Aer Lingus Simulators of Old

McWotever

Aer Lingus had a wide range of equipment over the years, but does anybody know what simulators/trainers they had?

Currently they own a A320 simulator, and it is operated by www.simtech.ie.

I know they had a BAC1-11 trainer, and that now resides in atlanticairventure in Shannon http://www.atlanticairventure.com/News/St%20Thetic.html

They had a Boeing 741 procedural trainer also, with no motion, but it is still doing plenty of rotations, now as a B744: http://www.jet-experience.com/info.html

That sim has an interesting past. I believe the owner bought the sim off EI privately and placed it in a 20ft container and did it up to run on MS Flight Sim. It was on show for a while, maybe 10-12 years ago, in the Royal Hibernian Academy. Since then I heard nothing of it until last year where a house was for sale in Inchicore complete with 747 in the shed! It now resides in Dalkey

Anybody know if they had anymore sims?

Irish Steve

There were a couple of other sims over the years.

Not sure where it went or when, there was a 737-200 Sim, which was about the same vintage as the 1-11, it had CRT visuals, not wrap around, night only and limited motion. In it's later years, it was heavily used by Ryanair, and may even have gone to them. An old DEC VAX processor was the main computer. the flight deck was very good, but the motion and the visuals were less helpful, it was almost impossible to fly a visual right hand circuit from the left hand seat, as there wasn't a good external visual reference, and a left hand circuit from the right hand seat was equally difficult for the same reason.

There was also a 737-3/4/5 sim that was much more recent and had full motion systems and a wrap round full daylight visual, I suspect that was replaced by the 320 sim when the Boeing fleet was replaced. They were all in the same building, at the bottom of the Ops building beside the hangars, effectively airside, which made it "interesting" to get access to them.

Spent quite some time in all of them a good few years ago when doing some work with Air Lingus on MCC training, I built a very simple FS4 based dual control sim device with a large BARCO back projector screen to allow them to have a context for that training, and it was subsequently used for the Young Scientist show the following year, advertised as "The Ballsbridge 737", there was a very good half page picture in the Irish Times of President Mary Robinson's visit to the show, and the simulator specifically. Hundreds of visitors over that week flew a pre programmed approach and landing, we had to limit it time wise in order to get through the queues.

I also remember being in the right hand seat of the 737 300 during a visit for a conference of aviation human factors research people, I was hand flying the 737 at low level towards the Wicklow Hills in order to demonstrate things like GPWS warnings, and had to be very careful how I flew it, there were about 10 people in the cabin, not seated, and the motion system was on, so no sudden moves as that could have been problematic. I do remember taking the autothrottles off to reduce the pitching that was happening with hand flying and the autothrottle being in automatic.

The 741 device went to (I think) Romac Delimata , but it was a long time ago. He built FS4 into it. It was originally programmed by a paper tape reader, but had already gone out of use as an active device when I was there, and there were no Aer Lingus 737-200s or 1-11's at that stage, so only external instructors for them. They were still fully maintained and servicable, as there were a number of regular external users.

There were other devices around, I built a flight deck mock up that was used as a proof of concept for AS2, based around the A320 and MD83, and subsequently an A320 Flight deck used for research by British Aerospace in the UK, and my generic device appeared in several shows around Dublin, the JFK event at the airport in the old Iona building, and Aer Lingus used it at a recruitment fair in Dublin Castle, and it was at at least one of the Aviation society of Ireland events in Dublin. It was a pain to move around, 4 x 28" CRT monitors for the external views, (same concept as the 737-200 visuals) and then 6 x 10" monitors in the panel for the instruments, a full glareshield autopilot and dual control yokes with dual rudders, and a rudimentary trim and feel feed back system. Needed a twin wheel transit size van to move it, and a day to set it up when it got to where ever it was going. It used a network of 7 computers (486-100's at the time) and could be networked with FS and other systems with interlinking for things like TCAS and ATC, so very much the forerunner of things like VATSIM and the like. Heady days, and in some ways, a lot easier to do with DOS than with Windows, at least we could control what the PC was doing.

Hope that's helped, and filled in some of the gaps.

ohigg84

My dad works at flight operations, they relocated to Simtech but the A320 simulator is not owned by Simtech, it is still the property of Aer Lingus. The airline simply decided to lower its costs by relocating to a Simulator training centre outside the airport. The 737-200 was scrapped, as was the 1-11, and the 737-3/4/5 EFIS went to the U.K..

