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!