George Burkley News

In 2001, George Burkley, a maritime educator, wrote a look-ahead article for Maritime Reporter and Engineering News, presenting the benefits and real-world payoffs from using simulators in maritime education. In the late 1990s, new tech and software advances were creating scenario programs that moved a student closer and closer to the realities demanded by, well, reality. “The future is here, and we are ready to simulate it,” Burkley concluded.Burkley is now executive director at the Maritime Pilots Institute in Covington, La.

When a pilot learning to guide ships along the Mississippi River makes a mistake and crashes into a New Orleans wharf, the only thing that ends up damaged is his ego. That's because the mistakes happen in a ship simulator housed in an old movie theater in Covington, La. The $1 million simulator can place a pilot on the bridge of a ship anywhere along the river between the mouth of the Mississippi and Baton Rouge. Scenes projected on the walls of the simulator, located in what once was the old DeLuxe movie theater in downtown Covington across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, accurately depict every aspect of the 240 miles of waterway.