A Bit of SunAir History

[Marty_Becker]

I found this article this weekend in some old files. It was published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch on 22 May 1994.

Marty - SAX054
8 NW of ORD

"PILOT" SOARS ON A WING, A KEYBOARD
COMPUTER BUFFS FLY IN CYBERSPACE CLUBS

By Virgil Tipton

Some people golf to relax. Some people garden. Some people sew.

When Jim Erwin wants to relax, he climbs into the cockpit of a Boeing 737 and flies a planeload of passengers from Orlando, Fla., to Bangor, Maine.

He doesn't have a pilot's license, but his record is pretty good - at least lately. He hasn't crashed a plane in more than two years.

Erwin, a business lawyer who lives in Kirkwood, is a pilot for SunAir, a fictional airline that operates in the forgiving universe of a computer. He's one of about 360 computer users around the world who belong to the airline.

SunAir is one of thousands of cyberspace clubs, clubs that were impossible a few years ago.

Today, because of more powerful computer technology, anyone with an interest - no matter how obscure - can join a network and find fellow aficionados in other states and other countries.

Among SunAir's members are a Canadian and a couple of Germans. SunAir used to have a pilot in the Netherlands. A computer owner in Greece doesn't belong but sends messages to members.

All the communicating happens over the computer. Most of SunAir's pilots communicate on CompuServe, a commercial data base. The Germans are linked by the Internet.

To Erwin, SunAir is simply a 1990s version of an old toy - model railroads.

"People who belong to model railroad clubs build the trains and run them," Erwin said. "This is the same thing with planes. And you get to fly them."

SunAir is based on a flight-simulation program by SubLOGIC, a software company based in Champaign, Ill.

Anyone can buy the program and fly a plane, but SunAir takes things a few steps beyond that: SunAir's 360 pilots actually get assignments every week from the airline's operators.

They have to report back in, too, and tell the operators how much fuel they used and whether they landed on time. If they fly well enough, they can get promotions.

An interest in flying bit Erwin a few years ago, when he was making flights around the country on a legal case. From his seat, he began to wonder about what was happening in the cockpit. He read a few books and took ground school.

Computerized flight simulation gives him a chance to find out what goes on in the cockpit.

Last week, Erwin's assignment was to fly a 737 from Orlando to Washington to Boston to Bangor. The flight took four hours and 17 minutes, about as long as the real thing would have.

On a recent assignment, Erwin flew from Honolulu to Los Angeles to Atlanta, a flight that took almost nine hours. Except for a short time on autopilot, Erwin was at the computer for the whole flight, even the dull parts, just as a real pilot would have been in the cockpit.

In a demonstration at home for a visitor last week, Erwin put his left hand on a joystick, his right hand on a keyboard and his Nikes on a pair of foot pedals.

The computer screen showed a cartoonish view of a runway at Lambert Field, complete with a boxy terminal. Under that image glowed more than a dozen dials and gauges.

Punching a button every couple of seconds, nudging his joystick back and forth, Erwin lifted off from Lambert, circled the Gateway Arch and landed again.

Erwin and other pilots try to make the experience as close to reality as possible. They program real weather into their flight. They use real navigation charts from the federal government.

SunAir's pilots include a few real pilots, air traffic controllers, lawyers and teachers, said Marty Becker, a computer engineering student in Louisville, Ky., who manages the St. Louis hub of SunAir.

SunAir's founder wasn't a pilot. He was a professor in Russian history at South Florida University, Becker said.

Like Erwin, Becker has crashed a few times.

"But being a computer airline, the planes fix pretty easily," Becker said. "We have pretty low maintenance costs."

Erwin said there was another benefit to flying a fictional airplane.

"The passengers never complain," Erwin said. "No matter what the ride is like."

[Dave Blake]

Great article. Thanks for posting it Marty!

[David Vega]

Thank you for the article. It is also good to see that SunAir Express is still goign strong after all these years, and getting better. Thank you again.

Dave Vega

[Al O'Brien]

That was great Marty. The realism has progressed a lot since then, and it is still a lot of fun.

[Pylet]

Excellent reading and a great tool to be used to compare us Now to Then. Thanks.