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!

Week 74: Smoke, the scariest thing yet!

We continued to work through failures this week, but with the more modern simulator '599' were able to complete exercises with an increased sense of realism. Starting out we looked at the pressurisation systems, and therefore the sorts of scenario's we'd be in requiring an emergency descent. An emergency descent is what you see on TV when a naf documentary is showing an aircraft in a dive, but they have their details slightly mixed up so give the impression that a door blowing out is what caused the aircraft to fall into an uncontrollable dive. The reality is totally different, and it is the pilots that initiate the fast descent in order to preserve the lives of the passengers and for more suitable conditions (its a rather chilly -50 degrees at 36,000ft!). For the crew it isnt just a case of holding ones breath and hoping you make it down in time, so the (not so) wonderful oxygen masks come out to play. 

For pressurisation we looked at pack failures, leaks, and explosive decompressions (bomb explosion), the common theme being that we had to get the aircraft down quickly without falling into a blind panic. Thats easier said than done, as you only have a few seconds to get your mask on before your body is rapidly put outside its survivable comfort zone, so the simulator detail does its best to mimic these conditions. The real core learning point though was the immediate memory drill actions both pilots have to follow, and these must be committed to memory but readily retrieved as an emergency descent could happen anytime. Worse yet, if one crewmember leaves the flight deck to use the lavatory, the remaining pilot must remember to do both pilots actions, and shouldnt expect their collegue to return to the flight deck until the emergency descent is complete.

We also looked at engine failures, which was more of revision than learning. Thats not to say I was textbook on my first go, but it was good to brush up on something that makes up a substantial part of the LST (licence skills test). I think the main point I have taken from the single engine exercise is that being proactive (more than usual) is the best way to counter the numerous threats that exist in this unusual scenario. 

Finally we closed the week with one of the scariest situations a crew could be exposed with, smoke on the flight deck. What makes the situation so awful is that smoke will be coming from a combustable source, and if it's already burning how long will it take for the fire to be so bad that it burns through vital components. Equally the smoke itself is highly toxic, but worse it can fog vision to the extent instruments are caked in soot and need to be wiped. To help raise the simulation, CT599 being one of the newest sims actually produces smoke which is similar to the dry ice from a school disco (the picture shows me coming to the end of the smoke clearance). It quickly flooded the flight deck so we had to don the masks, and with one of us scrabbling to get the aircraft down the other would be working through the Quick reference handbook (QRH) smoke procedure, followed up by the clearance drill. All in all I have firmly established that I would rather lose both engines and bring my gliding skills into play than have to deal with smoke; you just dont know how long you have a flyable aircraft for, but at least with a double flame out sticking the nose down means gravity's on your side. Obviously neither is particularly pleasant, but it's amazing how what on first inspection is the worst problem actually might be the more manageable!

So I now find myself with only 5 more instructional flights before my big day and the LST. The last two instructional flights I will actually be flying as a pair with Steph, which means we have extra time to consolidate any deficiencies and practice until we are above the standard required to pass the type rating. In less than two weeks it's all over, and ill be finishing one journey eagerly awaiting the start of the next! 

Week 73: some tough scenarios to contend with

Following our relatively gentle start to Advanced, the flights this week have really pushed us to scratch around in the grey matter and work through some fairly hairy failures. The areas of focus were mainly the electrical and hydraulic failures, as deficiencies with either of these systems have some pretty far reaching consequences. 

Starting with the electrics, the Airbus really relies on these systems to be working because of the fly by wire architecture; put simply, if the electrics die, the computers that are responsible for the control protections are gone and things get quite interesting. We looked at the loss of both AC and DC electrics, and in different situation one or the other pilot would lose all their instrumentation, or in one extreme case (lightning strike) everything went dark for a few seconds. Common to most electrical failures there was a degradation to 'Alternate law' which makes the aircraft a little twitchy, but more importantly the normal protections are reduced. 

As for hydraulic, this really is a vital system. Even though computers power the flight control system, they are still sending signals to hydraulic actuator, which will move the desired control surface. Therefore no hydraulics, no control surface movement, and more importantly no ability to control the aircraft. With this in mind the nice chaps at Airbus have designed the A320 with three separate and independent hydraulic systems, with the philosophy that a loss of one makes the aircraft comfortably flyable. That said the loss of two out of three is a fairly bad situation, but the aircraft will still be controllable which fills me with confidence!

