（September 02,2010）

THERE'S one thing mechanics undergoing Boeing's intensive training for the 787 Dreamliner won't soon do: touch one of the planes.
Using both laptop and desktop computers inside a classroom festooned with huge wall-mounted diagrams, airline mechanics will train on a system that displays an interactive 787 cockpit, as well as a 3-D exterior of the plane.

Using a mouse, the mechanics can “walk” around the jet, open virtual maintenance access panels and go inside the plane to repair and replace parts.

Like most new jetliners, the Dreamliner is an electronic tour de force, with computer networking cards as likely to need troubleshooting as mechanical parts.

Boeing has made the training for the much-delayed jet as virtual as its first deliveries, now scheduled for sometime in the first quarter of 2011.

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At the end of the course, the mechanics get all training materials on a tiny memory stick. Once they are in the field staring up at an actual Dreamliner, they will also use laptop PCs to diagnose and solve real problems with the planes, Boeing says.

Boeing executives admit a maintenance course that doesn't involve interacting with an actual airplane raised a few eyebrows.

“We had a lot of talks with the regulatory agencies, and they were definitely a bit sceptical at first,” says Don Reiter, a senior manager at Boeing's flight-training unit. “But once we brought them in here and showed them how the interactive program works, they all signed off on it.”

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said the agency for years has agreed to permit computer-based training.

Last week, hours before the company announced yet another delivery delay of the troubled Dreamliner, Boeing officially launched the jet's training program.

It will eventually train thousands of mechanics, pilots and flight attendants who will operate the 787 after it enters service.

Along with the boxy, full-motion flight simulator that is a staple of modern flight-training programs, Boeing introduced a host of other new computer-based training tools.

A cabin mock-up teaches flight attendants how to operate everything from cabin lights to a Dreamliner's passenger door during an emergency.

For pilots and mechanics, gone are the thousands of pages of flight and maintenance manuals in favour of laptop tablet PCs and memory-storage sticks.

Boeing has already established eight Dreamliner “training suites”, including in London, Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo, home of launch customer All Nippon Airways.

Boeing executives responsible for the training programs said they have taken advantage of the continuing 787 delays to finalise their own courses and materials.

“A lot of what we're doing today is waiting for the airplanes in flight test,” says Sherry Carbary, vice president of Boeing's training and flight services unit. “We've had to get data from those actual airplanes” to determine how the training devices should be calibrated, she said.

More than 140 Boeing instructor pilots have been certified to fly the Dreamliner, though most of those have trained only on a simulator.

Only a handful of test pilots get to regularly fly the real thing until it receives final certification from the FAA.

To accommodate the thousands of pilots from the 56 airlines that have ordered more than 850 of the largely carbon-fibre composite jets, Boeing has taken a page from its customers and developed a system akin to mileage-reward points.

Every customer who takes delivery of a Dreamliner gets a certain number of points to use on pilot training.

The value of those points depends on a variety of factors such as the time of day the airline requests the simulator and how much training its pilots need.

Before hopping into the costly full-motion simulator, prospective 787 pilots receive initial training on a suite of computers and get hundreds of pages of training documentation on tablet PC devices.

They then move to a mocked-up cockpit with flat-panel monitors and touch-screen displays to learn the basics of handling the plane before heading into the full-motion flight simulator.

In the full-motion simulation, pilots practice emergency procedures in a replica cockpit that mimics a variety of locales and weather situations.

At the end of the course, the pilots receive a USB flash drive that contains all of the Dreamliner flying manuals and the students' own notes jotted down during training with a stylus directly onto electronic manual pages.

(Source:theAustralian)