It is early morning when we taxi out to Mumbai International runway 27 bound for Sharjah. FSX decided a flight path which will take us over the northwest corner of the Indian Ocean squeezed between the Indian subcontinent and the Arabic Peninsula. Our destination is in the United Arab Emirates, the peninsula looking like a threatening dagger pointed to a dodging Iran, forming the Strait of Hormuz, gateway to the Persian Gulf.

Our first contact with the Arabic Peninsula is the corner location of Ras al Jinz in Oman, where an eco-themed park based on the endangered green turtle powers a lively tourist attraction. Close to Ras al Jinz is the village of Ras al Hadd where until 1507 there used to be the town of Quryiat. That year Commander Alfonso de Albuquerque razed it to make sure no rebellion to the Portuguese rule was to spring for a long time.

Portugal bears no resemblance today to the maritime imperial power it was in the 16th and 17th Centuries; actually it was in the 20th century when the last overseas possessions like Macao were released. Far East trade used to be by earthbound along the Silk Road, its terminal controlled by Ottomans in the Mediterranean shores, and by Venice by sea for further distribution in Europe. It was only natural for Spain and Portugal to try to figure out how to bypass the middlemen; Columbus convinced the Spanish Catholic King and Queen to go west on a hypothetical round Earth. Portuguese Vasco Da Gama instead turned East at Cape of Good Hope and on to India, all that before the discovery of America. Portugal focused on establishing a lucrative network of trade hubs spanning all the way to China and Japan and after the discovery of America in 1492 divided the world (except Europe) with Spain through the treaty of Tordesillas.

In the previous feature I mentioned how Mumbai was built around the Portuguese held chain of seven islands later given to Great Britain. The Indian Ocean was much of a Portuguese "Mare Nostrum" from roughly 1500 to well after 1600. Albuquerque conquered the entrance to the Red Sea at Socotra, and later Muscat, which just happens not by coincidence to be sliding abeam to the left of our flight path, on the eastern shore of Oman.

Back to the MD11 we are now flying courtesy of Simmer's Sky. I cannot asses how accurate this flight model is, but find it convincing. Noticeably ponderous, it takes heavy driving to start moving in any axis and then equally heavy opposite drive to stop it. She needs precision handling and advanced planning, to closely watch numbers. The MD11 has a bad reputation with respect to hard / bounced landings, had several mishaps resulting in hull loss for that matter, which prompted review of training procedures. Seems like from the cockpit it is difficult to notice a bounce which in turn may elicit ill timed control inputs. Stabilator size had been reduced with respect to the smaller DC-10 to improve aerodynamic efficiency, placing a fuel tank inside to trim with weight but this scheme reduced crosswind performance and made it trickier to land than similar sized planes. In the simulator at least, I had an initial spate of landing crashes I still cannot figure out exactly why, I mean not the obvious blunders but flares and touchdowns which did not look out of the ordinary yet FSX fastidiously cried foul.

I don't know whether wariness about landing performance was the case, but I recently caught a probably expensive inconvenience for Lufthansa cargo operations. October 19, 2016 was a stormy day here in Montevideo with high winds, rain and thunderstorms. I was watching D-ALCD from Curitiba approaching Carrasco runaway 24 with winds from the south - don't remember precisely, probably about 20 kts, maybe more, and gusting. Fact is about 2 miles from the threshold it poured coal and headed to Buenos Aires without ever looking back. Buenos Aires was also stormy but a little less intense. Then past midday it departed to Montevideo as scheduled before diversion, only to racetrack for almost an hour and give up, back to Buenos Aires and then Dakkar. I do not know the circumstances under which it was dispatched - it is only 90 nm Buenos Aires - Montevideo, only to hold, wait and finally abort. Other airlines operated normally in Montevideo that day, A330 / A320 / 737 / 777 / CRJ. To be fair an ATR 72 diverted too, but may be understandable. Perhaps some reader happens by chance to have inside info, should love to learn.

Last time we reviewed how after a tale of leaps and bounds, Boeing succeeded to lead the civil air travel industry with model 707, the first jetliner to attain significant impact. Douglas was soon playing catch-up with the DC-8 also in the same year of 1958, also a four engine plane in the same layout. Convair and Lockheed, the other major competitors in the commercial aviation arena, did not seem to foresee turbojet engines as being the wave of future so stuck to propeller driven - albeit turboprop. In Europe De Havilland continued manufacturing the Comet 4, while Sud Aviation launched the unconventional Caravelle with rear mounted engines, setting a trend that continues to this day in private jets and regional airliners.

