The VFC is just 25 minutes by road from London's Gatwick Airport, conveniently situated in semi-rural West Sussex within easy access of the A23, A24 and A272.  Exact location details and map will be provided to you by e-mail or post upon booking confirmation.  If you have a GPS navigation system you can find us by entering latitude N50.99787°, longitude W0.41256° (N50° 59' 52"  W000° 24' 45").

We are usually open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, and are often open at weekends.  We are able to take bookings for any simulator service on any day of the week and at any time - simply telephone us with your requirements.

Yes, you can find client satisfaction scores and some past client comments on this page.

We utilise the B737-800 fixed base simulator: the aircraft is all "glass" with full visuals and is typical of the aircraft type used by many of the European operators within their selection process including British Airways, Ryanair, CTC/Easyjet, DHL, Astraeus, Thomsonfly, Jet2 and Flybe to name a few.

At the Virtual Flight Centre we only use current airline pilot / instructors all of whom have significant jet experience and are involved in their respective airline's training, pilot recruitment or flight safety departments.  All of our instructors have been hand picked for there professionalism, ability, experience and most of all enthusiasm for teaching.  For all our instructors working at the Virtual Flight Centre is something they chose to do in their spare time, whilst not flying the line.  All the instructors are at the Virtual Flight Centre teaching our students because they want to and they enjoy it; we find this makes for the most effective learning environment.

Over the past year, we have conducted over 100 such pre-assessment courses for students attending many different airline assessment days and have thus built up a bank of knowledge about each of the airlines' assessments through student feedback and our own detailed research.  Many of our instructors currently run assessments for their existing airlines and others have the experience of being the student not so long ago!

Yes, from provisional student feedback, we estimate 90% of the students that have attended our pre-assessment courses have gone on to pass the simulator-based element of the airline assessment process they were undergoing.  Also, the feedback we are getting from our students is overwhelmingly positive (please see our testimonials page) and this is further supported by the number of students currently recommending our services and training to their friends and colleagues within the industry.

Yes, we strongly believe so.  A typical 2 hour training slot (generally the minimum amount of time that can be booked) on a full-flight B737-NG simulator with instructor would cost upwards of £1200.00 + VAT.  For around a third of this cost you get 3 hours of simulator time and one hour of briefing / de-briefing time at the Virtual Flight Centre.

In addition, we offer competitively-priced training time on the full-flight simulators located near Gatwick should you wish to use those either on their own or in conjunction with our fixed-base simulator.

We own our fixed-base simulators - we are not just a broker of simulator time!  We not only own our simulators, but our engineers manufacture them and maintain them on a day-to-day basis.

We like to operate in a relaxed but professional environment therefore there is no official dress code as such.  We suggest long trousers or smart jeans are worn with short sleeves in the summer and long sleeves in the winter. Most importantly, be comfortable.

Your instructor will be a CAA Type Rating Instructor (Core) qualified airline instructor, currently rated on the B737-3-900 with significant operational experience on the aircraft type.  We try to limit the number of instructors to a maximum of two over the five session course, but very often you will have the same instructor for the duration of the course.  Please see the JOC section for further information.

The standard JOC is one half day of ground school and five sessions in the simulator run over a minimum of five days and generally a maximum of seven days.  As we own and operate our own simulator and have a pool of qualified instructors we can be flexible and try to accommodate your requirements should you be fitting the course around your job (for instance).  Please see the JOC section for further information.