Base Training #60

It's fair to say that base training was absolutely incredible and a once in a life time experience! I took control of an airbus A319 for the first ever time.

A very happy boy having just flown the airbus for the first time

Come rather a long way from this

There were 11 of us on the 3 day course along with 2 training captains and a training first officer. We each had to complete a minimum of 6 take-offs and landings. We started off at Gatwick and due to the average weather conditions across the UK had to go over to Chateauroux, France for the day to get everyone's circuits done before heading back up to Liverpool for the night.

Group walk-around

It just so happened that I was first up which was a bit daunting but I was so excited and so keen to get into the right hand seat that as soon as the offer was made I was straight in there. The trainers did the departure from Gatwick then when we were in the cruise over the English channel, one of them pops out and says, "right mate, you're in!". It's hard to describe the feeling I had when I sat down in that seat, looking out the window whilst at 30,000 feet, travelling at mach 0.75. I thought to myself, "wow, is this really happening to me?" It took me a few moments to settle down and actually realise that I was in control of a £40 million piece of machinery. I flew the arrival from the cruise down to about 500 feet where the instructor took control and demonstrated the first landing. He then gave me control on the roll, applied full power and off we went into the circuit.

It was a very nice day in Chateauroux so the weather wasn't a challenging factor. I settled into it quite nicely, repeating what I'd done in the sim a few days before and made 6 smooth approaches and landings to my relief and that was it, full stop, change of crews and signed off. I have to admit I wasn't getting out of that seat without a fight, I absolutely loved it and I cannot believe I'm going to be paid to do this job.

How often do you see a cabin this empty?

Me by a pretty big engine on a cold, wet and windy walk around in Liverpool

For the next 2 and a bit days I was just a passenger down the back, chatting to my friends, reading over a few manuals, watching some shows on my iPad and tucking into the crew food supplied to us, ducking into the cockpit every now and again to see what was going on.

During the transit back to Liverpool on the first day I managed to get myself in the jump seat which was really fun and very interesting to see how a crew operates a proper sector.

Observing from the jump seat

It was that good I got a promotion.... 

We spent 2 nights in Liverpool and every day ended up going to France to do the circuits due to the dodgey English weather, finishing up in Gatwick at the end of day 3. The next morning I had to go to the CAA to get A320 officially stamped on my licence - a very proud moment indeed.

I have 2 days of jump seating normal line flights next week and then just after Christmas it's my turn to show up to work and start transporting passengers around Europe. The dream becoming reality!

Who said there's no leg room on easyJet?

Induction #59

Awarded our wings on day 1 of induction

I've now been working for easyJet for 2 weeks and I'm really enjoying it. The first week was spent at easyJet's new training academy at Gatwick airport. It's very modern and has an A320 cabin simulator, which is used for smoke drills, door operation and so on - very realistic.

The first day was very adminy. We met a few people from the company who explained various things to us, filled in some paper work, got our air side ID and got measured up for our uniform which was very exciting. The rest of the week was basically an abbreviated cabin crew course, run by cabin crew trainers where we learnt fire and smoke drills, wet drills, safety and emergency procedures, first aid, aviation security, door and slide operation and customer focus. The last day was a CRM day which included being shown round the crew rooms in the north and south terminals at Gatwick and what we'll have to do when we're on the line. It was all very helpful and interesting and so exciting!

Smoke Hood

Fire training

Wet drills @ 6 AM

The second week consisted of 2 days of line training ground school (LTGS), which again was really interesting. Although there wasn't much new information, it was good to review the important things that we're going to be needing on a day to day basis from now on. Then finally, 2 sim sessions; one LOE (Line Orientation Evaluation) and PBN (Performance Based Navigation) and 1 pre-base sim. Both were good fun and a few new things were introduced in the LOE sim, such as RNAV procedures and unreliable airspeed. The rest of it was just a review of what we'd covered in the type rating. Then the pre-base sim was simply practice for base training; 2 hours of circuits in different conditions to get the landing and take off technique fine tuned for the real thing. They were the last sims I'll have to do until my recurrent check in 6 months time.

Final sim

The next step is base training which will be the first time I get my hands on the real thing, I cannot explain how excited I am!

First time in uniform. Worked extremely hard for this cheeky number

easyJet Type Rating Part 2 #58

Another stage of training complete! And this perhaps the most significant. 

