Week 58: A trip to the darkside.

Although the MPL has been around for a number of years, the powers that be who decide what the course needs to contain sometimes can be a little slow to accept that technology moves on, and so training should reflect this. Because of this, even though our course is designed so that we reach a high level of competence in the Airbus, we are still required to spend a couple of sessions operating in a 'conventional jet', so last night my group had our introduction to the Boeing 737-700. 

So the conventional jet......when we look at the Airbus, it is an incredibly clever aircraft which operates with a huge amount of input from computers, utilising what is known as a fly-by-wire system. In a conventional aircraft there are more direct control paths between the pilot and the control surfaces, so if the pilot pulls the yoke back the elevator will stay up (which in turn pitches the nose up), with no reference to the aircrafts flight envelope (it's safe parameters). However in the Airbus movement of the controls doesn't cause a linear movement of the surface; simply put instead you are telling the aircraft that you are making a pitch/roll/yaw demand, and the computer will calculate how much movement is required for the input demand. 

What the hell is this thing for? Where does the tray go?!

The beauty (or curse) of the fly-by-wire system is that you are effectively telling the aircraft how you want it to fly through space, and once you have put it in that position (eg. nose 5 degrees up and rolling 20 degrees to the left), it will automatically trim itself to remain in this position until the next demand is requested. On the Boeing there are none of these niceties in manual flight, and with underslung engines, giving a handful of power will cause a pitch up (due to the pitch/power couple), so the aircraft felt a lot more twitchy. Obviously with practice and familiarity the pilot becomes more used to the handling characteristics of the Boeing, but I can say at present I am very much an Airbus man! I have a full motion session in the Boeing 737-800 this afternoon to put that to the test, but i'm fairly sure my love is for the Eurobus!

Asides from the flying an aircraft that responds differently, the cockpit layout was a little tough to get my head around when compared to the Airbus. This is chiefly because the 737 was designed in the mid-1900's and as it's design has changed and equipment had come and gone, controls have been put in where there was space. In comparison, the Airbus was designed from scratch in the 80's, and from day one was planned to be a more simplistic flight deck, and personally this suits me better.