Six-year-old aircraft 'genius' becomes pilot for a day

Adam sits in a training simulator at Etihad Airways headquarters in this still image from video. (YouTube / Etihad Airways)

A six-year-old boy with an encyclopedic knowledge of aircraft got the chance to play captain for a day with Etihad Airways, after demonstrating his considerable expertise to a pilot in a recent viral video.

Etihad Airways dubbed young Adam a “genius” after he explained various emergency manoeuvres to one of the airline’s captains recently, during a visit to the cockpit of a flight from Morocco to Abu Dhabi. Captain Samer Yakhlef captured part of that conversation on video and shared it online, where it has garnered more than 27 million views in just a few days.

“If you have no hydraulics and your plane is banking right, you reduce engine 1 and increase engine 2,” the boy says at one point in the original video.

The boy went on to discuss ram air turbines, engine failure, hydraulics and landing gear operation.

When asked what he plans to do when he grows up, Adam tells Yakhlef: “I will be a captain just like you.”

Etihad Airways followed up with the little captain-to-be a few days later, inviting him to their headquarters to put his knowledge to the test. Video posted by the airline on YouTube shows Adam donning a captain’s uniform, touring the Etihad training academy and virtually landing a plane in a training simulator.

“This is hard,” he says at one point in the video, before successfully landing the aircraft.

“We were so amazed by Adam when he came to talk to us in the cockpit, that we wanted to make his dreams a reality,” the airline wrote in the video’s description.

Etihad says Adam’s (rather specific) dream has always been to “become a captain of an A380 Airbus,” so the airline was happy to oblige.

“Adam, may your dreams fly high,” Etihad Airways said.