Planes are automated, they can also land on auto pilot," says Nair, whose wife is a pilot at one of India's airlines.Įxplaining the most common passenger anxiety, which is turbulence, he says pilots do many things to avoid bad weather - they divert routes, avoid dangerous clouds, if there is a full blanket of clouds ahead they come back - "You may be agitated that you are late for a wedding or holiday, but s/he brought you safe," says Nair, who has had curious groups of people come to experience his airplane.Īirlines like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa run such programmes because they see flight anxiety as a part of safety. "When they have a query like this I make them sit and put the plane in auto pilot and show how the plane can take turns and automatically come down from 40,000 feet to 5,000 feet itself. Since he began his project, those with a fear of flying have asked him questions like 'Will a plane go down if the pilot falls asleep or suffers a medical emergency?' and he tells them, 'No.' The seats are upholstered Tata Safari car seats. IMAGE: The window is actually an LED screen fitted inside the panel which provides visuals. The door is a well-made replica of an airline door. The body of the aircraft has been made of wood, with roll up plywood with a sunmica laminated surface. Similarly, car seats were upholstered to become passenger seats. A year after taking early retirement from the air force, he rolled up his sleeves and got down literally on his knees with carpenters to build the aircraft in an office complex in north-east Mumbai.Ī bus driver's seat was tweaked and refurbished to make the pilots' seats in the cockpit. With 22 years of experience behind him in the IAF, Nair nurtured the idea for four years. If you were in the pilot's seat, you could be landing your plane at an airport - holding the controls, the throttles and all the buttons on the touch screens in front of you - with a 360 degree view. The aircraft has been built by Nair who once worked on MiG-21s and was responsible for the safety of the fighter jets.Ĭhristened Cockpit Vista ( external link), it provides the experience of flying aircraft like the Cessna, ATR and Boeing 747 on its flight simulators. There are no security doors that seal the pilots and the cockpit from the passengers - a consequence of the tragic events of 9/11 - well, here one can even take a shot at flying the aircraft! Step inside and the seating is like a private Boeing 747 jet where one can sit with a full view of the entire cockpit. Nair enthusiastically explains a pilot's responsibilities, but what he has created is an attempt to deglamorise the airplane - to open its doors and cockpit for all to see and experience what goes on inside. They don't do anything based on memory but on a checklist." Pilots may meet each other for the first time in a cockpit, but what binds them is training and their manuals. "In a cockpit the decision has to be right every time," he explains. "I'll just take off and show you how easy and safe it is to fly a plane," says Dinesh Nair, a former Indian Air Force aviation engineer, sitting inside an aeroplane which is not on an airport tarmac but on the sixth floor of a building in Chandivali, north-east Mumbai. Computer screens outside the window panels show actual visuals from a flight simulator. IMAGE: The cockpit of the aircraft is like that of an aircraft.
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