BOEING 737-800
Simulator EXPERIENCE

On Wednesday 9^th March 2022, the day started off nice and early at 8:00am with myself volunteering to drive, picking up Vic Southern, Jim Fitch, and Chris Griffiths along the way up to Gloucestershire Airport where SimAir737.com are located who run the flight simulator experience.

Vic brought his Boeing 737-800 technical manuals with him, so during the drive up he kindly briefed us on some of the technical details of the aircraft which was very interesting and made the two hour trip pass by quickly.

On arrival, we were given a very warm welcome by our flight instructor Simon Burnham who originally learned to fly when he lived in South Africa, and has over twenty years of flying experience. We had a nice introductory chat with Simon to discuss our aviation backgrounds before being taken into the simulator.

Entering the simulator is very impressive, the cockpit is fully fitted with the seats, controls, panels and switches etc from a real Boeing 737-800 aircraft, and it has a 180 degree panoramic view with extremely realistic and accurate graphics. The simulator is static and does not move, and during flight has the sound effects of a real aircraft including the ambient sounds of passengers on board. The simulator also has four passenger seats just behind the pilot seats so that up to four other people can sit and watch the flying experience at the same time.

I booked a 45 minute flying session for each of us, and we decided that Vic would go first due to his wealth of technical knowledge on 737-800’s, so that Jim, Chris, and myself could learn from Vic’s mistakes, and there were plenty!… LOL.

Each of our flying experiences was taking off from Bristol Airport runway 27, with two touch-and-go circuits, and a final landing. Because our instructor Simon knew that Vic, Jim and Chris are pilots, he decided to give us all a challenge with the real time weather of Friday 18th February 2022 when we had storm Eunice with up to 85 knot winds and a cloud base of around 3,500ft, so it certainly made the flying very interesting, what a mean trick!

After Vic’s 45 minute session, we had a quick 10 minute break and then it was Jim’s turn to fly. After Jim’s session, we all then headed off for lunch to the Aviator Café which is based at the airport, only a 2 minute walk away. After a nice lunch, it was my turn to fly, and being a non-pilot, it certainly was a great experience. Chris was then last at flying, with the day ending around 5:00pm when we were all presented with a certificate of completion.

SimAir737 offer flying sessions of 30, 60 and 90 minutes, so if you would like to book a session you can do this directly with them by clicking the button below, but keep an eye out for their special offers which they periodically run as I managed to get our 45 minute sessions for only £59 instead of £149 each.