AU-05 - A Site Visit

I rarely go on vendor offered site visits unrelated to geospatial, but I made an exception this year, because the press was invited to see JetBlue’s new training building which houses its cabin and pilot simulators. The building, located at the Orlando Airport, was built using Autodesk products. At first we were told it was built with Architectural Desktop but learned from the architectural firm just AutoCAD was used. More to the point for me, we got to “ride in” the cabin simulator, which feels just like an aircraft, as it lifts off, experiences turbulence, and lands. (In-flight crew members spend about 40 hours in the simulator during initial training and get a refresher each year.) The pilot simulators looked like creatures from a sci-fi movie: large pods on thin hydraulic legs. We were assured they act just like the planes they simulate. The visit was definitely cool, though I didn’t feel we learned too much about how Autodesk products made its creation in about 10 months possible.