Andr

100% right on your comment about running a company....so sad !Andr

http://www.avweb.com/toc/columns.htmlLook for "CEO of the cockpit" columns.Judging by his other stuff it looks like he just got out of bed in a suboptimal way the day he wrote the flight sim article.Regards, Andreas

Err... maybe he's confusing the 757/767 with e.g. the 777 flightdeck that has two A/P switches, one to the far left of the MCP and one to the far right.Martin767 fetishistIt's a lot like life and that's what's appealing

Or mabe he flies both 767-300 and 767-400s and gets both of the autopilots mixed, as the 764 and 777 have almost the same cockpit and autopilot.

Yes, almost the same. I just looked at all the pictures of 767-400 cockpits at airliners.net, and they all had MCPs with three CMD switches to the right, just like PIC and the older 767s, and not like the 777.Martin767 fetishistIt's a lot like life and that's what's appealing

This is a clear case in favor of not drinking heavily before writing a review!!!! :-beerchug

On the Tenerife-accident:Recent re-evaluation apprantly showed that not all could be blamed on Cpt. Van Zanten.Tenerife tower was just as faulty as he was.As usual: accidents are the result of a string of errors.And on Sabena....well nothing to say about Sabena.It just adds to the numerous corporate and personal tragedies Belgium has witnessed the last decades.IMHO you can't say that one West-European airline teaches it's pilots better/worse than the other.Regulation is tough enough as it is and every pilot has to adhere to it.Belgian pilots are no different from German, English, Dutch pilots in regard to general skill level, whatever the nationality. Individually there are diffrences for sure.Sorry for sounding a bit 'sharp' but I always get that when I see Belgians making _indirect_ comparisons between Dutch and themselves as a means of compensation. If that is not the case, than I respectfully give way.- Gideon

This captain Kevin Garrison may have 30 000 hours of flying I would still be scared to fly with him. Someone who jumps to (wrong) conclusions that quickly is not my idea of a person I would like to have in the left seat of the cockpit when I am on the same plane. If you study the NTSB - accident reports there are a lot of crashes caused by pilots with 20 000 or more hours whose only problem was that they made a slight error in judgement one day...(and there is simply almost everything wrong in his PIC -767 review)Walter

In all fairness I would like to see if he'd change his mind after seeing PIC in FS2002, on VATSIM, and with someone who knows the panel (In FS I mean) very well flying it.

>Recent re-evaluation apprantly showed that not all could be blamed >on Cpt. Van ZantenThat's right. Tower did lots of non-standard radio-phraseology, didn't clear-out doubts, the weather was foggy, the airport was crowded (taxi-ways not usable coz' full --> that's also why the two 747 had to back-track on the runway), the KLM co-pilot probably wasn't assertive enough... just remove any of these and the accident would have bever occured. It still remains that Cpt. Van Zanten was the main direct responsible of the crash. Investigations made clear that he was psychologically and physiologically unfit to fly. He may have not understood correctly what the tower said, but his co-pilot and flight engineer both emitted doubts about the take-off clearance which were not taken in to account by him. Further on, he lacked situational awereness since he never understood that another 747 was backtracking the runway. >Regulation is tough enough as it is and every pilot has to adhere to >it.I'm sorry but I have to disagree with this. You would be astonished to see the differences in pilot's skills who all have passed the skill tests.. Some are simply scary, but they still get to fly. They still go past checkrides. How come? It's just like in any other business, if you get to know some people, all get's easier if you see what I mean. Now, regulation tests you for a couple of hours on 6 months of your career. There are people who know it and just play the game for those checks and for the rest of the time don't give a damn. Aviation if probably the place where you will find the biggest number of "phenomenons", of special characters.Often, airline training centers get you to a much higher level than required for the official checks. I remember my CPL being a piece of cake compared to what we were trained to do.>Sorry for sounding a bit 'sharp' but I always get that when I see >Belgians making _indirect_ comparisons between Dutch and themselves >as a means of compensation. If that is not the case, than I >respectfully give way.That's really not what I meant at all. It's just that it happened to KLM as it could have happened to Sabena. Airlines all have characters such as Van Zanten. Hopefully nowsadays they tend to disappear.During my flight training, my flight-mate was a dutch guy. He made us laugh every day ! He had a tough time just as others had, but made it through.>Belgian pilots are no different from German, English, Dutch pilots >in regard to general skill level, whatever the nationality. >Individually there are diffrences for sureWell it's not really about nationality but rather about the airline they have trained for. It would sure be a mistake to say that all dutch are like this and all belgians like that, but there are some "stereotypes" of pilots that exist. Like the British Airways pilot who allways engages A/P at 200ft AGL, the Lufthansa pilot who flies like a robot, etc...From what I have heard (pilots and ATCs), that's how it is generally spoken. Now I'm not saying that Sabena Flight Academy's pilots are better than others, I'm saying that they are very-well trained. That doesn't mean that others can be as good or even better.I hope this clarifies my first post, anyhow this answer isn't about what I was talking about.Regards,Andr

