Its early morning, August 2022 and my first flight of the day. Sitting with easyjet on one side and Germanwings on the other waiting to take off for Amsterdam. Nothing special you may say but with a front row seat in a Boeing 737 it is special and something completely new to me. Front seat does mean front in the pointy bit of the plane
Watch a short section of the flight to Hong Kong
As a co-pilot I work through all of the checklists, prefight, taxi, take-off etc, I am eager to get to the main event. I do miss a few things in the checklist, controls that need setting, but you are really doing some something special. I am sitting in front of all of the controls and looking out of the windows at Stansted Airport at one of the many gates running through these long prefight necessities. Grateful thanks to my captain for the morning, Mike at Flightstudio, Andrewsfield located close to Braintree in Essex. He is putting up with me and all of the questions. Also being patient with my flight check mistakes. After a safe take-off and landing at Amsterdam it was on to my chosen international airport the infamous runway that needs to be seen to be believed
Second flight was the epic take-off and landing at Hong Kong, not the new airport reclaimed from the sea but the old one Kai Tak, where you fly between and practically level with blocks of flats to land. Hopefully also stopping at the end of the short runway before taking a possible dip in the sea. I remember sitting close to the end of the runway in the old days with a good friend, Peter Grundy. We were both returning to the UK after giving presentations in China for a conference on electronics manufacture, what else would we be there for!!
There is no question that this simulation is realistic, you are concentrating to fly a plane and on both these trips not much time to look out of the window. You are trying to control things on both parts of the experience less so on the initial flight but a lot more on the departure and landing at HK. You do have to look carefully out of the front window to see both of the red and white checkerboard signs for alignment and then the running rabbits. They are flashing lights on the top of buildings to aid alignment with the runway, this is referred to as Hong Kong Curve. It did take me some time to spot the billboards and also the flashing lights before seeing the runway. I was lucky as the low cloud cover is also an issue as you may not see the lights early. I am not great at multitasking with all of the other activities, hight, speed, angle, wheels etc. It must be great for passengers to relax and just watch out of the window. If you see some of the old videos/photos, they may not be so relaxed at all!
When you do land it is a relief not to be in swimming or in a pile at the side of the runway. Would I do it again yes, would my captain put up with me again not sure?
