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Mike Sierra Foxtrot

My father has always loved planes. As a kid he was in the air cadets, and while he never got the opportunity to pursue his love of aviation as a career, he takes any chance he can to get on a plane.

For his birthday last year his siblings bought him a voucher for couple of hours in a Boeing 737-800 simulator. The 737 is one of the world’s most popular commercial planes with almost every airline owning one. Apparently one lands every five seconds somewhere in the world.

Today Dad got his chance in the cockpit, and lucky me, I got to sit in the jump seat.

The simulator is a high fidelity, full replica of a 737, which has the capacity to hold 24,000 airports in its database. Dad had the option to do circuits (taking off, doing a loop, coming back in to do a touch-and-go landing and taking off again ) at some of the world’s busiest airports or fly a sector route, ie Sydney to Melbourne.

He chose to do circuits at London Heathrow and the old Hong Kong airport, Kai Tak. The latter, which closed in 1998, was renowned for having one of the most difficult approaches in the world, with pilots having to navigate Hong Kong’s towering skyline, mountains and water to make it safely onto the tarmac of the inner-city airport.

I completely loved this experience having flown into Heathrow and transited through Honkers a stack of times.

As Dad struggled to do up his seatbelt (no wonder planes get delayed), I sat in the back making call signs like Mike Sierra Foxtrot to Victor Charlie Charlie. (enter Flying Doctors reference!)

It was pretty smooth sailing (or flying should I say) with Dad behind the controls, although I was slightly amused when he came in for his second landing at Heathrow and announced, with a touch of concern in his voice, “there’ a plane on the runway!” Ollie, the co-pilot, was great though and reassured him the other plane would take off before we eventually landed!

Although I never got the opportunity to land at Kai Tak, the Hong Kong skyline in the simulator is so incredibly accurate. It shows the two IFC buildings and the ICC on the Kowloon side and also Hong Kong’s highest mountain Victoria Peak, which I ran up and down in preparation for the Great Wall marathon.

On dad’s final approach, Ollie, changed the conditions so he was landing at night and in bad weather. I laughed then when fireworks started up in the sky around us – something familiar to anyone who’s spent time in Hong Kong.

We were having such a good time that they had to kick us out in the end. These simulators are approved by CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) for pilot training and besides Dad’s ‘joy flight’ it’s booked solid with Cathay Pacific trainees from 5am to 10pm everyday trying to clock up the required amount of hours.

Check out dad in action: