WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. — Zaid Elnasser, a senior at Williamsville East High School, can say that he has something in his basement most people in the area don’t, a replica of a Boeing 737 cockpit with a working flight simulator --- and he built it all himself.
Zaid has spent the last 7 years building this replica.
Rather than paying over $20,000 for his own simulator, he used a 3D printer to create accurate panels, wired over 100 switches and salvaged old computer monitors to make his dream a reality for a fraction of the cost.
“It really started when I was 10 years old. I was on vacation in Florida at my grandmother’s house and I was kind of bored. I saw in a magazine a thing called “Sim Center” and it had a flight simulator.”
Zaid and his family made a trip to that flight simulator as a hopeful cure to his boredom.
Little did Zaid know, that would become a life defining moment for him.
“I was shocked, it was one of the coolest things I ever did. I said, ‘I want one of those’ and my dad laughed when I said that.”
From that moment on, Zaid made it his mission to build his own flight simulator as accurate as he could possibly make it to a real airplane.
“I probably spent just as much time building as I time spent on my computer researching. I would say its within 95% of an actual Boeing 737 cockpit.”
“I would never take something like this on myself,” Zaid’s dad Omar Elnasser said. “He definitely has an engineering mind."
The simulator is equipped with a working throttle lever, dozens of active switches, autopilot and connects to a program built to mimic a real-life flight.
Still, the craziest part might be Zaid’s little exposure to working for an airline because neither Zaid nor his parents work anywhere around airplanes.
“I have never flown a plane before,” Zaid said. “I’d want to get a private pilot’s license in the future.”
“I’m not sure where he gets it, but he’s very motivated,” Omar said.
If you’re thinking that Zaid would want to be a pilot or an engineer for his future career after all this, you’d be wrong.
“I’m looking into medical school and the medical field, and I think I want to become a doctor. I feel like this [simulator] is more of a hobby than a field that I want to spend all my time in.”
Still, His dad Omar, hopes Zaid uses this experience throughout the rest of his life.
“Whatever he does, the lessons he’s learned by working on this are going to help him in the future.”
