Archive for July, 2011
Flying Airbus A-330 in the Lufthansa Simulator
Amazing stuff this morning. Thanks to Christoph Hausel (“The Hauslinger”), a friend of mine who runs Germany’s leading PR-agency in the internet space Element C, I drove up to some unassuming hall which reads “Lufthansa Flight Training” adjacent to Munich Airport.
We were greeted by Michael Langer (left in the suit, Christoph on the right (no suit ;-)). Usually Captain Michael Langer, who just yesterday returned from Johannesburg commanding a Lufthansa Airbus A380.
In his second life he’s an instructor for Lufthansa pilots who are regularly training in the simulator especially all types of odds like system failures. On the way to the flight simulators, we came across high-tech cabin simulators where especially cabin crew receives training for emergencies. (All the pictures, by the way, are here on this Flickr-set).
And, here they are, the flight simulators, priced around EUR 12 mn each, established on four hydraulic double legs which allow for three-dimensional movements. So far the theory.
Yet the practise, admittedly, exceeded all the expectations I ever had in theory how real and realistic the sensation effectively would be. After getting seated and briefed in a couple of basics, Michael “placed” us on Runway 26R of Munich Airport and told me to apply full throttle. The Airbus A330 started to move, we felt both the bumping effect of the runway and the acceleration being squeezed into our seats. (How it’s done: The cabin of the simulator banks backwards, however as the eyes see the horizon still straight, the equilibrium organ “believes” that there is a an acceleration happening in the plane.)
At 140 knots I rotated the nose with the Airbus-typical joystick on my left and kept a pitch of 12 degrees and the plane took off smoothly. Commanding “gear up”, Christoph pushed the lever up, we accelerated further, retracted the flaps, climbed out to 6,000 feet, levelled off and continued to fly in southerly direction towards Austria. The spheric impression of three dimensional space looking out of the six window feels close to flying really through the Southern Bavaria.
At some point Captain Michael (the real one, in his simulator command console sitting right behind us) changed the weather to “passing through thunderstorm”. Suddenly, we were in the clouds, and we got shaken to the point of slight motion sickness.
Next and all of a sudden, sky was blue again and we were set on the final approach to Nice Airport in France. See the two illuminated lines through the window, we were supposed to land on the right one after crossing the bay and overflying a cruise ship (chicks in bikinis on the upper deck to be imagined ;-)
The first time, I screwed up as the inertia of such a huge plane – unlike the small propeller planes I usually fly – tends to build up when applying too much impact on the rudders. hence making the aircraft difficult to control. At least I saved our lives with a go-around …
Second attempt was easier as Michael set the approach speed automated to 150 knots, I did not have to bother about the power, so I just focused on the flight director on the navigation panel. 50 ft above ground which get announced by an automated voice, I set the power to zero, the automated voice commanded “retard, retard”. (Yes, I know, it’s me). I slightly lifted the nose applying back-pressure on the stick. My touch down was quite hard, though. And again, amazing simulation hot thoroughly we could feel the bumper through our spines.
Approach number three, fully manual, was really a good one, despite strong cross-wind from the right which Michael added. With getting some feeling for the inertial of that huge beast, I basically forgot that I was flying an Airbus, and just did a visual approach as I would do in my little VFR-flying: Keeping the direction of plane towards the centre line and controlling the descend rate with the power. Shortly before touch-down I pushed the left rudder to align the axis of the plane with the centreline and lifting the nose a bit up. The bird just smoothly sat down, I pulled the reverser power up, we again physically felt the deceleration. Finally, I applied the brakes before the plane came to an organized standstill on the middle of the runway 04 of Nice Airport.
Overall, a once in a lifetime experience, also thanks to Michael who is not only a phenomenal aviator, but also a cool guy who doesn’t miss out on a good joke.
By the way, in case you are interested in going through the same experience, just drop me an e-mail under rene.seifert {at} gmail.com and I’ll be happy to connect you to him.
Comment (1)
Fantastic Flight Impressions from the Cockpit
Didn’t want to miss out on sharing some great videos from Sardinia three weeks ago with us three pilots Thomas Leiber (“The Leibertinger”), Felix Haas (“The Haasinger”) and myself (=”The Seifertinger) in Thomas’ plane, a beautiful Diamond D-40.
Yep, that’s The Leibertinger, just after heroically landing in San Teodoro (Sardinia) on a short grass field. If you listen to the sound, you would hear the flight director in its robot-like voice repeat: “Warning! Terrain-Terrain!”. That’s because the Garmin GPS system doesn’t know about such small airfields and believes that you’re just about to ram the aircraft straight into the ground. But it went better than that :-)
For take-off we had done lots of calculation if the length of the runway would be sufficient based on our weight, temperature and height of the grass and even defined a point to abort the take-off if we had not reached at least 50 knots. Here The Haasinger was Pilot-in-Command and did a phenomenal job in accelerating the plane, lifting it off effectively using the ground effect, accelerating further before assuming a stable climb.
This one, however, is by far my favourite. The Leibertinger again in command, me sitting to his right side (but all credit & glory to him, he did it all). This was a small airstrip some 800 meters above mean sea level in the mountains of Sardinia, no living soul around. It was clear to us that the length of the runway could be just enough for landing, but not way to get the plane up in the air, especially due to the trees just at the end of the runway. Still, we didn’t want to miss out on that one, so we did a thing in between called “touch & go”.
Kudos. The trees below, the plane above. Exactly how it should be, and never mind the margin between the two.
Co-Founded Brain Pirates GmbH: Social Media Branding
It seems like my year of building and creating new stuff. Happy to announce today from Bangalore a new company which I co-founded with my business partner and moreover dear friend Reinhard Dreßler (“Ray”). It’s Brain Pirates GmbH, a German limited company located in my home town Munich.
What we do? We call it Social Media Branding. What is different to other consultancies in that space? We believe that we understand Facebook, Twitter and blogs quite well, but they stand at the end of the process. What matters more, that Ray and me bring combined more than 30 years of experience of marketing, communication, media, branding, operations and business building to the table. Hence, we are able to advise very clearly how and where Social Media fits into a clients’ bigger picture of integrated communication. Last, but not least we can both recommend and implement on the execution level how this whole concept will fit well within his often complex operational framework.
Founding Brain Pirates GmbH has been a natural step both from the obvious demand side of the market and a couple of assignments which Ray and I have had in the past two years. Where we can help concretely is in a modular end-to-end approach for clearly larger organizations.
- High level, kind of “philosophical” explanation what Social Media stands for. It is still surprising to see that many companies are literally standing on Ground Zero.
- Devising a tailor made social media strategy which fits into the broader plans of the client’s marketing and communication strategy.
- Setting up tangible metrics and KPIs (=Key Performance Indicators) against which to benchmark progress and success.
- Providing a comprehensive overview of best practices which would spark innovative change within the clients’ organization.
- Setting-Up creative concepts which are centered around Social Media, but would be thoroughly integrated into all other channels in reach. Online and offline.
- Building software like Facebook Apps, websites and other enabling connectors.
- Running campaign on the operational level from communication on behalf of the client to online advertisement on social networks.
- Employing a variety of exciting software tools in the market which facilitate the publishing- as well as the measuring part.
And of course, iterating over and over throughout the process to just become better. We are very excited to take this company into the market today. We have a webpage here and a Facebook Fanpage, too. We like if you like. Any feedback is – as always – highly appreciated. And if there is anything we can help you in that space, let me know :-)
Feeds