In general, pilots reacted to these new jets in one of two ways. One group distrusted them completely. They were ill at ease in jets; they simply did not want to fly anything without propellers. By contrast, the second group held the opinion that an airplane's an airplane and that flying one with turbojets was hardly any different than flying one with pistons and props. Bill Lear felt that way. As I recall, his position was, "If you can pay for it and fit in it, you can fly it."

Both groups had their share of problems, as was evident in a series of unfortunate accidents involving new kinds of airplane killers such as Mach tuck and overspeed. That's when pilots, owners and insurers all started to come to the same conclusion: that the best place to learn about such things and to master this new breed of business aircraft was inside a simulator. It was then that business at FlightSafety took off.

We began adding real simulators. Generic trainers gave way to type-specific machines. We took real cockpits and married them with analog computers and hydraulic-motion bases. Sabreliner pilots flew Sabreliner simulators; King Air pilots flew King Air simulators. And we even converted our original Link Translator into a Gulfstream I.

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