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That's because a few of the terrorists actually used flight sim games to "train" prior to the hijackings. It wasn't completely unfounded hysteria.

SyneRyder 6y ago
Here's one of the news stories about it, mentioning a British government report into the intelligence they had around September 11 and usage of MS Flight Simulator. (Apologies for a Daily Mail link, it's the only one I could find with some quick Googling, but it was commonly reported at the time.) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-357006/The-flight-software-trains-terrorists.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-357006/The-flight-s...
bitwize 6y ago
True, but at the time, anyone who wanted to fly a plane (for recreation, commercially, etc.) would be likely to use a flight sim as an inexpensive starting point for training or practice, and that's not even counting the people who might never step into a cockpit, but enjoy flight sims regardless. Terrorism was a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the use cases for flight simulators. And when this happened, the dust had just settled on a big nontroversy over the role of first-person shooters in real-life shootings -- arguably, a stronger case can be built for restrictions on those (for example, not allowing them to be sold to small children) than for restrictions on civilian flight sims.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Flight sims are a lot more useful than FPSes for training. My first flight hour was an ILS approach in a King Air. Supervised, for sure, but the owner was rather shocked I could navigate and follow glide slope without any actual time in the air. The same is not true for a FPS.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Almost all pilots use flight simulator "Games" during training.
mcculley 6y ago
And when the US military drops a bomb on a wedding party in Afghanistan, it is a certainty that those pilots/operators trained on a simulation at some point.

SyneRyder 6y ago

Here's one of the news stories about it, mentioning a British government report into the intelligence they had around September 11 and usage of MS Flight Simulator. (Apologies for a Daily Mail link, it's the only one I could find with some quick Googling, but it was commonly reported at the time.) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-357006/The-flight-software-trains-terrorists.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-357006/The-flight-s...

bitwize 6y ago

True, but at the time, anyone who wanted to fly a plane (for recreation, commercially, etc.) would be likely to use a flight sim as an inexpensive starting point for training or practice, and that's not even counting the people who might never step into a cockpit, but enjoy flight sims regardless. Terrorism was a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the use cases for flight simulators. And when this happened, the dust had just settled on a big nontroversy over the role of first-person shooters in real-life shootings -- arguably, a stronger case can be built for restrictions on those (for example, not allowing them to be sold to small children) than for restrictions on civilian flight sims.

ceejayoz 6y ago
Flight sims are a lot more useful than FPSes for training. My first flight hour was an ILS approach in a King Air. Supervised, for sure, but the owner was rather shocked I could navigate and follow glide slope without any actual time in the air. The same is not true for a FPS.

ogre_codes 6y ago

Almost all pilots use flight simulator "Games" during training.

mcculley 6y ago

And when the US military drops a bomb on a wedding party in Afghanistan, it is a certainty that those pilots/operators trained on a simulation at some point.