Since the days of the first Link Trainer, flight trainers have played a small part in the initial training of most military and commercial pilots. The elementary types of trainer have been used successfully to teach new pilots the basics of instrument flying and subsequently how to fly instrument procedures on SBA, Radio Range, non-directional beacons, VOR and ILS.

Quite a lot of thought has been given from time to time to the possibility of extending the role of the trainer, for use as a pre-flight trainer perhaps, or to reduce the total amount of in-flight training and experience required for the issue of a licence.

Many space satellites consist of a pair of highly-flexible solar panels attached to a relatively rigid centre-body, the recently launched CTS is a good example. The panels supply electrical power to the communications equipment and attitude sensors which are usually mounted on the centre-body. It would appear that in the current generation of vehicles the flexure of the panels does not degrade the quality of the attitude control. This may not be so, however, in the next generation of satellites which will of necessity carry much larger solar panels. If the same high pointing accuracy is to be maintained in these vehicles and problems due to structural damage are to be avoided, then the flexure of the panels will have to be controlled.

Before beginning my contribution to this symposium, I must make it plain that I do not claim to speak here for employers of pilots, other than myself. For that matter, I do not even claim to be speaking for my own Company. The opinions I shall express are my own and they result from a modest experience in the management side of the air transport industry. They are not the product of any discussion or agreement with other employers of pilots.

Concerning the title of my contribution, I shall assume the word ‘employer’ to mean an air transport undertaking, operating under an Air Operator's Certificate, and the word ‘pilot’ to mean a qualified aircraft captain engaged in public transport operations.

Box-shaped containers when carried by cable harness from helicopters are known to have complicated motions, in many degrees of freedom and with varying degrees of stability. The resulting motions are caused by the complex aerodynamics of, for example, unsteady movements of the containers. These motions create, and are in turn sustained by, complex aerodynamic flows and forces.

Steady forward motion of the container results in separation bubbles initiating from the container leading edges. Sometimes the separating stream surfaces will re-attach to the container surface at some station downstream from the leading edges. In other cases, no reattachment occurs and the container is considered to be in the ‘wake’ of the forward facing surface.

Unsteadiness in the fluid motion, when induced most importantly, for example, by the pitching of the container, can significantly alter the criteria governing the formation of the separating stream surface and its re-attachment.

I am going to broaden the picture somewhat from what has already been said so far in order to try to put the topic of employment in its general legal context from the point of view of passengers, operators, flight crew and air traffic controllers.

When a person is injured in an accident on land, he must prove negligence by somebody, e.g. the driver of a motor car, and if he can do so he can get judgment for full compensation for all his injuries, loss and damage. Recently, awards in severe cases have been up to £100 000, and sometimes more.

If however the Defendant proves that he was not negligent, or that someone else caused the accident, the Plaintiff will get nothing from him, no matter how serious his injuries.

In the beginning was the Link Trainer! It was from the Link Trainer that the simulator as we know it today descended. When the simulator was first introduced into airline service it was to some degree treated as a novelty. Instructors on the simulators fell into two categories—they were either in the minority, Link Trainer instructors, but in the main the fleet instructors from the aircraft types. They were ex-service RAF, Navy and CFS trained and they adapated themselves to the new form of aptitude tests. It is perhaps interesting that we look back over a quarter of a century to the time that BOAC, as it was, acquired its first simulator.