The actual failures weren't the only important element of this weeks flights, but the manner in which we dealt with them. There's little point running into a solution when its a load of rubbish, so the ECAM system (electronic centralized aircraft monitoring) gives a foundation for problem solving. But regardless of the failure, if the crew adhere strictly to the ECAM process failures should be dealt with quickly, accurately, and offer solutions without delay. We would also then be able to decide if continuing or diverting was the next step, therefore forcing us to consider ATC, the cabin crew, and the passengers who heard the bang down the back! 

Again failures will be on the cards this week, including rapid descents and engine failures. More worrying, that with 9 lessons to go I only have 19 days until my LST is complete. Get it over quick, I wanna get to the Airbus!

Week 72: Advanced commences

After a nice relaxed week advanced is under way, with the Airbus showing us all the wonderful things that can go wrong! Before we got going i'd enjoyed a week off, so whilst being at home managed a trip to the Imperial War Museum in London, somewhere i'd not been for easily 15 years! As usual the aeroplanes on display grabbed my attention, but pretty much everything took my interest. At the moment there is a Holocaust Exhibition which was really incredible; the fact that the human race were capable of such atrocities is unbelievable, but the tone of the exhibition, level of knowledge I left with, and the many learning aids included left me well-informed, but saddened. Amazingly we consider this to be an isolated occurrence, but history has proven that such nasty acts have been repeated and probably will again.

Coming back to Southampton we had another day in the classroom in preparation for the advanced phase of training, looking into how the operation would change and the areas of focus during the flights. Advanced only consists of 14 flights in which we have many failures to cover, so each flight really needs to count. We also have items that need to be 'signed off' to confirm that we have reached an acceptable standard of proficiency ahead of our Licence Skills test (LST), proving that opportunities to prepare are gently reducing! The focus of our first flight was manual handling, looking at the dreaded circling approaches, non-precision approaches, landings, and take offs. We also had a chance to look at a rather scary manoeuvre, the 'TOGA 10'. It is a low level recovery manoeuvre, normally following a bounce on landing, where the pilot selects go-around power, pitches the nose to 10 degrees and waits. This is because prior to the bounce the power would have been reduced to idle (zero), so the engines will take time to spool up to full power, and when they do the nose may pitch up violently which could lead to a tail-strike. By utilising TOGA 10 the aircraft should stay off the runway, and once it gently begins to climb the normal go-around procedure can be put into action.

Hopefully next weeks post is a bit more interesting as things start to go seriously wrong. Thank God it's all in a simulator!

Week 71: Well that didn't last long!

After only 20 days of instruction, intermediate is already over! Starting on the 9th and finishing last Wednesday (the 28th) with another competency assurance, we managed to fly 13 profiles, all with the motion finally switched on. I'm pleased to say that I completed the CA with no major issues, so am enjoying a week off ahead of the advanced. Fortunately this week roughly coincided with mine and Alice's one year, so we went to Smith and Western for some top notch Texan cowboy style dining. 

To give a flavour of the intermediate CA, with our recently acquired skills in the multi-crew environment we were expecting some sort our failure that would require us to work as a team to resolve the situation. The focus was in fact performing overweight landings, so the three scenarios we were given all pushed us to prep the aircraft quickly and make an approach. These included a bomb threat, an APU fire (which was mine) and smoke in the cabin, with the resultant drills tobe followed in response. 

In all cases we were put into a situation where we were forced to work quickly, but had to avoid the temptation to rush in an effort to prevent mistakes being made. The theory is that if you take your time and do it right, you won't have to do it again! That's not to say you take hours considering every possible detail, but equally you don't need to jump straight in and start a plan which ultimately might be the wrong one. 

With Advanced starting on Saturday with a day in the classroom, I can finally see the end in sight and a  first summer zooming all over Europe. The lads on EZMP01 have been through induction with easyJet, and are now waiting for uniform and their first flights as rosters have started to arrive. It must be so exciting for them, and a demonstration just how close qualification is!