“I either wanted to be a pilot or a photographer,” says Lang. “I was passionate about both, but at school my maths and my science weren’t great and you really need those to be a pilot. In those days there was no Ryanair, or easyJet. Flying was still quite an expensive thing, so there wasn’t the demand for pilots and there was the oil crisis. It was quite hard to get on to a training scheme and so I became a photographer, which has been the most wonderful career.”
Lang is still a busy photographer but his passion for flying remained. Moving house meant that the expensive hobby of learning to fly had to be put on hold, so Lang started visiting flight simulators instead, where he met Atkins. In Northamptonshire, they were offered the chance to take a flight instructor course: “I thought that is the nearest I’m ever going to get to being an airline pilot.” When the simulator company there closed, Lang and Atkins took the decision to open their own. They found the ideal venue at Luton Airport – being surrounded by real planes just adds to the atmosphere – and arranged for a Boeing simulator to be transported from Poland and assembled on site.
Up and running since November, Lang and Atkins have welcomed corporate groups for team-building sessions, couples celebrating anniversaries, bar mitzvah boys and others just wanting to test their skills in a plane or conquer a fear of flying. They offer a choice of 24,000 airports from which to land or take-off, various weather conditions and can even – like Chesley Sullenberger’s famous landing on the Hudson – provide you with a bird strike and engine failure.
With all this expertise, would Lang be the perfect person to land a plane if the pilots suddenly became incapacitated? “Technically, yes,” he says. “It would all be about if I kept my cool on the day. What you would do is call up air traffic control and say ‘Emergency, where do you want me to go?’ and they would probably give you vector headings [navigational guidance] to get you to an airport. Most big airports have a system that guides you in, and right at the end you take off the autopilot. If it’s a Boeing we can fly it, not an Airbus – they are fundamentally different design philosophies.”
Eventually, it is time for me to land the plane. Under Lang’s cool instructions, I bring the aircraft to a safe stop, even managing to keep it on the runway. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time, but I think I’d be a better member of the cabin crew than a pilot. Chicken or beef, anyone?
