As intermediate has rapidly progressed, we've taken advantage of full motion to hone our skills when it comes to landing the Airbus, as well as gently allowing our trust in the automation to increase. It's very easy to say that engaging the autopilot takes no effort as the aircraft's doing all the work, but if we as pilots don't actually understand what it's doing (ie. we lose our situational awareness) we very quickly arrive in an undesirable and potentially dangerous scenario.
The first system we have looked at is the auto-thrust, which effectively gives control of engine thrust to a computer. I could for example tell the aircraft I want to fly a selected airspeed, and dependent on the aircrafts position (eg. nose high) the computer will tell the engines how much power is required. On the approach this is an incredibly handy tool, as it frees up a significant amount of mental capacity to concentrate on the aircrafts flight profile, as well as monitor the progress of the flight and any changes required. The aircraft can also be in managed speed, where it understands what stage of the flight we are in and what speed is required.........the important thing here is maintaining situational awareness, because if no-one monitors what the aircraft is doing and it's wrong, the results could potentially be fatal.
We continued to develop our understanding of the automation on what are called Line orientated flight training (LOFT) routes, utilising the full flight management and guidance system, interfacing through the MCDU (pictured). In the real world of line flying the vast majority of the flight is controlled through the MCDU, as its direct link to the Flight management computer works a lot quicker than our human brains. That said the system's capability can be seen as something of a curse, as there's so much it can do learning all of it's functions takes time. Fortunately the MPL provides us with opportunity to work through many of the funcitons without feeling too rushed, thus far having looked at routing direct (ATC give us a short cut), holding (entering holds, changing them, creating a new hold), as well as changing the approach mid-flight. It all seems like a lot, but with practice I personally feel more comfortable in using the MCDU, but can guarantee I will still be learning when I arrive at easyJet for my line training!
On our final flight this week we also got to experience low visibility operations (LVO's), to start gaining some experience of the visual cues we will have from the flight deck, and just how much more challenging flying becomes. Initially we were just looking at Cat 1 operations which is the least restrictive, but at certain point our instructor changed the visibility to give us a greater appreciation of deteriorating conditions. One notable point was on line up when we started with about 400m visibility which we initially thought was very restrictive. However, as he gradually reduced the outside visibility to a thick fog of 75m (Cat 3b) and we felt like we were in thick pea soup, when the visibility was increased to 400m again it felt like a clear day! For the LVO flights we also looked at the approach, discovering just how limiting forward visibility can be when attempting to complete a landing, the decision whether to land having to be left right until the last second (a point called minimum, an altitude below which the aircraft must not descend unless the pilot has the necessary visual cues to continue). This was a new experience as we had previously been given a generous margin above minimum to settle, but now the scenario is more reflective of the real world.
As we've had the weekend off i've been able to relax (a bit), but always had my work to keep me company. This is really the business end of the course and there's a huge amount of knowledge to consolidate, and rather scarily I only have 7 more intermediate sims, 16 advanced sims (which include my licence skills test), and in 10 weeks tomorrow I commence induction at the easyJet Academy, Luton. Even more scary is that when I write this next Sunday I will only have 2 more intermediate sims left, proof that time is flying by and I have no opportunity to let up!
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