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!

Week 70: Manual handling, incapacitation, and ECAM

Quite a busy week of flying for us, working through a lot of manual handling so we feel more confident in a wider range of possibilities. Of note were TCAS and EGPWS manoeuvres, which if completed correctly should see the aircraft avoid trading paint with another aircraft, or bumping into terrain. TCAS stands for traffic alert and collision avoidance system, and is a useful system that prevents mid-air collisions. Put simply if both aircraft are equipped with TCAS, they will recognise there is a potential for a loss of safe separation, and come up with a complimentary resolution to solve the problem. These resolutions will only give a command in the vertical plane, requiring the pilot to either climb, descend or level off, and they are designed to achieve a miss and not full legal separation. 

TCAS encounters can be quite stressful, because the system 'waking up' indicates the potential for a collision, so the pilot must respond quickly and accurately to any commands. In the case of terrain avoidance, a system called the enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) is used, which utilises a terrain database to enhance warning. Again put very simply, the system is designed to prevent unplanned comtact with the earth, normally referred to as CFIT (controlled flight into terrain), which unfortunately was to blaim in many accidents a few decades ago. 

In both cases, the pilot must respond quickly an accurately. The procedure is what is known as a memory drill, so the response must occur without reference to any written material or checklists; quite obvious considering how quickly the situation may deteriorate, and faffing with checks might end up with sheep and cows getting quite a bit closer!

On one of the flights, we had the opportunity to see what an incapacitation scenario feels like. As cadets in the Captain's seat we had to pretend to lose consciousness, so whilst flying as First Officer we had complete control of the aircraft. It's easy to say this is what we had to do during earlier training on light aircraft, but the Airbus is a tad more complex and having two pilots to spread the load makes normal operations more manageable. That said, with a bit of thought the whole affair is doable.

Finally we've also looked at ECAM operations, specifically what happens during failures. ECAM is the electronic centralized aircraft monitoring system, and rather than running through dozens of paper checklists, the ECAM should indicate the failure and give a work-through to solve the problem. There arent ECAM drills for everything, but the majority of problems encountered in normal operations should be catered for. 

Tomorrow we have a nice early sim starting at 0515, then I have my competency assurance on Tuesday morning. Here's hoping the next few days go well, then its a week off ahead of the final push through advanced!

Week 69: LOFT routes and autoflight

As intermediate has rapidly progressed, we've taken advantage of full motion to hone our skills when it comes to landing the Airbus, as well as gently allowing our trust in the automation to increase. It's very easy to say that engaging the autopilot takes no effort as the aircraft's doing all the work, but if we as pilots don't actually understand what it's doing (ie. we lose our situational awareness) we very quickly arrive in an undesirable and potentially dangerous scenario. 

The first system we have looked at is the auto-thrust, which effectively gives control of engine thrust to a computer. I could for example tell the aircraft I want to fly a selected airspeed, and dependent on the aircrafts position (eg. nose high) the computer will tell the engines how much power is required. On the approach this is an incredibly handy tool, as it frees up a significant amount of mental capacity to concentrate on the aircrafts flight profile, as well as monitor the progress of the flight and any changes required. The aircraft can also be in managed speed, where it understands what stage of the flight we are in and what speed is required.........the important thing here is maintaining situational awareness, because if no-one monitors what the aircraft is doing and it's wrong, the results could potentially be fatal. 

We continued to develop our understanding of the automation on what are called Line orientated flight training (LOFT) routes, utilising the full flight management and guidance system, interfacing through the MCDU (pictured). In the real world of line flying the vast majority of the flight is controlled through the MCDU, as its direct link to the Flight management computer works a lot quicker than our human brains. That said the system's capability can be seen as something of a curse, as there's so much it can do learning all of it's functions takes time. Fortunately the MPL provides us with opportunity to work through many of the funcitons without feeling too rushed, thus far having looked at routing direct (ATC give us a short cut), holding (entering holds, changing them, creating a new hold), as well as changing the approach mid-flight. It all seems like a lot, but with practice I personally feel more comfortable in using the MCDU, but can guarantee I will still be learning when I arrive at easyJet for my line training!

