By now I should know to expect anything and everything to fail while training in a flight simulator, but experienced instructors like FlightSafety’s Fred Pfeiffer can concoct scenarios that I never thought of before. The purpose is to make you think about the airplane and its systems, but also to reinforce that complacency is the No. 1 enemy of safety.
It was during the second of three sim sessions in CJ2+ recurrent training that Fred failed the air data computer on my side of the cockpit. At least I think it was the computer. It could have been something wrong with the pitot-static system, but in any case, airspeed, altitude and vertical speed information blanked on the flat-glass primary flight display (PFD). That was only a momentary problem because the push of a button sent air data information from the copilot’s side onto my PFD with a display color change to remind me that I was looking at cross-cockpit data.
