Learning to Fly, Century of Flight | Microsoft X09-519450503

A Century of Flight

Learning to Fly

It’s been a full century since the Wright Flyer’s first powered flight. At first, the skies were empty and the airspace unrestricted. It was an age of slow speeds, spruce-and-fabric wings, and airfields that were also corn fields. In the following decades, aviation filled the skies with beautiful aircraft and awesome adventure, while technology allowed pilots to travel through all kinds of weather. Within a few decades of the birth of powered flight, pilots and passengers were soaring across continents, racing over oceans, and jetting around the world in less than a day. It was a century when the airplane brought distant lands closer and changed people’s sense of space and time—a century when the world learned to fly.

Developed as a World War I bomber, the Vickers Vimy was the finest long-range aircraft of its day. In 1919 and 1920, the Vimy claimed three incredible flying records.

By piloting the Wright Flyer on the windswept dunes at Kitty Hawk, navigating the Ryan NYP “Spirit of St. Louis” across the dark North Atlantic, and bringing in a sophisticated Boeing 747–400 for a smooth landing in Tokyo, you can experience the range of technology that defined the first hundred years of powered flight. You’ll slip into the cockpits of some of the century’s greatest aircraft and pilot them on their historic flights. And once you take flight, you’ll have a greater appreciation for what those early aviators may have felt as they followed the train tracks, squinted into the wind, pushed in the throttle, and roared aloft.

A Century of Flight

“The best way to understand pilots—even pilots who lived 75 years ago—is simply

Posters celebrated the Vickers Vimy’s

nonstop transatlantic crossing.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Experience

the Dream

The centennial of powered flight has enjoyed a healthy share of media coverage. But it’s one thing to learn about history, and quite another to experience it. And that is what Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight is all about—allowing you to experience the dream of flight firsthand.

to fly with them,” writes Flying magazine columnist and West Coast editor Lane Wallace in her introduction to A Century of Flight. In nine evocative stories, Wallace recounts her experiences with the historic aircraft featured in Flight Simulator and reflects on their legacies.

Savoring the rare opportunity to sit in Amelia Earhart’s Vega, Wallace writes, “‘This is where she sat,’ I whisper wonderingly to myself, well aware of how few people since then have ever been allowed to sit in the silence of this carefully preserved cathedral …”

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