Week 77 & 78: gearing up for big school!

After the absolute ecstasy of successfully completing my LST, I was given a (well deserved) two weeks off to relax whilst waiting for my induction. some of my collegues found themselves with onbly a few days before their induction, but as I picked Gatwick as my base my start date was the 23rd. And it's a good job, as I found I actually had plenty to get on with. 

For starters Alice and I managed to sort ourselves a flat on the outskirts of Crawley, which was nothing but stressful. Given the state of the property market there are huge amounts of people needing to rent, and a such whenever a nice property becomes available about six million people want to view it that day, and invariably one of them will take it. But finally after lots of frustration and a fair dose of patience we managed to find a place which is only a 10 minute drive to the staff car park at Gatwick. I appreciate that doesn't sound terribly important, but given ill need to then catch a bus from the car park to the crew room (Gatwick is rather large!) anywhere I can cut a few minutes and save myself an even earlier alarm is welcomed!

I then had a nice family party as my Mum's cousin celebrated her 50th birthday. It was great to be able to go, because working shifts for so many years has led to me missing quite a few family gatherings. I suppose that's one of the inevitabilities of working in aviation, that sometimes social plans just don't have a chance as work is the driving force. 

As I had another week off I had a great chance to shoot off to CenterParcs with my family to spend a few days relaxing in the woods. I won't lie I did get a bit excitable at the water park place, getting a touch too giddy playing on all the slides. My sister and niece were there too so I had a great chance to mess about with them (and she made a mess too as she's recently onto solids the little cutie), because now i've got quite a few weeks of work ahead so the opportunities may not come along. Finally Mum treated Alice and I to a relaxing evening in the spa where I experienced about 8 different ways of being tortured by heat and steam, but I definitely left feeling energized!

Finally this week one of the much loved teachers from my secondary school is retiring this week, and I had the chance to pop up and be part of a surprise farewell party. She was mine and my sisters swimming coach so we both spent a lot of time under her care, and it was wonderful to be part of her big goodbye. What made the day even more exciting was that so many of my old coaches and Masters were there so I was able to catch up with some of the people who played a big part in making me the man I am today, 10 years after I left a school I really loved. 

I now find myself in a hotel room on the outskirts of Luton relaxing before my first day of induction tomorrow. Rather than do battle with the m25 and m1 on a Monday morning i've come up a day early, so hopefully the traffic around the airport doesn't let me down! So this single bed is where i'm laying my head for the night, with hopes that I don't roll off the side! As of tomorrow I officially fall under the responsibility of easyJet, and the next chapter of my journey commences. Best bring a change of underwear, absolutely bricking it!

Week 76: Qualified Airbus A320 pilot? Oh go on then!

It is with great pleasure, elation, emotion and relief I can announce that on Saturday March 7th 2015 I passed the license skills test (LST), qualifying me as a type rated pilot on the Airbus A320 family of aircraft. Given that this blog has been updated throughout my training, I can confirm it has been one of the most intense and draining 18months of my life, but the hard work has paid off and I am now of some use to easyJet!

To fill you in on the profile of the test, it is spread across two days each with 4 hours in the simulator, during which we have to demonstrate we can proficiently fly a variety of manoeuvres. These range from normal take offs to landing with one engine failed, and effectively during the test we are proving we are competent operators of the A320 and would be safe to form part of the flight deck crew. I was paired with Steph, and although we got a bit of a sting having our first day moved from 10am to 6am, the move meant we flew in ct599 which is the newest and most modern of the simulators.

During the test we continue to work as pilot flying and pilot monitoring, and the challenge is to do absolutely nothing different from previous lessons. Steph went first and fortunately managed to complete all of her sign off items in about 2.5 hours, leaving me 1.5 hours to work through mine. By the end of the first detail we had made great headway but I was yet to perform the engine failure after V1 and the raw data ILS, so these were ready for me the next day. These were to be flown in a different simulator, ct250, which is quite old so the software isn't quite so modern, and all I wished for was an hour to get my stuff done!!

From walking into the sim on the second day I took about 30 minutes to get the aircraft off the stand ready to taxi (this involves pre-flight checks, a briefing, then getting relevant permissions from ATC), and then about another 30 minutes to complete my two sign off items. So about one hour after walking in (and with ct250 having behaved itself) our examiner Paul happily informed us we had now both officially passed the LST, and the rest of the flight reverted to instruction. To say I was grinning from ear to ear would be an understatement, but after a moment of pure bliss we went straight onto the next task. 