By the late 60's and with the jetliner established, it seemed straightforward the next evolutionary step should be a supersonic plane - and atomic powered for that matter. Came November 1962 when British Aircraft from Great Britain, and Sud Aviation from France formally announced the launch of project Concorde. Boeing had been working on concepts of SST airliners for ten years but no project had been funded with a production objective, not until news of the announcement of Concorde sent American aero industry in turmoil. Much more so when Pan Am president Juan Trippe leaked he should consider European SST products as an option. The US government quickly set to fund SST research through a request for proposals to major companies - atomic power not mandatory in this occasion. As a result of previous study, Boeing went forward with a swing-wing Mach 3 150 seat plane model 2707. Different fuselage versions should further adjust capacity as needed be. To make the story short, after delays, cost overruns and radical design changes like dropping the expensive and heavy swing-wing mechanics, the project was cancelled after a final Congress funding cut in 1971.

Yet Boeing had plan B or sidekick if you want. SST was the wave of the future for passenger travel - at least that was what was thought for the duration of the 2707 project - but freight was still being hauled onboard ships which meant delivery times measured in weeks when not months. The reasoning then, build a large passenger subsonic plane as a backup for the SST, if SST goes well convert it to freight, there must be people ready to pay a premium for only days of transit time, much more so with small size and weight high value products like electronics and that stuff. So, as a hedge in case something went wrong with the SST - which was known to be no smooth sailing - project 747 was launched in 1965 with an eye both on passenger service and cargo duty. The project dovetailed with a USAF request for design of a very large military transport to succeed the C141 Starlifter - but it was not to be the Jumbo to get the job, it was the later C5 Galaxy. The 747 team was headed by legendary Joe Sutter, responsible for the then much successful 737. To be cost effective in the cargo market the plane had to be the largest possible within the constraints of available engine technology and well understood engineering. It was natural to opt for four underwing engines with the latest, biggest plausible powerplants. So Pratt & Whitney committed to develop the JT9D high bypass turbofan.

Past Muscat, the Jebel Shams range slides by at our left as we rapidly progress along the Omani coast. There is an important tourism effort here to make the region known because of its great scenery and the possibility of trekking and adventuring in the peaks and canyons of what is now a protected reserve area. It may be counted on weather being sunny most of the time though it is not utter deserted, some rain along the year allows for small shrubs and some agriculture.

And soon we are landing at Sharjah. Sharjah is the cargo airport for United Arab Emirates, Dubai being the main regional passenger hub and one of the busiest terminals in the world, gateway from Europe and America to India and the Far East.

Landing at Sharjah with a photorealistic and detailed scenery as freely available made me reflect to decades back, to the early times of flight simulation. My first contact was about 1986 through a Sinclair Spectrum computer. Display was a TV set, program loading through an audio cassette player, it had an integrated keyboard and plug joystick. There were some programs available, a generic light airplane and a F15 capable of dog fighting among others, you may guess the level of realism both in scenery and cockpit details, here they are.

Frame rates were easy to figure out, count the obvious flickers for 10 seconds and divide by 10, never had the chance to count over 30 if I remember well. Crude as they were, I learned lots about flying during countless hours of takeoffs and landings, crashing and trying again. They were not forgiving, you had to take numbers seriously, learned precision, situational awareness, to manage power, speed, to anticipate and establish trends, to put all ducks in a row as the saying goes and the reward was ... well just this time you did not crash ... You must recall that in those years and for almost a decade beyond, there was no such thing as Internet. It was through photocopied instructions and tutorials about these games that the fundaments of flying were learned, and trade magazines and trips to the library, read books, get informed about real world aviation knowledge and how to apply to simulation.

Then it was unavoidable to be soon learning to fly for real. I soloed in less than 6 hours time - and only because the instructor wanted to stay with me long enough to make sure I had the judgment to figure where and how to pull an emergency landing just in case. In my first lesson he let me lead landing, him fingertiping as backup which proved not necessary, was impressed how the simulator gave me an edge. We now take that for granted, even PC based simulators like FSX do a great job not to mention the professional training full motion devices airlines use instead of the more expensive real flight time. But only so far, at least with our basic PC based simulators. In a real airplane you use both hands, feet, and swivel your head as you need to assess situation and to command the machine. In the simulator the task is more cumbersome; in return you have access to ships you could only dream to put your hands on.

Soon we will be taking off for Frankfurt and, while airborne, will go on commenting places, recalling fond flight simming memories and reviewing the story of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, the dawn of the widebody and the newcomers stepping in to reclaim their place in the air travel business.

Rodolfo Astrada
Read other articles in this series