Last night the guy seated next to me was "flying" our route on Microsoft Flight Simulator. Struck me as the ultimate in geeky aviation buff activity...

I always wanted to do that... to see what other pax would think.

If you lose control and crash, just don't shout loudly "oh no, we're all going to die!"

I know a pilot who does this IN THE COCKPIT on his laptop during long flights (multi-crew)!

What happens if you are seated next to a Nervous Nellie Kettle? And if you are Flying While Arab Looking? And happen to joke "You know, Microsoft built in a back door for us. If I hit "ALT-OBL" this laptop takes over control of this plane"?

FAM Time.

What would really get attention is if the sim program had a terrain avoidance alarm that started chirping, "PULL UP! PULL UP!"

Sample

I've often wondered what would happen if I attempted to clear security carrying a parachute...
If someone next to me wants to play pilot on the computer I could care less. As long as there's no audio to annoy me.

You know, you can set MS Flight Simulator up so that it populates the air roughly accurately with scheduled commercial flights, in the correct airframes and in the commercial liveries. I've never had a laptop powerful enough to run the latest version of MSFS in flight, so I've always wondered, if I were to fly MSFS properly configured on my laptop in flight, and while seated in a window seat, could I fly the MSFS plane alongside the commercial flight I'm on, and see myself in the window?

Seriously, though, the kind of person who's going to want to simulate the flight he's on would encounter a number of frustrations in attaining the kind of accuracy such a person would want. For instance, you wouldn't be able to simulate pushback, taxiing, takeoff, and the first few minutes of flight because your computer would have to be off. Then even if you started the sim up in mid-flight, it'd be hard to estimate exactly where in the projected flight path to "join in," so you'd know you were always off by a significant margin. Also, while ATC is simulated, the actual situation with other aircraft will likely lead to a discrepancy between the simulated ATC and the instructions actually given to the pilot, so while you're lining the simulated flight up for approach on runway 11, your actual flight is entering a holding pattern for runway 4. Finally, of course, you'd have to put the computer away for the actual landing.

To top it off, they just don't make travel-size joysticks, much less yoke-and-pedal controllers.

I suppose I've thought about this more than is really healthy...

It didn't annoy me, and I didn't complain. I just thought it was an amusing "game imitating life" thing.

One of my friends actually orders airplane food delivered to his place to accompany him while he flies 12 hr long flights (on the ground)

I know several people who have done this exact thing while flying. Their motivations are questionable, but I don't see anything wrong with it.

It should be recalled that during the mass hysteria after the alleged 11-9 attacks, there were documented stories of american FBI goons raiding houses of immigrants whose children were known to play FlightSim. At least one of these families, in the New York area, were "disappeared" and showed up months later in a foreign country.

Playing Flightsim should not even evoke the slightest suspicious response. It's just a form of entertainment.

That is very sad, very very sad. Oh well each to their own.

When I used to play Flight Sim as soon as I was up in the air and heading in straight line I couldn't resist pushing up the simulation rate as high as it would go. I once started an effort to fly around the world in a little 4 seater plane on Flightsim, flying for an hour a time between landing - got as fas as Dubrovnik and gave up, life's too short.

Now thats funny!