No, not me. My dad's name is Sam as well. I don't think I'm captain of anything, besides.

We got to the training building about 6, when we were supposed to, got inside, got our guest badges and made our way through the building. First thing we saw was an antique "instrument trainer" that's little more than a single-seat canopy, like if you were in an old fighter plane. Except no window. My dad said that he had trained in that, about 40 years ago, now. My dad's friend, our "tour guide", took us through and showed me the training facilities besides the simulator. Computer terminals, rooms with posters of the switches, buttons and dials, things like that.

We made our way to the simulator - there were three of them in a huge room, about two stories tall, I'd guess. Maybe three. They rooms need to be huge to house the huge training shells that are up on the hydraulics. I think there were six hydraulic arms reaching up from three points on the ground like Vs, holding the cockpit simulator. We walked across to the sim we would be in, down some stairs and into the pod.

There was full instrumentation, a perfect recreation of the cockpit of a 747-400, the type of plane my dad had flown for the last...oh, I don't know, at least few years of his career with the airline. There was a third movable seat that was for the trainer behind the Captain and Co-pilot's chairs. It had a computer so that the trainer could simulate all sorts of flying situations.

My dad showed me how to work the seats to adjust them to however you wanted them - up & down, forward and backward. There was also a recliner part, but my seat was fine where it was. We buckled in and he showed me the rudder pedals in front on the floor, and the flying yoke was there, of course. :) Our guide brought up the visual - we started at Gate 76 at LAX. We went through a full check on the instrumentation and everything - even though my dad hadn't done it for a year and a half, he remembered just about every single detail. There was even a checklist on the "dashboard" that I went over with him, I'd call out what needed to be checked and he'd call a response - each check had a specific response, and he still knew them. My dad was good at his job. One of the best. :)

We pushed back from the gate and had to wait for some ground traffic. They had me input some of the flight information into the computer - departure location, arrival location, heading, etc. They both said I picked it up quickly - I attribute that to a couple of things: first, having never been at the controls of a plane before, I had nothing to forget or cloud my mind; second, I'm a computer geek! This stuff was like second nature to me. My dad even said when he was going to flight school for the 747-400 that he was no longer a pilot, but a computer programmer. :)

We started to taxi, but had to wait for an American Airlines jet to take off ahead of us. We waited until it was past, and then taxied onto the taxiway and then onto the runway. We could even feel the bumps in the concrete as we drove along! The simulator was programmed that well. I was very impressed. Not that I didn't expect that level of detail, but it was cool that it was there. They said we'd be taking off "light", meaning that it wouldn't be simulating a full plane of people and luggage and fuel.

My dad eased the jet down the runway, going faster and then up into the air. We had set a course for Denver, and took off and brought the plane around toward the east. I could see a green light on the ground in the distance and asked about it. My dad told me that that was the Ontario airport, out by where my sister lives. I looked down on my side (I was sitting in the right seat - I figured my dad shoule be doing his Captainly duties, and I wanted to see him as so many others had, in that chair, in full command of the jet) and found John Wayne airport. Our guide, in the meantime, had programmed for a jet to narrowly miss us! Scared the CRAP out of me - it seriously did take me a while to settle down from it! Just out of nowhere, on my side, we saw a jet zoom just above us and I think it startled my dad as well. :) Our guide said "you have to be watching out - that's what happens when you get up here and just start sightseeing!" Pretty funny. Lesson learned, he set another plane to appear - this time we heard the internal cockpit warning, a male voice saying "Traffic. Traffic." We started looking out the windows to see if we could find it and once we had a visual, we were able to avoid it. :)

We didn't fly all the way to Denver, but instead switched to New York City. Our guide turned it to dusk, or early evening, so all the lights were on and everything was lit up. :) We started an approach to LaGuardia, but weren't going to land. As we were turning back west, I looked down and saw a baseball diamond all lit up. I asked "Is that Shea?" and was told I was correct. We travelled up north a bit and banked over Yankee Stadium and came down Manhattan's west side, over Central Park. We could see lots of landmark buildings, the Chrysler building, the Empire State, and kept going south. My dad noted that there were a couple of buildings missing, and that they had been taken out of the programming a couple years ago.

We flew over the Statue of Liberty and then out over the Newark airport. They asked where I wanted to go next, and I thought Sydney would be good, as that's where my dad flew so often in his last couple of years. He decided he'd do a "touch and go", so we came in toward the airport. He had me working the flaps, going from 0 to 1 to 5 to 10...I'm not sure what they do, but I was doing it! We cruised in and touched down (oh yeah, I was also in charge of the landing gear :) and then brought it back up into the air quickly. We went around and flew at the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the West (well, judging as I can from pictures of the harbour at sunset). We flew *under* the bridge and then over the Opera House! It's a close call, but we made it. It was pretty impressive to see the command my dad had of this huge, huge airplane.

We then decided to go to San Francisco as our time was starting to run short. We had scheduled for two hours in the simulator and we were at about the one and a half hour mark. Up until the very end, all the flying we did was in real time. They decided to show me how impressive the instrumentation and computers were on the plane - we brought it into San Francisco under thick, heavy fog. There are three autopilots on the 747-400, and for landing in those conditions, you turn on all three of them. We got everything set up and let the plane land itself! We couldn't see the runway until we were pretty much on top of it, 100 feet above it. It's interesting how they do the fog in the simulator, it's pretty much white, but you can "see" the vapor blowing by. The plane did most all the work, touched down on the runway and slowed to a stop - before the cross runway! For those of you familiar to SFO, we came in from the south. :)

We took off from SFO and flew out toward the Pacific. Our guide switched the weather on us a bunch of times, going from a clear, sunny day, to thunderous rain, to hail, and finally snow. :) It was fun seeing and hearing how they created different weather effects. We flew up toward the Golden Gate, watching the city come up on the right. We flew underneath the Golden Gate and then up over Alcatraz and over where I used to live, El Cerrito, then up and over the Berkeley hills toward Walnut Creek. We looped around and came in over Oakland for a landing at SFO on the cross runway that runs East/West. My dad came in for one final landing with his son manning the controls in the right seat, not something that many pilots get to do, I assume. :)

We came in and touched down and slowed to a stop. My dad had me steer the plane over to the International gates - it's hard to steer that thing! But he's had a lot more practice than I have, obviously. :) I took it over toward the gate and then my dad took the tiller. He steered us into the gate perfectly and our guide commented at how my dad hasn't lost his touch one bit, which is surprising considering that he hadn't been in the cockpit for a year and a half. I was very proud to hear that, and at having been there.

And that's pretty much how it ended, my dad's flying career. I had asked him beforehand if he missed it, and he said yes, that he did. I asked if he'd considered doing any other sort of flying and he said he had thought about it, possibly flying for a charter, but the flight industry is senority-based all the way, and he'd have to start on the bottom again, being on-call and getting a lot of the shit routes and flights. He said after being on top, he wasn't in too much of a rush to start over again. :) One of my favorite parts about when we were in the simulator is when we were flying around one time, I forget exactly which part, but he turned to me with a huge smile and said "How can you not miss this?"

I love my dad, and everything he's done for me, and everything he's taught me.

Thanks, Dad.