In a milestone for the flight training department in PNG, the recently installed Redbird Flight Simulator was dedicated to enhance and improve in-house training on Caravan aircraft. On Thursday, 22 August 2019, during the little dedication ceremony, Markus Bischoff, MAF PNG’s Crew Training Manager, explained the advantages of the ‘sim’, as everyone is calling the Simulator, “Compared to a real aircraft, the sim is much cheaper to operate and we can use the actual airplanes for operations serving our customers. In the sim, you can practice things that cannot be done in the real airplane, like certain engine failure procedures. These scenarios help us to deal with emergencies from beginning to end. Because of the latter, we as pilots will become much more familiar with the Caravan and thus better equipped for dealing with real emergencies. Through training, we become better pilots as we move from simple exercises to the more complex ones. Training in the sim also builds trust in the systems and capabilities of an aircraft.”
The MAF Mt Hagen team then came together in a circle around the simulator to pray, thanking God for providing the resources through a Dutch business club to purchase this awesome piece of equipment for our program, for the people who prepared the room and where involved in the logistics to get the sim shipped to PNG, through customs, up the highway and built together. May this simulator be a blessing in the training of our next generation of pilots and increase the safety of our operations!
