Weeks 79 & 80: Adding a little more orange to my life!

It's been a busy couple of weeks for me, as I have finally joined easyJet and am now under their care. During my first week of induction I was based at the easyJet academy, Luton, where we were introduced to the company. During the first day we were visited by many people from various parts of the business, and given a pretty decent overview of what makes the company tick. As the week wore on we moved onto the more practical activities, including floating about a pool wearing a life jacket as part of our SEP training. 

The group we cadets found ourselves in was quite new in terms of the norm for easyJet, as a group of direct entry Captains were being inducted. When we moved onto security, this was of huge benefit as their experience made the whole session incredibly worthwhile as they were able to give a bit more context to the scenarios. That said, as cadets from an MPL programme there was an odd shift in terms of knowledge when it came to easyJet SOP's (Standard operating procedures), as we were significantly better versed as we had the luxury of 6 months working on them in Southampton.

As much as the crew on the flight deck aren't as customer facing as our colleagues in the cabin, we still need to understand their role as well as have some basic skills in terms of first aid. To this end we had an opportunity to learn CPR using the much loved mannequin, but we also got to use the new on board defibrillator which basically tells you what to do to keep things ticking along! Understanding the cabin crew role also extended to learning how to operate the aircraft doors correctly, something which I hadn't given enough respect to. Put simply if you cock up the order or make a mistake, when you open the door you could activate the slide, and anything that was blocking the door is soon getting shifted!!

The week finished with a day of crew resource management, delivered by two pilots based out of Gatwick. We also had a chance to visit hanger 89 again, and with that our induction week was over.

The weekend following induction Alice and I moved into our flat in Crawley, or at least moved enough stuff to live until we could hire a van for the rest! Unfortunately that didn't extend to a sofa, so we spent four days getting a numb bum sat on the floor. Thankfully when I got another break we moved properly, and our flat is now pretty cosy.

Induction continued this week, but this time at Burgess Hill which is just South of Gatwick. It's the main flight deck training facility, and houses many simulators for a variety of airlines. Frustrating our first two days there were spent in the classroom learning a bit more about line training, as well as how to negotiate a full flight plan. Given each flight plan is about 20 pages long and we could be doing 4 flights a day, thats plenty of paper to get through!

Finally yesterday we were back in the simulator in readiness for base training, but we still had training to get through. This included PRNAV, which put simply is a form of satellite based naviagation. We weren't really learning about the mechanics of the system, more how we will use it on a daily basis and what to do when the system fails. Todays sim session was however a lot more topical, as it was our pre-base sim. Sheldon and I were paired up, and we basically had 4 hours to fly round and round in the circuit at Gatwick to get used to the pattern we will fly tomorrow. Given we both completed our LST a month ago it was also a big opportunity to really blow away the cobwebs and get confident in the aeroplane again. Thankfully there were no major dramas and I feel ready for base training tomorrow, so hopefully there are no snags to stop us going ahead. As long as I continue to fly the way I have been taught and practiced, I should fair OK and will ideally be training in a week. So it's an early night for me, and an exciting day tomorrow. Time to fly the jet, and I finally wear these beauties with pride!!