Week 61: finally my blog title makes sense!

Following more days in the classroom for our CRM training, we were back in the simulator looking at automation and the flight director. Automation is an invaluable tool on the flight deck of a commercial aircraft for a number of reasons:-

• Accuracy- the computers will make the aircraft fly with a much higher degree of accuracy than a human.
• Capacity- If a human is flying the aircraft, no matter how good they are some of their mental processing capacity is used for manual control. By freeing some of this up, the brain can plan and manage the flight more effectively.
• Fatigue- even with the lightest of inputs required, human muscles would tire if expected to maintain control for long sectors, especially in circumstances of turbulence. The result of physical fatigue can be mental fatigue, at which point mental processing rapidly deteriorates.
• High altitude control- a bit complex but at higher altitudes where the air is much thinner, the aircraft is constantly sitting on the fence with regards to stability (known as coffin corner). Inputs from a human at these altitudes would likely be too severe with a resultant control issue, so the computer uses much finer inputs to give the aircraft just enough control.
• Cost- by being more accurate the autopilot will make the aircraft more efficient, and with efficiency comes a cost saving. Obviously with the operating costs sky-rocketing, anywhere money can be saved helps, so most company's encourage the use of automation whenever possible.

For the moment we've looked at automation in very simple terms, where we can tell it to fly a direction, level, and speed, but none of the flight management functions are engaged. Even though the automatics eventually lower our workload, as it's very new and we have to be comfortable with what modes are engaged, our brains are having to work harder than with manual flight. Thankfully as we become more used to the equipment mental capacity is freed up, and we're becoming better able to 'manage' the flight. Management tasks now include:-

• Talking to the cabin crew- ensuring the cabin is secure, discussing any failures, changes of plan, diversions etc.
• Negotiating with ATC- points of descent, radar vectors, procedures, emergencies etc.
• Communicating with the cabin- the dreaded PA announcements! Passengers are afterall the customer, so PA's have to be informative, concise, as well as reassuring.

With the automation an awesome system called the flight director has been brought into play. For those of you that have gone through pilot aptitude, it's basically the crosshairs test where a vertical line and a horizontal line give indication of which direction you need to move the aircraft to achieve the desired flight path. The rather blurry image on the right is of the primary flight display (PFD) on the airbus, the flight director bars being the two green ones on the artificial horizon. It's not a great picture because there's a bit of confusion, but they are saying the pilot needs to pitch the nose up, and roll the wings to the left. When the horizontal bar lines up with the black dot the pilot needs to stop pitching, and when the vertical line moves so that it goes through the dot the aircraft is in the correct angle of bank. I've made that sound very complicated, but I promise that with practice they're a great tool.

Tomorrow I start flying LOFT routes (line orientated flight training) where we fly a sortie that should mimic a real flight with the airline, in real time. For my first one I will be departing on a shuttle flight from Heathrow to Prestwick, so from a dark aircraft in west London to parking in Scotland i'm in the driving seat, responsible for the progress of the flight and all that goes with that.

In company related news, easyJet have this week posted a profit of £581million before tax! This is obviously quite a substantial amount of money to be pouring into the bank account, and perhaps in years to come if the trend continues those joining cadetships might find the airline investing a lot more in their cadets so funding becomes less of a barrier. It's too late for me, but at least i'm off to a financially healthy company. Enjoy the last week of November, and for those of you that enjoy a bit of panic it's four weeks to Christmas!

Week 60: Single engine ops, a cheeky spa break, and CRM.

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! 

Week 59: Full motion, upset, and a careers day.

As part of the upset recovery training I had two flights with full motion this week, the first in the Boeing 737-800 (the type used by Ryanair) and the second in the Airbus A320 which I am more used to. During the first we went through the upset recovery elements, then had a look at single engine flight and how the workload quickly ramps up for the pilot flying. This led us nicely onto an instrument approach at Edinburgh, where Matt had the chance to perform his first landing with the motion on. It was a fairly firm touchdown but at least he touched down! On my attempt, even though the touchdown was smooth, this was following a long 'float' down the runway, where I only touched down with about half the runway remaining. To say I was getting uncomfortable as the red lights of the runway end approached would be an understatement, and stopping with about 100m to spare wasn't the best!

Things for all three of us improved in the Airbus, and following more upset in both Normal and Alternate law, we had the chance to perform an instrument approach to Gatwick. Whatever I did, or however much luck was involved both my landing's were really smooth, so i'm a bit happier as I hadn't had much practice actually landing and it felt good to 'grease' it on. I'm putting both down to beginners luck, but we won't know until the motion goes back on in January.

The only other news was CTC Aviation's open day at Nursling which myself and my housemates volunteered our Saturday for. The most exciting and notable part of the day was the attendance of the Virgin Atlantic pilot management team, who were publicising the recent opening of the Future Flyers programme. Unfortunately the weather yesterday was awful, and the subsequent traffic on the motorways caused about a third of guests to be delayed or unable to attend. On the upside this meant there were periods where the sims were empty, so I got to have a few plays in more challenging conditions. This included a bit of fun in Geneva, where an instrument rating instructor from Bournemouth and I had a race to see who could fly the quickest circuit in the Airbus.....which i'm proud to say I won with a time just over 4 minutes! 

This afternoon i'm flying with a new instructor, and we're also looking at single engine flight and procedures in the A320. As much as we'd had a go in the 737, we were simply shutting the engine down and concentrating on the manual control, whereas now we'll learn and practice the procedures we will use as working pilots. Enjoy the week. 

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.