Hey guys,After reading the "review" that Capt. Garrison penned, and the comments about said review, a couple of things stand out.First of all, the comments about Capt. Garrison not being a flight sim junkie (like the rest of us) is probably spot on. I would guess that he definitely DOES NOT spend hours in front of the PC monitor, flying, tweaking, fiddling, etc with his programs and/or hardware...doesn't make him a bad guy, just not a simmer like us (re: his comment about "PCs pretending to be airplanes"). His "review" of 767 PIC seem more of a collection of editorial statements about flight simming vs. "real" airline flying, than a "behind the scenes play-by-play" of the program in question. I will say that I THOROUGHLY enjoy reading his comments over at AVWeb's Columns ( http://www.avweb.com/toc/columns.html ), and for the most part his comments concerning what it's REALLY like to be a flight crewmember for a major U.S. airline are dead-nuts accurate. With that said, I wouldn't get too upset about his comments concerning Wilco's 767 PIC....again, it's not coming from a flight simmer.Second, as an avid flight simmer, I would like to introduce myself. I've been fascinated by these wonderful programs for the last seven or so years. I "major" in combat flight sims, but do spend a fair number of hours flying around the GA skies in MS FS2k2 (although I am BY NO MEANS a guru when it comes to all the add-ons, etc). I've been RW flying since my 16th year, professionally since 1979, and with Northwest Airlines since 1983. I've flown Flight Engineer on the Boeing 727 and 747. First Officer on the 727 and DC-10. Captain on the 727 and am currently enjoying my sixth year in the left-seat "throne" of Mr. Boeings incredible 757. I have just under 20,000 total flight hours, and also spent several years in the General Aviation world as a Flight Instrutor. With all that mumbo-jumbo spewed forth, I would like to say that some of the above comments concerning airline pilots is correct....some simply are not. -correct that just because someone is an airline pilot, they don't automatically know everything (anyone can be an idiot) HOWEVER, they do know a fair amount about hurling big jets through "low Earth orbit".-incorrect that because we use the FMC and APFDS daily, we would suck at flying stick and rudder if the magic takes a dump. Yes, we take VERY through sim checks on all that our job entails, but we are also tested on our basic airmanship (yes, we even have to do stalls, steep turns, etc). Most all of us hand fly the jet as much as we can (not at altitude for OBVIOUS reasons), and although getting wrapped up in the magic can be bad (American Airlines crash in Cali), knowing when to use it and when to "just look out the window and put airplane A onto runway B" is something we all get good at after a few months on the jet.By the way, I have Wilco Publishing's 767 PIC, and have been flying it for many months. I enjoy it very much...IMHO it's actually quite good....not perfect, but very good. I've been working on an indepth review of it for the website that I "work" for ( www.frugalsworld.com ). Things have been going slowly with the review for a number of reason (recent move, etc), but I should have it ready in a few weeks.Thanks for the chance to chat with you....Capt. William "BBall" BallBoeing 757, Northwest AirlinesSenior Editorwww.frugalsworld.com

just read the article, and I don't own PIC 767 (yet!). Is it true that the package doesn't contain SIDS and STARS? I fly online with VATSIM most of the time, and couldn't use the plane if it didn't have SIDS/STARS...ThanksSSunil Mulay

Contrary to what you've been led to think, 767 PIC comes with a full complement of SID/STARS for all of the major airports. There are also two websites where you can download additional or updated procedures. Finally, if you have access to charts you can easily program and save your own procedures using the FMC.

WorkingStiff,Really ? Remind me please, all major airports are located in the US then ? Yes, you may find A SID or STAR for one of the runways at SOME major US airports, but hardly anything resembling the real world. And what about airports like LHR, SIN, CDG, BKK and AMS. They are not major then? Do bear in mind, that any given runway will have numerous SID/STARs.I am lucky to have access to a full complement of Jeppesen manuals, and therefore have the option of programming SID/STAR into the PIC FMC myself. Have done so for quite a few airport / runway combinations. It's fairly straight forward, but on some occasions on or more of the waypoints you need are not in the FMC database, which causes problems.Anyway, the guy who wrote this review obviously don't like flightsims. Fair enough, and he is entitled to his opnion as everyone else. But why he would then waste his time trying out the package, and waste yet more writing this article puzzles me.