Myself and Ben having just passed our LST (Licence Skills Test)

The second stage of the type rating was the simulator phase. I was lucky enough to do all the sims at Quadrant Systems in my home town which was convenient. There were 13 sims to complete; 1 full motion pre-sim, 6 fixed base sims and 6 full motion sims, the last two of which were the LST (Licence Skills Test). These sessions were spread out over 22 days, each lasting 4 hours with a 1.5 hour brief before hand a half hour de-brief afterwards. 

Burgess Hill VFD

As you can imagine, the sims were pretty intense and there was a great deal to learn. It was indeed a very steep learning curve and required a lot of preparation to keep up to standard. All that said though, it was thoroughly enjoyable! Sitting in an airbus cockpit with the realistic graphics and full motion was amazing! 

The sweat box

After a few sims of normal procedures only, various emergencies started being thrown in such as engine fires and failures, decompressions, cockpit and cabin smoke, windshear, collision avoidance and so on. Towards the end if you had a phase where everything was operating normally, you felt nervous because it was almost too good to be true and you knew something was going to fail soon! 

easyJet ToughPad for calculating performance, weight and balance etc

The LST was spaced over the last 2 days. Day 1 was basically run like a proper flight and we were given a few issues to deal with. There was very little input from the instructors, they were just observing and making notes, ticking boxes etc. Although stressful, it was actually quite fun. The 2nd day was very different and much more disjointed. Due to the sim having a few issues, we lost about an hour of the time which wasn't ideal. We had one more approach to get signed off for the LST which we didn't have time for the day before, then the instructors went into instructing mode and started showing us various low vis ops scenarios. There were several situations to see and deal with and get signed off. It wasn't part of the LST but more stuff that has to be completed and signed off before we can be released to easyJet. They told us both as soon as we finished the test that we'd passed successfully which was very good news and a massive relief! 

I thought I was going to feel a lot more nervous than I actually was. I think because we'd done all of the possible scenarios we would be tested on several times, and with no problems, it just felt like another sim. That obviously helped hugely with the performance because I was relatively relaxed. Plus the instructor was very nice and calm and made us feel comfortable and relaxed.

The standard of training was really excellent throughout the course and it's no wonder that CTC and easyJet pilots are so highly regarded in the industry. 

What I didn't mention in my last post was the cost of the training. You're charged £30,000 for the 6 weeks and it has to all be paid up front. If like me, you had to take a big loan for the initial training with CTC then there's no chance of getting another loan for the type rating. I was very fortunate to have a few generous family members who managed to scrape some money together to lend me but it certainly wasn't easy! easyJet then bond us for £10,000. That takes the total cost of training to about £140,000!!!  So it's definitely not cheap and not easy but hopefully it'll be worth it! 

I have a few days off now and officially start with easyJet on Monday. I have a week of induction stuff at Gatwick, then a couple more sims to do, 3 days of base training and 2 days in the jump seat before Christmas, then my first actual flight with paying passengers is on December 27th. I'll be shuttling people between Gatwick, Bordeaux and Zurich. I'm so excited and can't wait to get my hands on the real thing and can't believe this is actually happening to me. The dream is getting more and more real! 

easyJet Type Rating Part 1 #57

The first stage of my type rating was the ground school phase at CTC Aviation - Southampton, lasting 17 days (weekends included). There were 10 guys including myself on the course, most of whom I knew well from my course at CTC. I stayed in an excellent B&B called Heatherdene, just up the road from Dibden Manor which meant I was nice and close to the training centre.

Having had a fair bit of time off between being selected and starting, I was predicting being smacked in the face by the highly demanding workload - how right I was!

The first hour or so on day 1 was the standard introductions and paper work etc. The instructors then said, "Right then, off you go!".

Before we started we had been given a number of files to download, such as the A320 CBT (computer based training) app, easyJet's crew training manual, relevant charts, QRH (quick reference hand book) etc. On the CBT are a number of topics that we had to cover in the limited time available to us and we would eventually be tested on it. In just about 2 weeks we basically had to learn all about the systems of the A320 plus learning the easyJet SOP's (standard operating procedures). There were a lot of topics to get through, some much more complex than others, for example; ice & rain, doors, lighting (pretty standard and doesn't take long to complete) and flight controls and auto flight (much more complicated, takes hours to complete and longer to understand).

We were also given our allocated bases a few weeks before we started which was very exciting! Out of the 10 of us, 5 were placed at Gatwick, 2 at Stansted, 2 at Bristol and 1 at Luton. I was so so happy when I was told that I'd be based at Gatwick! Having lived 20 minutes from the airport for the last 17 years, I couldn't have asked for a more perfect base - Chuffed!

