Luckily, the accident it wasn't a real airline tragedy, but just my first pathetic attempt at piloting British Airways' new A380 "superjumbo" in a virtual-reality simulator which mimics the flying experience.

The first clue things weren't going so well was the shouts of "Retard! Retard! Retard!" coming from the computer voiceover as I headed for the runway at Terminal 5, coming in too steep and too fast, and concluding with what is known in the industry as a "hard landing", wiping out all 400-plus passengers.

By this point the cockpit windows – or screens, as they actually were – had blacked out and the only indication of the catastrophe was the explosive sound effects.

It was a relief to discover later that the computer shouts "retard" during all landing manoeuvres, not just mine. It turns out it's a technical term to remind pilots to pull back on the throttle as they touchdown.

I was at Vanguard House, British Airways' new pilot training facility on the perimeter of Heathrow airport and currently home to the Airbus A380 simulator.

The simulator is being used to train BA's pilots before the firm takes delivery of the first of 16 Airbus A380s in July. A double-decker plane which can take 469 passengers, it is the largest passenger jet in the world.

Its 478 square metres of floor space make it 49% bigger than the next largest airliner, the Boeing 747-8, while its four engines are said to be so quiet that airlines are considering pumping artificial noise into the cabins after complaints from passengers that everyone could overhear their conversations.

There are only around a hundred A380s currently in use, the majority flown by Emirates, Qantas and a number of Far Eastern airlines.

In Europe, only Air France and Lufthansa boast the superjumbo. BA's arch-rival, Virgin Atlantic, will have to wait until 2015 to get its six.

The runways in Scotland are too small for the bulky A380 but tickets are already on sale for its highly anticipated maiden flights from Heathrow, with BA trialling it initially on services to Paris this summer before launching return services to Los Angeles in October and Hong Kong in November.

In the A380 simulator's sheepskin-covered captain's seat you are surrounded on all sides and above by a baffling array of buttons, switches, dials and computer screens.

The windows can be programmed to show any airport in the world – we tested Heathrow, Manchester, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and New York JFK. Once you take off, the surrounding scenery is automatically generated using Google mapping technology, creating the bizarre sensation that you really are flying over Manhattan skyscrapers.

Everything from the G-forces that push you back in your seat as you accelerate along the runway to the shaking sensation of turbulence and the rattling of the plane over uneven sections of tarmac is so lifelike it's difficult to imagine opening the door of the cockpit to be faced with just an empty hangar.

While a lot of the flying is controlled by computers – you can even set it to auto-land – pilots are still required to undergo regular tests of manual flying skills and how they cope with emergency scenarios such as engine-out landings.

Richard Frewer, a trainer at Vanguard House, said: "A human with all their experience and judgment can always make better decisions than a computer can."

He said experience of flying planes virtually would also make him confident to step forward if the pilot took ill on a real flight

He said: "I'm much better at fixing computers than flying a plane, but the basics of flying are pretty easy. Even if the pilot dropped dead, the co-pilot would be the one taking over the controls – I would just be there to sit in and help them."

Me? I'll work on my landings.