As most flight training departments recognize, hand-flying skills can be developed fairly quickly as students transition from aircraft type to aircraft type. But not everything goes so smoothly. As fleet types become more highly automated, and the complexity of procedures increases, the ability of pilots to quickly navigate the Flight Management Computer (FMC) becomes of critical importance.

That’s why we’ve incorporated an FMC trainer into our stable of virtual reality products. We understand that a huge component of training – including the ability to leave the gate quickly and efficiently – rests on stellar techniques managing the FMC. Therefore, we’ve built our FMC directly into our ground-based flows. Airline flight students now have the ability to get a mock ATIS and directly type information into the FMC exactly as they would on a line flight. They can incorporate the PDC, flight plan, and so much more.

This FMC feature creates the repetition that is vital to successful training. Students no longer gloss over the FMC inputs while they transition to the seemingly more exciting steps in the flow. Each FMC input has a profound impact on the flight and accuracy is paramount.

Programming the FMC can take 20-25% of the overall time for ground-based flows and represents an even higher percentage of errors. Reduce errors, decrease flow time, and get off the gate faster, because we all recognize that saving minutes on the ground will save millions of dollars a year.

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