One of the slides from the CBT

We were given a daily schedule of which topics we were expected to cover that day and it was up to us when we did it and how long it took. The CBT lessons are really good, you just set your iPad up, stick your headphones on and watch the virtual lesson on the app. It has animated graphics and a voice taking you through it, which you can pause, play and replay at your own leisure.

As well as doing the CBT each day, we all had a 2 hour VFD (virtual flight deck) session with an instructor in groups of 3 or 4 at some point throughout the day. And finally, there were a number of questions (ranging from 40 - 70 each day) on the topics for the day which had to be answered and then reviewed/discussed the following morning. As I'm sure you can imagine, there wasn't much spare time in the day at all.

The VFD's were great for familiarizing yourself with the A320 cockpit and easyJet's procedures. It's a few screens laid out to represent a cockpit and everything is touch sensitive, so you set it up exactly how you'd set up the real aircraft. We had 9 of these sessions and for the first few I thought I was never going to learn the procedures but about mid-way through the second week I started feeling much more comfortable with them from cold and dark to top of climb. We briefly looked at the descent and landing in the last couple but I wouldn't say I'm that confident with that phase of flight yet. The instructors seem to expect you to be fairly switched on and familiar with the procedures by about session 4 so if you go into it having not learnt the procedures, you look very silly and it reflects badly on you. This obviously just adds to the stress and workload, as if trying to learn all the systems wasn't tricky enough. Anyway, somehow everything started coming together, thanks to many many hours of hard work.

My sim partner, Ben packing up after a late VFD session

Each day would start at 9 am and most days I wouldn't finish till about 7/7:30 pm. I was absolutely shattered by the time I got home. Just about enough time to change, eat and go to bed.

In the second week there were 2 progress tests (20 questions each), one on the Monday and one on the Thursday, with an 80% pass mark. These are just internal tests to see how you're coping but obviously you don't want to fail it because that gives the instructor the impression that you're either not putting in enough effort or not up to the task.

There were 2 tests in the final week, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. Monday was a revision day with the instructor which was really helpful! Tuesday's exam was the big technical one, consisting of 112 questions, made up of several sections. The pass mark for EACH SECTION was 75%. For example, getting every question in the paper right besides 1 section where you got 70%, would not be a pass, even if it was an overall 95%. So having a weakness in one particular area wasn't really an option. It's marked on the spot and the results are revealed almost instantly. I'm very glad to reveal that I got 96% for that one. The whole class passed first time with marks ranging from 96% - 98%.

Once we'd had a chance to have a quick look through to see where we went wrong it was straight into powerpoints with an instructor, readying us for the next test. The second test was on performance and was only 32 questions, again with a few different sections with the same rules as above applying. This tested us on things like various low vis ops rules and situations, determining certain landing distances, weights etc from given graphs and circumstances. Most of it was OK to be honest although I genuinely thought I messed one of the sections so was delighted to discover I'd only got 1 question wrong in the whole paper! Someone was clearly looking after me that day!

The final day was a CRM day with a current easyJet pilot which was really good because he had a lot of excellent and current information to pass on. You knew that what he said was bang on because he does it on a regular basis. We had plenty of discussions about what we will be experiencing on the line along with positive and negative actions in various scenarios. We then had a few other people come to talk to us about the flexi-crew situation and what to expect in the first few weeks at the airline and what to do to prepare for the sim phase in a few days. It ended up being quite a long day but there certainly wasn't a lack of golden information.

I have to say that the Airbus is an absolutely incredible piece of engineering! It's so well thought out and has so many redundancies built in. It seems to be so user friendly and built to clear as much capacity as possible to increase the safety of the flight. I cannot wait to start flying it for real. Not long now!

If only!

Joining Team Orange! #56

My next aircraft!

The new office!

I've just been given the news that I will be flying the A319/20 for easyJet. I can't believe how quickly things have happened and it really goes to show that hard work and determination does pay off. easyJet was the airline I've wanted to fly for since the start of my training so I'm sure you can imagine the jubilance when I got the good news!

It took three days for my AQC report to be written and to be told I had a place in the holding pool. Just three minutes later I received an email saying I had a selection day with easyJet in a weeks time. So I started work straight away and worked solidly for the next few days making sure I was well prepared for the interview.

