In keeping with the theme of upset recovery and unusual situations in flight, this week we looked at single engine flight, including engine failures on take off and subsequent asymmetric flight. The main challenge of single engine operations is that in normal flight the thrust from each engine balances the aircraft, but when one engine loses thrust the forces are out of balance and there is a resulting force in the yawing plane (apologies for my crude picture!). This means the nose quickly steers towards the 'dead' engine, and the pilot must swiftly use rudder to maintain directional control. This has to be performed smoothly and without heavy inputs, as the rudder is very powerful and if applied too quickly could rip itself clear of the fin! Once the rudder is in the correct position to keep the aircraft going in the correct direction, trim is used to reduce the load on the poor pilots leg, otherwise they wont be able to fly for long. Performance of the aircraft drastically reduces as one engine is trying to do the work of two, and speed control is hugely important; if the speed is allowed to decay the amount of power required to recover could be massive, and with changes in power the directional control becomes more difficult, making the pilots life more difficult in an already undesirable situation. 
In terms of the exercises we looked at failures before rotation (when the nosewheel leaves the runway on take off), after rotation, and also at a stage early enough for the pilot to reject the take off altogether and stop. The obvious challenge is keeping the aircraft straight, as the time taken to wander towards the grass is quite short, and if a wheel leaves the paved surface chances are the situation will get a whole lot worse. Once the aircraft seems to be going the right direction, with one engine the nose is pitched up slightly slower than normal, and to a lesser angle. The cockpit workload is high, as the pilot flying is trying to maintain control of the aircraft, whilst the pilot monitoring (ensuring he remembers to call that the aircraft is climbing so the gear can be raised) is scans the instruments to ensure the climb out is safe, as well as doing an initial diagnosis of the situation. It can be an exciting time but to anyone it's clear just how safety critical the entire manoeuvre is. As for the rejected take off, this is the time when the aircraft's autobrake system really comes into its own, and to say it feels like someone has thrown an anchor out the back is an understatement!
View from the First Officers seat, with the infamous side-stick poised for action.
This week was also my birthday (29, getting old!), and my wonderful girlfriend took me to a rather swanky hotel for the night where I was treated to a massage and a facial. Yes I know I lose all credibility with a facial, but recently my face has looked like it's been shaved with broken glass, so anything that's going to stop the stinging is fine by me! Laying by the pool and slobbing about in the spa was also most welcome, even if I did get dirty looks for being childish with the foam noodles.........seemed a great idea to tie them in knots so I had armbands. Later I was surprised again with my course-mates surprising me in town for dinner, and after a brilliant dinner our friend had made an absolute stunner of a birthday cake, topped with my favourite marshmallows! Lucky boy I am :-)
All good things must come to an end, and yesterday we were back in the classroom for Crew Resource Management (CRM). This subject comes under the category of non-technical skills, an area that the aviation industry takes an incredibly keen interest in, as a break-down of 'notechs' has caused a significant amount of incidents. Even though we have been operating the airbus as a single pilot, we shortly will be more multi-crew orientated, and therefore workload management, communication, leadership, and situational awareness have been reviewed to ensure we have the tools to operate efficiently.
In addition we have started to think about a large chunk of the aircraft's load which up to now haven't even been considered; the passengers. They are the customers and have a right to be kept informed, and for most of you the sound of the pilots voice on the public address system is a familiar part of the flight experience. As simple as it may seem, the PA is an incredibly powerful tool and of vital importance in ensuring a safe operation, but it is also very easy to make a mess of, use the wrong words, or leave the passengers even more confused. Accordingly we've been given this simple booklet with a few do's/don't's, and ideas on what to include in the announcements with guidance on the words/phrases to use. Thankfully we shouldn't be making any PA's for real for quite a while, but actually having to think about the wider operation shows how much closer the end really is!
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