I’m skeptical. To the point where I’ll happily call BS. Taxiing and flying a real plane is substantially different from flying MS flight sim. The physical responses of the plane to control inputs, thrust, and external forces can only be approximated by an actual physical simulator, not a desktop video game.
There are other problems with the narrative, too. Instructors will generally get a much better idea of where the student is in their training and brief them pre-flight on the maneuvers to be practiced during the training flight. The instructor would have reviewed the trainee’s logbook, which should contain notes from prior training flights as well. Unless this instructor was exceptionally careless, he’d have discovered the commenter’s inexperience pre-flight. Also, the abnormal attitude/configuration the instructor put the plane in and the recovery described sounds dangerously close to a spin. It’s unlikely an instructor would choose this as the first hooded maneuver for a new instrument rating trainee.
Yeah, it’s a cool story but not really believable.
* A student in an instrument flight is doing 99.9% of the work. The instructor is really there as a guide. The instructor will expect a student to do almost everything, from taxiing the plane, to taking off, to the radios. There’s no way that the instructor will pilot the plane into the air for the student.
Even PPL students on their very first lesson can taxi the airplane and be guided through takeoff. Why would an instrument student sit passively by?
* Any instructor worth their salt would review the student’s logbook, and his would’ve been empty or he wouldn’t even have one. I can’t see this happening even as the result of some kind of massive mixup.
* An instructor meeting a new student for the first time, for instrument flight, and instructor doesn’t even ask how many flight hours the student has? What training or experience they have? I’ve trained with a number of instructors, and none has taken me in an airplane without asking these kind of basic questions.
Flying in a simulator also doesn’t generally prepare you for the preflight (walk-around). Anyone going for their instrument rating would know how to do this solo — and the instructor would expect the student to do it most likely (maybe not for instrument lessons?) — whereas someone who hasn’t stepped foot in a plane wouldn’t know how to do it at all. Are you really going to know how to check fuel levels and oil levels from the simulator? I doubt it.
(There are some highly realistic simulator mods that get close though, and can simulate the preflight too.)
* The original story does not use accurate terminology. (A CFII that I asked about this story wrote: “When you give the controls to a student you don’t let them aimlessly wonder under the hood you give a radial to follow or some nav aid - no one aimlessly wanders for instrument training. Dude doesn’t know basic terminology either: Anyone worth two cents would say pull the throttle, rolled out of the bank stepped on the rudder to remove the yaw.”)
I’ve taken flight lessons but don’t have a PPL. I also have a lot of simulator time in DCS/MSX/XPlane.
TIL about a 2,000 lb "manhole cover" (big armored plate they welded on the end of a pipe to contain (HA!) the explosion) that got launched into the atmosphere in 1957 by a nuclear explosion test, leaving ground at 150,000 mph (220,000 fps). Spoiler: it probably vaporized.
It's unclear that there's a consensus on something that reliably works across cultural contexts, though - which, to be fair, is also a problem with human-human interactions!
Glad to see the twist at the end - great story!