I guess I'll take a stab at this.

I think in order to best understand the 737-200 and other aircraft of her vintage, it would be good to understand that in reality, the 737 Classics are just not even the same aircraft as the other or even now, the MAX. True, put them side by side and the lineage/pedigree of the Boeing narrow body is obvious going back to the 367-80 (which, incidentally, has its own unique fuselage cross section as does the KC-135 - there are actually four different cross sections but I'll move along).

The similarities end in appearance and you are correct in that decades bring about change across every element of our existence. But we'd have to go back a few more decades to really understand how to approach the idea of becoming one, with the 737-200. I'll spare you and all else my version of commercial aviation history here and condense things to the basics.

Just after the turn of the last century, the postal service figured that sending a letter on a Boeing Model 200 Monomail was a huge advantage over that of rail transport. It took a pretty salty guy with some grit to fly a few passengers and bags of mail over the Rockies - all from an open cockpit. I'd imagine an intrepid, young barnstormer pilot jumped at the chance to fly mail for what was once called Boeing Air Transport. It was these early beginnings with Boeing during which United Airlines came to be.

Moving ahead, to the Forties, America was in need of a lot of pilots all at once. The Second World War would largely be responsible for creating the best trained pilots in such sheer numbers in a short amount of time. Think, the Link simulator. Rather, Google it. These guys, who more often than not, were in their early twenties, became highly seasoned in a skill set that laid the foundation for which every 737-200 driver demonstrated mastery decades later.

The 737NGX and every aircraft since the first 767, with the beginnings of the glass cockpit, has been developed over time for many good reasons. for the sake of your curiosity given your post, the other serves to significantly reduce crew work load for every flight cycle. I'm not suggesting that the crew of a 737NGX has neglected to master the same skill set as the crew of a 737-200, the skills are very much present.

Here's the takeaway...

When piloting a vintage airliner having old, analog "steam gauges, you are exercising the skills of "old school," very basic but essential navigation. It doesn't matter a bit if you are in command of a Beechcraft Bonanza, stuck in the soup of a very dark cloud or that 737-200 en route to the next leg of the day - the principles of navigation are the same. The instrumentation is largely, the same. You are a consumer of a great deal of information all at once. What you do with that information and how you translate required inputs to the aircraft no matter the vintage, mean the difference between a successful flight or one you might hear of in the news.

Pilots of modern airliners are in reality, "energy managers." Not only is a pilot responsible for the safe navigation of their aircraft, the company insists it be done in the most efficient/cost effective way without jeopardizing safety of flight. So imagine yourself in the 737-200. No, not this simulated version. Imagine it's 1979 and you are sitting in the left seat with 83 souls onboard. You smell the coffee brewing in the forward galley. The acrid scent of electronics from the E&E bay below you. It's cold outside on the ramp in Chicago. The weather is a mess all the way to Phoenix but because you have mastery of the skills, everyone onboard will be home in time for Christmas dinner that night.

There is a saying about glass cockpits. Don't become a child of the magenta line. As you push back from the gate in Chicago in that 737-200, consider the principles as applied to the other and not only look at but USE the tools in front of and around you in the 37-200. Short of studying the basics of navigation (which, Microsoft has offered a ground school in FSX by the way) I would recommend that you look at what is going on with the information given by the PFD and ND of the other and find the instruments on the panel of the 737-200 that correspond with that information displayed in the other. It's all right there. Every bit of it. If you have successfully made flight after flight in the other and have a solid understanding of what your instrumentation is telling you, the consumer, applying it to the 737-200 is not difficult.

If, on the other hand, you fire up the APU, load a flight plan and depart into clear skies with the aircraft doing the thinking for you all the way to flare and rollout, you'll likely continue to find the 737-200 to be a bit much. You are, the FMC in a big sense.

The pilots who made their way across Europe and back in the B-17, the flight engineer of a 314 Clipper, crawling out into the wing to change spark plugs in flight over the Pacific, the navigator in a Stratocruiser, using a sextant to cross-check his plots on an airways chart; they each relied on their mastery of the principles of flight in its many chapters.

The other is an incredibly sophisticated aircraft for sure. Step aside from it for a while, read up on the essentials of navigation, weight and balance, subsonic/transonic flight, transport category aircraft systems, and FAR Part 121. Get a copy of the ATP rating book and absorb it - memorize it. Start your IFR training in a Cessna 172 without the Garmin panel. Things happen a whole lot slower in a Cessna and you'll soon appreciate what the instrumentation is telling you.

Twist, Turn, Time, Talk.


I don't know why by the word "other" replaced "N G X"