lay one total rumour to rest, someone pops up with another! I strongly suspect this is another internet 'friend of a friend of a friend' story with little foundation. They cahnge so much in the re-telling over the years. Did I ever tell you about the guy in the Arizona desert strapped some Hercules RATO units to the back of his truck, and lit the blue touchpaper?........

[Charles Darwin]

Originally Posted by Crash & Burn

I believe that during WW2 an English pilot was 'flying' a Link Trainer and was killed during a strafing run by a German aircraft. I'm guessing this would have been the first sim fatality?

And we think modern sims are realistic!

[screwdriver]

BA had a 767 "fall over" in the mid nineties. They used the A/c recovery crew from Engineering to recover it. It was empty at the time and under test.

[Denti]

What happens when you crash a sim - e.g deliberate vertical dive into the ground? What does the display do? What does the motion do? Does it take ages to reset it, or is that a porky pie?

Visual just stops and motions settles back into neutral, control hydraulic normally goes into inactive (or depressurized whatever) mode.

[ZFT]

Simulators typically have 2 crash modes. Recoverable and Unrecoverable crashes. The instructor can usually inhibit/reset recoverable ‘crashes’. Unrecoverable crashes usually result in the sim being set in Total Freeze.

Recoverable are typically:-
Excessive IAS
Excessive Mach
Excessive G
Taxi speed excessive
Touchdown speed excessive

Unrecoverable are typically:-
Excessive vertical speed below 50 ft
Excessive pitch below 50 ft
Excessive bank below 50 ft
Moving object collision
Terrain contact

The above varies according to sim manufacturer and customer requirements.

[jumpseater]

I can verify that one should strap in in a sim. Sitting in a jumpseat/observer position the driver was demonstrating recovery from an uncommanded roll, not long after the loss of a 737. Anyway I'd got the lap belt on but not the shoulder harness. The sim 'dived' to the left as I was looking over the co-pilots right shoulder. One instinctively rapidly leans further right as the sim 'flipped' to the left, the only trouble was the sidewall/bulkhead of the sim was still travelling towards me, with the inevitable dull thud as my head and the side wall made contact . To say it hurt was an understatement, I genuinely saw stars, little specs of white light, and the headache afterwards!

[HotDog]

Depends on the simulator I guess but I experienced one incident as an instructor in a 747-200 sim where the crew under instruction, ignored the loss of hydraulic sys 1 prior to gear extension on final approach. They also ignored the gear unsafe light and the warning horn and landed with the nose gear retracted. A very surprised crew remarked on the steep nose down attitude of the sim when they came to a halt!