Basic is at an end! After 29 flights in multi-crew jet aircraft, I have passed my competency assurance which symbolises the end of the basic phase and fixed base flight simulation. When I return to the sim hall, the motion is going on and the workload is only going in one direction, so happily I am enjoying a week of relaxation before getting back into it. If I were on the Wings course, following my CPL skills test I would have been awarded my first bar to wear as part of my uniform. As I am not on Wings but following the MPL course I do not ever receive a CPL, so the end of basic is seen as the point where we deserve our first bar. This is chiefly due to basic being a combination of CPL, instrument rating (IR), and multi-crew cooperation (MCC), so the next time the uniform goes on it will include a silver bar!
The flight itself was no different from any others, but with the added spice of a bit of nervousness to help things along. Strictly speaking there is no pass/fail like there would be on a CPL skills test, but the MPL course is continually assessed so there are standards that must be met on every flight. After some delays due to the simulator having a hissy fit, we get on with our tasks now under a bit more time pressure. Matt kicked off taking us from Liverpool to East Midlands, Chris onward to Leeds Bradford, then I completed the triangle with a route back to Liverpool John Lennon. As part of the flight we expected a normal departure, en route phase, a non-precision approach, a go around, an engine failure, and a single engine ILS using raw data. Without the time pressure this was a lot to get done in the time, so from the beginning we were immediately pushed to work faster than usual. The most noticeable was how quickly we had to start briefing the approach when we had only just completed the departure; in my case a rather chunky short cut meant I was briefing as we entered the hold, so I had to get Matt to continue flying whilst I briefed him on what I planned to do. We all left having met the required standard, so now we're looking to the next phase.
From now we move onto the Airbus technical groundschool, so heads back into the books with a rather sizable chunck of knowledge to ingest. Even though we have been flying the Airbus since October, we have only touched on the technology the aircraft has. This is because the regulators insist that the Basic phase is flown in a generic jet, so we have not been allowed access to the technical knowledge. However we have seen a lot of the systems in operation, so hopefully working through the groundschool should be made a little less ominous!
During my week off it's been my mums birthday, so I was able to catch up with my family and enjoy a trip to Winter Wonderland in Hyde park. To say it was crowded would be an epic understatement, but it was good to see all the bright lights and a trip to London is never a bad thing. Given this was followedup by a huge Chinese takeaway all in all id say a successful day out!
Back to Nursling on Thursday, so i'm briefly working through some of the material we've been sent for the course. We've been warned not to run ahead and start on the technical stuff as theres a strong risk of misunderstanding the imformation, but the new operating procedures have been worth looking at. On the way down I need to swing into Gatwick as Alice has a uniform fitting, but then its back to Easteligh ready to start filling my brain!
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