Rant: The museum in Seattle had a 737 cockpit you could sit in

I took my kid to the Museum of Flight last weekend and they had a real 737-200 cockpit you could climb into. The thing that got me was the sheer number of old-school analog gauges and switches, all crammed in there. It really hit home how much our job has changed from just reading dials to dealing with full glass panels and data buses. Makes you wonder, how many of you guys have had to work on both the old steam gauge stuff and the new integrated systems?

3 comments

3 Comments

schmidt.blake7d ago

Climbing into that cockpit is like stepping into a submarine. I remember my first time on a glass panel, I literally reached out and tried to turn a knob that wasn't there for the oil pressure gauge. My captain just watched me awkwardly pawing at the screen for a solid 10 seconds before he took pity on me. It's a humbling experience when your fingers are smarter than you are.

sean_robinson1mo ago

Climbing into one of those old cockpits is a trip. It looks like someone tried to fit every gauge and switch from a hardware store in there. I got my start on that kind of gear, and moving to a glass cockpit felt like going from a pocket calculator to a supercomputer. The number of times I’ve reached for a dial that wasn’t there anymore is kind of embarrassing. You get used to the new systems, but the old ones really show how far the tech has come.

sandra1461mo ago

Man, you just described my first year on glass. Muscle memory is a real thing. I still catch my hand moving toward where the old ADF frequency selector would be, just empty panel now. It's like your fingers remember the airplane even when your brain knows better.