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!
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