How Hard Is It to Fly a 757 or 767?
Many people have wondered how it could be possible for relatively unskilled pilots to do this. This writer is in a unique position to answer that question. I am a licensed pilot of very limited experience, with just under 100 hours in small, single-engine training aircraft such as the Cessna 172. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to take a short course on the 757 that included classroom training, individual computer based training, and about five hours in a full-motion simulator. This high fidelity simulator was the same kind of that airline pilots use in their initial training or to simulate a wide range of emergency procedures. After about a week of training, I was familiar with the layout of the flight deck and with the operation of the flight controls, autopilot, and navigation systems. As a result, flying the simulator was much less difficult than I had imagined at the beginning of the course. The most difficult part of the simulator training was takeoffs and landings. On the