From here we moved onto Low visibility operations (LVO's) as is a requirement of the type rating, taking the opportunity to experience thick fog and the problems it brings. For about two hours we performed a number of take offs and landings, the recurring theme being that we had very little to see out the window. We even performed engine failures during the take off roll which really does take a fair amount of mental work, because the normal visual cues are non-existent! I'm pleased to say the LVO element was successful and Steph and I were complete. From there we had about 40 minutes of spare time so performed visual circuits in the same manner we'll experience during base training. Base training will be the first time we fly a real A320, but it will just be trainee pilots and crew on board, as we're not quite ready for passengers. It was nice to finish what was a stressful couple of days looking forward, and it shows just how close those line flights really are!

I now have two weeks off in which I intend to catch up with Alice (who's on her first trip with BA about to land in Barbados!!), and am going to Centerparks with my family for a spot of relaxation. I start induction on the 23rd up at Luton, but shock of all shocks I have a chunk of work to get through so i'm ready when I arrive. I plan to continue weekly updates to the end of my line training so that a realistic timescale of the MPL is more apparent, so ill just have to think of something to talk about next week. For now pub, beer, celebration, and a bit of feet up relaxation!

Week 75: my final week of sim training

I know this post is late, but it seemed appropriate to wait until this afternoon to post and for good reason. As of 1015 this morning my final training flight in the Airbus A320 was over, signifying the rapid approach of my licence skills test (LST) on Friday. I will discuss that later, but for now the flights I've done this week...

One of the beauties of the MPL is that we have an opportunity to look at many aspects that a normal type rating just can't because of the limited training time. In some cases notable points are also repeated, which was the case for flight controls as well as upset recovery. To save going into that as it's already been discussed at length earlier in this blog, we had the opportunity to work through an exercise centred around unreliable speed, in our case the outcome of a computer failure. A more usual scenario would be the external probes icing up so there is no way of reading the information, and this was the case for AirFrance 447, which unfortunately ended up pancaking the Atlantic Ocean in a near vertical descent. It is through learning lessons from incidents like this that we progress, unfortunately at the cost of hundreds of lives.

Once the unreliable speed has been recognised, either by comparing different indications or with sudden changes to those indications, the challenge is almost to sit on your hands and do very little as sometimes actions can worsen the situation. Obviously close to the ground there is a real element of danger and accordingly memory drills are employed which should keep the aircraft safe, but in the cruise with plenty of air between the plane and the earth, changing nothing should mean the aircraft remains safe!

The basic theory is that with a given power setting and the nose a certain angle in relation to the horizon (pitch) the aircraft will fly roughly the correct speed. The pitch/power tables are from the quick reference handbook, but given they cover 10 tons of aircraft weights, there is a neccessity to tweak the figures for the right result. Every so often (and to build our faith in the technique) our instructor Alex would allow us to reference the standby instrument to prove just how good it is; I can humbly say I was amazed that on pretty much every occasion we were within a couple of knots of the desired speed, so who needs an airspeed indicator? Unfortunately the aircraft we were in didnt have a newer development known as the BUSS (back up speed scale) which means flight within the green is safe, but if I never see one in my entire life I wont be complaining!

My last two flight have been line orientated, giving myself and Steph the chance to consolidate ahead of our final check. On both occasions there were training elements we had to work through so we were still learning, but the focus was mainly on flying as many of the things that will come up, so we're not too rusty. Thankfully today that involved single engine work, and its a good job because its been a while! On my first single engine go around I was a little too quick to use the rudder, so as a result put opposite rudder on to try and return to balanced flight. Unfortunately as the engine spooled up I then had too little and was back out of balance, so had to work my socks off to control the aeroplane! However badly I thought it was, my instructor said it was good enough to pass but was just a little untidy, and id much prefer to hear that feedback today than on Friday after royally butchering it!

I feel confident that I can operate the Airbus as a member of a multi-crew easyJet operation, and rather oddly am looking forward to Friday. That's probably mostly because I just want it over with, but if CTC didn't think i'd pass i'd not be sitting the test, so nervous or not I feel ready. Wish me luck!