United Airlines’ app now offers a more enjoyable way to spend your airport free time, by letting you try and land a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The Chicago-based airline added a flight simulator to its Android and iOS apps on Thursday, but didn’t publicize the new feature outside of prebriefing travel blogger Matthew Klint.
The app’s release notes explain, “In this release, we have a brand new game launching called ‘Flight simulator’ that puts you to the test on how well you can land a Dreamliner. Try it once, try it twice. Don’t worry–we won’t tell.”
To play this game SkyTale Studios developed for United, tap the app’s menu icon, select Game Center, and then Flight Simulator. You can choose between practice videos, tutorials in which the game handles most of the flying, and a series of final and full approaches into San Francisco International Airport that can have you landing in daylight with calm winds or at night with turbulence.
Because this isn’t Microsoft Flight Simulator, and instead a game squeezed into a 214MB mobile app running on my Pixel 5a, its interface abstracts out controls like throttles, elevators, ailerons, and flaps. Your task is to control the 787’s pitch, roll, and yaw by tilting your phone or tablet to keep the jet on the glide path to SFO’s runways 28L, 28R or 19L, as shown in a recreation of its heads-up display. You can also switch from that cockpit perspective to exterior views of your 787.
If you decide to try this flight simulator out for yourself, my advice is to “fly gentle.” Rapid movements risk leaving you struggling to correct them and then correct your corrections, as if you’re chasing your own tail across the San Francisco Bay. If you depart too far from the approach path, you’ll get a “landing aborted” error.
After a few tutorials, I needed two tries to land the 787 at SFO–and by “land” I meant get it down well off the centerline and at a rate of descent that my passengers, cabin crew, and landing gear probably would not have appreciated. Clearly, I need practice, but at least I won’t have to pay for the Wi-Fi to get that in-flight: The game works in airplane mode.
Editor’s note: This post originally spelled Klint’s last name wrong; we’ve corrected that error.
Source: diymag.com
