An Englishman who was told he “wasn’t clever enough” to become a pilot has built an incredible $25,000 flight simulator in his home using spare parts—and now he and his daughter can ‘fly’ every day.
Craig Cullingworth spent two years building his accurate model of a Boeing 737-800NG cockpit with mostly second-hand parts he sourced online.
Now, using a computer program, he takes to the skies with his “obsessed” daughter, Sophie, from the comfort of their home in Leeds, West Yorkshire.
The 40-year-old’s plan to create the replica came after his wife gifted him a simulator experience at a local flight center as a Christmas present.
He then bought a cockpit shell – with all the dials and levers found on the real twin-engine aircraft, and painstakingly turned it into a fully working model (seen in the video below).
He took his maiden voyage about three months ago, saying, “I always wanted to be a pilot, but at school I was told I wasn’t clever enough.”
“My wife got me a Boeing 737 experience because she knew how much I wanted to do it. It was the best experience of my life—and on my way home, I was searching how to build one.
“I found bits and bobs all over the country and started building it in my spare room after work, in a bid that one day I could get it flying.
“About three months ago, we did our first flight which I shared a video of on social media and gained lots of positive feedback.”
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“My eight-year-old daughter is now obsessed. She takes it in very quickly.”
Craig said his flight simulator teacher, who is also a first officer at Ryanair, thought he was a “natural” after their first lesson together in 2021. And Craig later earned his wings on the lifelike computer model, which professional pilots from carriers like Virgin and Jet2 often use to improve their skills.
Now he likes to fly on his simulator through the skies over Britain so he can have fun navigating tricky regional runways. He’ll take off from Leeds-Bradford and land at Manchester, then go over to the East Midlands airport, and down to Heathrow, needing about three hours to fly to a local airport, land, and then prepare for taking off again to go to the next airport.
“I usually do Leeds-Bradford for the fact that it’s one of the top ten worst airports to land in, and it’s usually quite tricky. It is usually a two-man crew effort, and you share the duties between each other.”
The cost of buying a new Boeing 737 flight simulator is around $70,000 (£55,000), but Craig spent less than half that on his model by using second-hand parts.
Flight simulator experiences cost well over $100 for 30 to 90 minutes of time ‘in the air’, so Craig is thinking about creating a business that offers the unique experience to more aspiring pilots.
“I’ve met people all over the country who have built their own flight sims but you tend to find they are retired pilots, and not people my age. The experience is so hands-on that you won’t know if you’re any good at it until you actually give it a go.” (Watch them in action below…)
Craig, who paints cars for a living, said he may now offer other interested flyers the chance to use his simulator—or others that he builds in the future—as part of a business venture.
“My body shop is expanding so we will have more space for me to set up two or three simulators for people to use, (especially) targeting pilots because they can do their training on these simulators.”
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Meanwhile, Sophie may be the first in her family to become an actual pilot, thanks to her father’s dreams.
SHARE HIS PASSION FOR FLYING With Aspiring Pilots On Social Media…