Former pilot wants to find new home for 737 cockpit
Jet cockpit converted to flight simulator by retired aviator was used to train pilots
There’s something to be said for the exhilaration of having your engines conk out or catch fire and still landing your aircraft safely. So we’ve heard.
You can capture that thrill without ever leaving the ground if you want Walt Lazaruk’s flight simulator. The former pilot, having had three back surgeries and dealing with arthritis in his hands, would prefer his cockpit find a happy home rather than wind up as salvaged parts and metal.
“I want to see if someone out there wants to take on the fun and refurbish it, rather than it wind up in a scrapyard,” Lazaruk said.
Lazaruk, 73, began flying at 15, had his private licence at 17 and commercial licence at 20.
He was a long-haul pilot for several airlines and cargo companies, flying the Arctic, the Middle East and round-the-world trips, before a slip on the ice and bang on the head at age 40 in Edmonton caused vertigo and balance problems, ending his flying career.
He took up training pilots, but renting a simulator cost $850 an hour.
“So I decided to build my own trainer,” he said. “The way Transport Canada works is they don’t care how you get proficient as long as you’re proficient at the time of your test flight.”
The Mojave, with its dry California desert air and hard ground, is one of the ideal places on the planet for what’s known as an aircraft boneyard, a place to park planes that are no longer in service, for their parts and their scrap value. And that’s where Lazaruk found his 737 in 2004, or at least the cockpit, part of an old Pacific Western/Canadian Airlines Boeing. That was the easy part, finding it. It was too wide, just, to ship home to Richmond on a flatbed. It was too expensive to have it lifted out by helicopter.
In the end, he wound up cutting it in two and had a B.C. company that built fishing boats put them back together once they arrived in the province.
He has trained pilots from all over the world. After 9/11, when student pilots from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen couldn’t get into the U.S., they came to him for training. They were all pre-cleared by CSIS and the RCMP, he said. “And I would’ve been able to tell in a minute if they were faking it,” he said.
For Iraqi student pilots there was an added twist: They had to be taught how to land while being fired at. “So instead of a long gradual descent, they would come in from a high spiral.”
Lazaruk figures he’s sunk about $80,000 into his simulator. He’d like to get something back for it, but if push came to shove, he said, he’d rather give it away than have it scrapped.
“When I retired I made it my pet project to finish it,” he said. “It was kind of my man cave. But because of my back operations and severe arthritis in my fingers, I can’t. There’s about 10 per cent of it that needs to be finished.
“I hope someone would be interested in carrying the torch and completing this great work of art and have fun with it.”
I want to see if someone out there wants to take on the fun and refurbish it, rather than it wind up in a scrapyard.