Tropheus

The 1-11 similator certainly looks scrapped. I presume those "bare" pictures are how it looks today. I would imagine that getting it back to operational condition is highly unlikely.

Irish Steve

ksimpson wrote: »

The 1-11 similator certainly looks scrapped. I presume those "bare" pictures are how it looks today. I would imagine that getting it back to operational condition is highly unlikely.

A lot will depend on how much detail was taken when it was stripped and taken out, it would all have been analog in those days, so miles of wiring to everything, and connecting it all up again will not be a short exercise, and getting the computer up again will be challenging to put it mildly.

There would be other ways of getting it going again, possibly not with the same level of authenticity, but as it's not going to be being used for training, that would not be an issue. A lot will depend on the degree of fidelity that the owners are looking for.

I flew the 1-11 sim several times before it was taken out, and it compared quite closely in terms of it's sensitivity to the PA39 that I used to fly regularly, both were very sensitive in pitch trim, and had to be managed very carefully to keep the aircraft within limits. A friend of mine flew the 1-11 for a while with Aer Lingus, and his comments about the handling of the real thing were that the sim was more sensitive than the aircraft, but not much.

I wish I'd know that the 200 was being scrapped, I probably would have bid on it, and kept it operational as such, in that it would have been a useful device for entertainment and some non type specific training, but that's life.

foxmike

i think they had a 707 simulator too.I remember as kid going in them in the late 70s.

Stovepipe

Hi there
With regard to the sims, the -200 was being used by Simtech's first outing, via PARC for MCC courses. The -300 went to Bournemouth, being taken out in a stealth fashion one night.I recall meeting a certain pilot who used a lot of single-syllable words when he found out that the sim was gone... Once, being an employee of the company and eager to get some sim time, I went inquiring about getting 1-11 time to keep the rust off the IR. I was told that despite the fact that it was technically sound, the engineers were specifically told not to power up the 1-11 and especially not to offer it around, on pain of death..........having used the sims in Bournemouth myself, I came to realise how scandalously underused the sims were, as there are several 1-11 sims available for small money in the UK, as well as 737/747/L-1011 old model sims. Now, in Ireland we have at least three providers of jet sim time.

regards
Stovepipe

eatmyshorts

Did my initial MCC and JOC in the old 732 sim. Was constantly leaking fluids of all kinds into drip trays below it. Saying that, it never failed once during the whole course. It was an excellent platform for an introduction to jets after flying light twins.

Lapin

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that because of Aer Lingus' fondness for naming their aircraft after saints, crews used to nickname one of the simulators "Saint Thetic"!

Any truth in this ?


EDIT :

Just found it in OP's second link, hadn't seen it earlier.
I was never sure if it really was true or just some joke invented by a journalist !

Irish Steve

eatmyshorts wrote: »

Did my initial MCC and JOC in the old 732 sim. Was constantly leaking fluids of all kinds into drip trays below it. Saying that, it never failed once during the whole course. It was an excellent platform for an introduction to jets after flying light twins.

Indeed. The leaks were not significant, but yes, it did. I can remember going in one day, around the time when Aer Lingus were reducing numbers again. I can't recall who I was with, but we got to "borrow" the 200 sim for 10 minutes, the person in it, (was station manager of Paris at the time) was doing a flight test with the IAA the following day. He went off for a quick coffee, and I did a circuit or 2 with my visitor. He came back before we'd finished the second circuit, and was watching what was happening. as I was getting out, I got asked quietly "you doing anything for the next hour or so", to which my reply was "nothing urgent", and I got asked to pop back in to the sim to act as P2, which I was very happy to do. I escorted my visitor out, and headed back to the sim.

We spent the next couple of hours in the end doing all manner of things, V1 cuts and the like, so that the preparation for the test the next day was complete, and while it was hard work, it was also darn good fun. I was doing some of the cuts and the like, so that "P1" didn't know what was going to happen, so it made for a busy session, but a good work out. It must have been successful, I do know that he went on to become a skipper for Ryanair. Oh what might have been, Saddam and a few other things got in the way, and then the rules changed, so I never quite got into a heavy jet for real, but at least had the satisfaction of getting to the point of having the ME CPL/IR and the ATPL exams.

Yes, the sims were cruelly underused at one stage, but that was probably due to the lack of instructors as well.

Memories, many of them good, life would be so much poorer without them.