From here we boarded the bus -- 29" pitch, give or take and made our way to the SOC.

This was very interesting to see -- different people running the flight plans for different regions with various tools on their desks.

Much thought is put into re-scheduling, moving planes around, what flights to change/cancel in the event of storms or other problems, and coordinating with Jazz.

AC and Jazz will sometimes "lend" each other a plane to protect the brand -- i.e., put a 319 between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg if a Jazz plane goes mechanical.

Sometimes people luck out -- Jetz plane being subbed for an RJ (which I have experienced, and is a marvellous event).

I also asked the key question:

On the YYZ-YVR route, many of us will select the flight that is scheduled to go with an internationally configured aircraft. Many of us have experienced these flights being downgraded to 762s. How often does this happen, and why?

They don't like to change aircraft if they can avoid it, as the particular Fin # is planned for certain routes days in advance, so a change causes the whole plan to need to be re-done. For the most part, flights are taken off these routes due to planes on other routes going mechanical or otherwise unavailable, and the SJ service being needed on routes where it is actually marketed -- i.e., international segments, rather than domestic routes where you may get it but it is not sold that way. It is NOT done for load reasons.

From there we rolled onwards to the flight simulators, where they broke us into groups of four.

I was in a group with PE, Nordsfan, and Empress.

We each had a turn at either taking off or landing the simulator...

PE took off out of LGA, I think -- I asked whether we could get YEG instead, but the pilot running the simulator explained that YEG was not in their database.

PE and Nordsfan did good jobs getting us up and down safely, although I will admit that my seat was not secured on the floor, so I rolled backwards and hit the rear wall during takeoff

For Empress' turn taking off out of LAX, snow was added to the mix for a bit of a YEG feel. Once we were up we got some turbulence added, to boot. The pilot did explain that if they ramp up the turbulence, people sometimes get sick.

I then had the opportunity to land the plane back in LAX. This was a very fun experience and I managed to get the bird down with only a slight amount of coaching. Figuring out how to keep it straight on the runway after landing was a bit more challenging.

Apparently when CAE first built the simulators, they hadn't programmed in what exactly would happen if someone landed without putting the gear down (none of us had that problem). So someone did, and the engines keep running. Now apparently, they "fall off".

Last part of the experience was the cabin simulator. I had been in this before back in 2000 as part of the Fear of Flying course that used to be run in YYZ by Glen Burns. We had two FAs who looked far too young to be flying for AC run the simulator for us and we got to experience smoke in the cabin, heavy turbulence, and simulated screams from back in economy somewhere and then got to take a ride down the slide. Great fun.

That pretty much wrapped it up. I will let someone else summarize events at the dinner later on as I had to head home, but all in all, it was a great event, I enjoyed meeting some of the folks off this board (some of whom should have pictures), and again, very strong kudos to Ben and team for hosting us and pulling off a fantastic event.

Thanks again Parnel for setting this all up for us, and I look forward to the next one! ^

Simon