Chocks away for city flight museum

VISITORS can enjoy a lifelike experience of piloting an aircraft on flight stimulators at the Shanghai Aviation Scientific Promotion Museum, which opened yesterday.

Air enthusiasts can experience taking off and landing in the cockpits, which contain simulations of runways at 15,382 airports around the world - including the risky super-short 245-meter runway of Germany's Helgoland Airport.

The simulations also include actual weather conditions at the time through a real-time Internet connection.

These are the nation's first such flight stimulators open to the public.

Previously, such facilities have been available only at aviation schools, said officials of the museum, a special education base promoting aviation knowledge.

Consisting of a 2,000 square-meter indoor section and 10,000 square-meter outdoor section, the museum displays dozens of aircraft, plus photographs, models and airplane parts to tell the story of the development of aviation in China.