On our final flight this week we also got to experience low visibility operations (LVO's), to start gaining some experience of the visual cues we will have from the flight deck, and just how much more challenging flying becomes. Initially we were just looking at Cat 1 operations which is the least restrictive, but at certain point our instructor changed the visibility to give us a greater appreciation of deteriorating conditions. One notable point was on line up when we started with about 400m visibility which we initially thought was very restrictive. However, as he gradually reduced the outside visibility to a thick fog of 75m (Cat 3b) and we felt like we were in thick pea soup, when the visibility was increased to 400m again it felt like a clear day! For the LVO flights we also looked at the approach, discovering just how limiting forward visibility can be when attempting to complete a landing, the decision whether to land having to be left right until the last second (a point called minimum, an altitude below which the aircraft must not descend unless the pilot has the necessary visual cues to continue). This was a new experience as we had previously been given a generous margin above minimum to settle, but now the scenario is more reflective of the real world.

As we've had the weekend off i've been able to relax (a bit), but always had my work to keep me company. This is really the business end of the course and there's a huge amount of knowledge to consolidate, and rather scarily I only have 7 more intermediate sims, 16 advanced sims (which include my licence skills test), and in 10 weeks tomorrow I commence induction at the easyJet Academy, Luton. Even more scary is that when I write this next Sunday I will only have 2 more intermediate sims left, proof that time is flying by and I have no opportunity to let up!

Week 68: Final written exams and back in the driving seat

I have finally completed my last written examination with CTC aviation, so as of now any testing I get will be purely practical inside the A320 simulator. To say it's a relief is an understatement, but I have no doubts about the difficulty of any further tests. After the written exam (performance) our final day of technical ground-school was actually a lot more relaxed, the focus switching to crew resource management. Our instructor used the session to actually look at what was going to happen when we arrived at easyJet, discussing any fears or anxieties we had before joining the airline. I definitely found the session most beneificial and it certainly answered most quesitons I had about moving to full operations. 

As I had a few days off in the middle of the week, Alice and I chose to go for a walk on the beach at Lepe, a fairly quiet beach west of Southampton water. Although the beach is quite nice for a walk, the weather was pretty wild and we looked more like members of Scott's expedition with the amount of layers we had on! As well as some old fortifications left from the second world war (many troops/vehicles left from the beach at Lepe during the Normandy landings) conveniently there was a great view of stricken car transporter Hoegh Osaka, that only a couple of days before had been beached on the Bramble Bank sandbar. As the transporter left Southampton docks it began to significantly list, and the harbour pilot knowing the waters of the Solent decided that beaching the vessel was the best course of action. 

After a couple of days off, on Friday (and after a month of no flying) I had my first lesson of intermediate, the focus of which was landings. I know it's a stupid thing to say, but officially I hadn't flown the Airbus as the requirements of basic were to fly a generic jet, and we were just lucky the jet on offer at CTC was an A320. Now that intermediate has started and the motion has been switched on, we are now learning the formal technique for flying the A320 starting with one of the most difficult manual manoeuvres, landing. The reason it's so difficult is the aircraft whilst airborne has a huge amount of energy, so the landing can be seen as a controlled crash! Ideally the technique should remove most of the energy to avoid damage, which is very similar to a light aircraft but with one subtle difference; in a Cessna the plan was to hold the aircraft off the runway until it ran out of energy, only allowing touchdown when the aircraft was incapable of staying airborne. In the Airbus, if this technique was employed the aircraft would touch down a significant distance down the runway as it's going so much faster, and therefore any performance figures calculated would be redundant. Instead, at about 30ft the thrust levers are closed (or 'retarded') and the nose is pitched up to merely arrest the rate of descent and allow the main gear to absorb the landing load. This I was initially struggling with as I couldn't get out of the habit of soft touchdowns, but as the lesson wore on I became more comfortable with the 'positive' landings. For once the saying "If there's no smoke your landing's a joke" actually has some truth!

In our second lesson we continued with manual handling, this time looking at circling approaches. For a circling approach the instrument approach is flown towards one runway, and when visual (and close enough) a visual circling manoeuvre is flown with the intention of landing on the opposite runway. This may be because of the wind or terrain which prohibits an instrument approach to the in to wind runway, and is one of the more challenging flying tasks. The crude picture i've drawn gives an idea of the circle, firstly with the green instrument element, followed by the red visual part. I went first and annoyingly I cocked up my timings, so had to perform a go-around as I didn't manage to stabilise my approach. That said, it gave me practice at flying the missed approach from a circling manoeuvre, and thankfully my second approach was as planned and I landed successfully. 

Day off tomorrow so going in to CTC to use one of the virtual flight deck and flight computer trainer. There is a hell of a lot of information to learn and commit to memory, so the workload can only go one direction!