Aircraft Training Simulator Network

The aircraft simulator is a vital component of pilot training and competance monitoring. Every few months all commercial pilots spend a few hours in the "box" where they perform simulated flights while a simulator instructor* makes an engine fail here or a wheel drop off there to see how the crew copes.

The simulator affords tremendous opportunities to build experience through exposure to scenarios that are rare and dangerous on real aircraft. But, they lack realism. The cockpit is often a perfect replica, identical to the aircraft, xyz movement is used as a stand-in for real accelerative forces and the windows host much-improved computer- generated visuals. But, there's no provision for traffic sharing the same airspace.

So, how about we link simulators to a common electronic environment. Now a pilot undergoing training will be flying around in a sky populated with other pilots, just like the real world. It will be somewhat more intense however, since those pilots all seem to be having tremendously bad luck with engine failures at V1/wheels falling off. Better still, air traffic control could easily be handled by real air traffic controllers undergoing training.

The main problem is that there aren't so many pilots undergoing training at any one time. So, this world should include the upper echelon of amateur flight simulator enthusiasts. Of which there are quite a lot. This would be the ultimate level of MS flight simulator, once you've demonstrated competence**, you get to fly around in the company of professional pilots. This might be worth enough to the airlines that they'd be happy paying the "traffic pilots" a small fee.

Some issues would have to be ironed out, aircraft suddenly appearing/dissapearing would be fairly common, so adding automated continuation of flights would be preferable.

*specialist type of torturer **and use a sensible aircraft, JFK with 27 SR-71s on the taxiway isn't very likely.