I spent a lot of time on the easyJet corporate site, researching the current fleet, orders, routes, bases, values, ambitions etc. I read plenty of articles online to see what was new in the press with the airline and rival airlines and what issues were going on in the world that may effect the industry and easyJet specifically. I also made sure I had a good selection of examples to do with work ethic, challenges, risk-taking, teamwork, communication, leadership, failures, initiative, pressure, decision-making, flexibility, conflict, customer service, SOP's and complex situations.

There was plenty to do but I felt well prepared going into the selection day.

The selection day was held at Dibden Manor. There were twelve on the selection and I knew all but three or four of them which was good because it meant we all felt a bit more comfortable. The day started with a presentation on easyJet and we were asked to contribute a bit and show off what we'd learnt about the company.

We were then split into two groups of six for the group exercises. We did two group exercises and we were asked to not reveal the information from that so sorry! But what I will say is make sure you've done your research on the company and just like applying to CTC in the first place, make sure you constantly stay involved and find the right balance between contributing and listening.

The day was then topped off by a one on one interview which lasted about fourty minutes. Having prepared well, thankfully there weren't any questions that caught me out. I was able to recall the examples I'd been practising and made sure I expressed how passionate I was about flying and flying for easyJet in particular.

All the recruitment team were really nice and did their best to make you feel as relaxed as possible.

Three days later I received the wonderful email confirming that I'd passed and wow what an amazing feeling that was!

I should start finding out when and where my type rating is soon and I will keep the blog going throughout that and the line training.

I'm certain I'm going to be very happy at easyJet and can't wait to start flying for them!

I'd just like to express how grateful I am to my family, friends, course mates and all the people who have helped me along the way. What I love about aviation is that everyone seems to be friendly and willing to give you as much information as possible to help. I definitely wouldn't have got this far if it wasn't for them!

Airline Prep

AQC #55

So that's it, my training is at an end. 18 months of hard work and determination. There's been plenty of ups and downs, I've met some great people and seen some amazing things. It's also quite scary taking a step back now and realising how far I've come and what I've achieved in such a short space of time. A few years/months ago I didn't think it was possible but here I am as professional pilot!

My course was topped off with the three week AQC (Airline Qualification Course). It was certainly hard work but quite enjoyable too. It was great getting into airline-like operations and flying a 737. We were all based in Dibden manor which was the best accommodation we've had throughout the course. It's maintained to such a high standard, everyone has a room with a nice bed, en-suite, plenty of desk and wardrobe space. You're given three meals a day and the rooms are cleaned and beds re-made every day apart from weekends. It's absolute luxury!

The first week was spent in the classroom, consisting of two days technical and two and a half days CRM (crew resource management). The technical wasn't like AGK with loads of power points on systems and electrics etc (thank God!), but was going through each phase of flight (profiles) and learning the order of events, standard calls, checks and so on.

Dibden Manor

View from my room

My Room

I really enjoyed the CRM course. There was so much useful and relevant stuff, such as how to effectively deal with emergency situations, how to brief crew, make PA calls, avoid/prevent dangerous situations from happening etc. It's great being taught something where you can genuinely see how it will effect you on a day to day basis.

What is a little disconcerting though is you have reports written about you for the technical and CRM course and although you're learning and taking in lots of good, new information, you're very aware that all the time you're being watched and assessed. It just makes things a bit tense and uncomfortable, it almost feels like a five day group assessment.

The plane we're supposedly flying!

When I first saw how much we had to learn in such a short space of time I felt quite overwhelmed and thought, "how the hell am I going to learn all of this!?" but my crew partner, Richard, and I sat down on Monday evening in front of the 'cardboard bomber' and started working away at all these checks, scans and calls. We spent almost every spare moment during the week and weekend doing this, gradually building it up and putting it all together and by the end of the weekend we felt pretty confident and were running through visualised flights from start to finish, including a few emergencies fairly smoothly.

Cardboard Bombing. Many many hours spent in front of this thing

We spent some time practising PA announcements, crew briefings and decision making in a range of hypothetical situations using the skills given to us during the CRM course. It's surprising how tricky it actually is to make a good PA announcement without saying something wrong that might upset someone and not sounding like a fool.

Digi-Bombing

Week two is the MCC phase and is spent in the 737-300 fixed base sim. There are five four hour details where you're introduced to handling, SOP's, autopilot, multi-crew operations, procedural flying, non-normal situations (fires, failures etc), single-engine handling and two LOFT (Line Orientated Flight Exercise) flights, one of which is an assessment.

