What It Takes To Become A Pilot — inside United’s Simulator
Okay, are you ready? I'm ready Okay Look down the runway, I'm going to push the throttles up I'll announce 100 knots Let's call V1 My hands will come off the throttles You can proceed and start pulling back There you go, don't be afraid of it There you go There's a positive rate and the equipment is going up I'm not a pilot, but I just took off in an Airbus A320 Okay, it's not a real plane But this simulator, valued at $20 million, is an exact replica of an A320 cockpit And the technology in its interior makes it even more complex than the plane itself Here at the United Airlines flight training center in Denver, Colorado there are 31 flight simulators and almost half a million square feet This facility is one of the airline training centers largest in the world All 12,000 United pilots stop by during their initial training and return every 9 months to stay up to date on flight procedures and safety protocols Captain Mike McCasky has been a United pilot for 28 years and showed us how fly a commercial airplane Tell me a little about what we are seeing here Before we start, we are in an A320 simulator We use our training devices to train our pilots from day one to day 30 which is the time it takes them to finish the school In this particular device we can simulate any situation that we want the team to experience in operation Gave us a detailed description of all the instruments Most of which are only used in emergency cases For me, takeoff was not that difficult I used the plane's stick to climb to 10,000 feet in altitude.
But Captain Mike was in charge of the more complex things like monitoring the speed and trajectory of the flight. At what point do you switch to autopilot? Anytime once we get away from the ground There is a minimum autopilot engagement altitude that we use but we like to fly so we will fly So typically the autopilot is not used for takeoff? Not for takeoff. Sometimes we use it for landing if conditions warrant. How long does the plane stay on autopilot? Most of the time, what would be a situation where you wouldn't use it? When approaching landing we usually don't use it or if air traffic control is giving you orders with a lot of turns to get into the traffic line for landing The autopilot tends to be slow at times since it is customized and oriented to do the flight as stable as possible Tell me a little about what we do while we fly We are listening to the radio.
We're monitoring air traffic control communications We'll monitor that We'll look out the window to make sure we're not flying in storms or that sort of thing We'll look for stable shortcuts if they're not there Once an hour, we'll check all parts of the system to make sure that everything is working properly After taking off in good weather we were able to experience how pilots fly through a thunder storm This is what it looks like on the plane We wouldn't fly on the red side We do n't even like flying on the green side So we would rotate . We would ask air traffic control for a turn at 150 We can do that on board Now we're going to start turning left And here comes the turbulence It keeps turning That's why sometimes the autopilot does a better job It's a little more stable although it's not that fast The simulator puts pilots through their paces from engine failure to severe storms or bird strikes United didn't show us what crashes look like in the simulator But pilots practice these emergency situations every nine months The good thing is that we don't do that kind of thing in the real world very often but we want to make sure that our crew is ready to deal with anything.
When I tried to land, it was obvious that I'm not a pilot. Hold it back a little. That was my fault. Drive. A simulator was much more difficult than I thought and much more realistic But the center is not just for pilots 1,500 of the airline's 24,000 flight attendants also come to the center once a year to learn and stay up to date on flight procedures. emergency This is our glide raft here at United Airlines and this is where every new pilot has to glide at least once in their career just like the flight attendants, who have to do it at least once And we hope this is the only time that they have to do something like this.
Are you ready? Take a step forward and down you go Sit down, sit down Good job United flight attendants also receive annual training to learn how to deal with medical situations and evacuate planes Take off your seat belt, get out, leave everything The goal we have at United is that there is a 90 second time frame to evacuate all passengers from the plane safely to survive I'm going to walk you through each step Do that up Now you're going to look outside Do you see fire, smoke, debris or obstructions? No. So, go ahead. That big lever does big things Turn the lever, let go and hold on like you did. Come this way! In your own words that would work because you are not trained as a flight attendant With all these resources and replicas for pilots, flight attendants and technicians United has invested a considerable sum in their training The center has more than a billion and a half dollars in goods on property United says these training protocols are industry standard If we all fly at the safest level, it benefits everyone We will compete vigorously on product and service but will not compete on safety After seeing the facilities and how rigorous the training I feel confident that the pilots are so well trained, they are ready for anything no matter what happens