Me after the first sim

These flights are flown mostly on auto-pilot which makes you think it should be easy with two of you working together in the cockpit, however, it's far from easy. Things happen so much quicker and are very very different to what we're used to. You need to know the 'profiles' and SOP's off the back of your hand and always be switched on and thinking ahead. As Rich and I found out in detail four, if you get behind or lose your situational awareness for a moment then it's very difficult to prevent it going badly wrong.

The 737-300 sim

The last week is the advanced handling phase and is done mostly without autopilot or auto thrust, which means you need to know the correct attitudes and power settings for all stages of flight and be able to fly them accurately (easier said than done). Being able to trim properly is essential! Otherwise you spend the whole time trying to fly straight and level and it saps up all your capacity. There are four four hour details, also in the 737-300 sim, with two LOFT flights again and the final one being an assessment.

Practising a rapid depressurisation or for when the captain lets one rip!

To ensure that each detail goes well, a lot of work and preparation is required! There's so many things to think about and be aware of and you need to constantly be thinking about and monitoring these whilst travelling between 180 - 300 kts. The profiles and SOP's have to be instinctive.

Each detail is marked as Normal+, Normal, Slow or Review. There are a number of categories (SOP's, Technical Knowledge, Automation, Manual Handling, Monitoring PM, Co-operation, Leadership/Managerial Skills, Situation Awareness & Decision Making) that you are assessed and marked on out of these four options and then given an overall grade. Most people go through with normals and obviously a normal+ is excellent and a slow is bad news. To get a slow you need to get two separate slows from the detail and that basically comes from lack of preparation. I've heard that if you get just one overall slow then that means you aren't eligible to apply for Easyjet. So although there's no official exam or test, there's a great deal of pressure riding on every lesson because of that thought and fear of a slow in the back of your head.

The next step for me is getting a job (scary stuff). I need to wait a week or two for my AQC report and overall course report to be written and then have confirmation that I'm in the hold pool. I'll then be waiting for an airline to recruit. I've heard the hold pool is more of a puddle at the moment. Four people on my course who were on the AQC ahead of me have been told they've got interviews with Easyjet in a couple of weeks which is very exciting. I don't know if my training report will be done in time for me to get on that selection but hopefully there'll be another one shortly after. Who knows what will happen with aviation though....

I must say that the standard of instructing throughout the course has been absolutely fantastic and if it wasn't for the many excellent staff at CTC in Southampton, Bournemouth and New Zealand then I wouldn't have got this far, so I owe them a great deal of thanks and would recommend the course to anyone who's thinking of pursuing a career in aviation.

I'm going to keep the blog going through the type rating and line training and then will draw it to a close. Hopefully it won't be too long until the next update!

My UK CAA Flight Crew License arrived. Worked very very hard indeed to get this little beauty!

UPART & THE DREADED SIGN OUT PROCESS #54

Airline Prep

Two weeks after passing my IR and I've now completely finished the Bournemouth phase of my training.

All I had in the first week was the brief for the UPART phase so I took the opportunity to spend some time at home. The second week consisted of three UPART flights in the Slingsby Firefly. These flights are great fun and it's a perfect way to finish because there's no pressure. The instructor does all the radio, checks, take off, landing etc. All you need to do is sit there and do a bit of flying once up in the air. They let you do the take off and landing if you wish on the second and third flights though.

It's all fairly similar stuff to what we've done in the twinstar, just a little more extreme because the Firefly is aerobatic approved. The instructor will demonstrate a few stalls, steep turns, unusual attitudes etc and then get you to replicate or recover. The second lesson is the best of the lot. You do a bit more of the same from the first lesson then have about twenty minutes at the end to do some proper aerobatics. I did a loop, aileron roll, barrel roll, stall turn and derry turn (a manoeuvre used by fighter pilots to escape the enemy in a dog fight). It was so much fun! I personally did a loop and aileron roll and sat as a happy, excited passenger for the rest. It really is a unique experience seeing the ground disappear from view and then the next time you see it is when you look up whilst hanging from your straps! I was absolutely gutted I wasn't allowed to take my camera with me because it's a view I'm probably never going to see again (not unless something goes horribly wrong).

Firefly

I was also trying to get my sign out process rolling this week. It really is a painful, frustrating process. You need to go through a number of staff to get various things checks and then signed off. The logbook is the main pain. You need to make sure that your hours match with that on the system and meet the minimum requirements for the licence. If there's a slight miss-match then it can be an absolute nightmare trying to rectify. The logbook needs to be checked by about three different people and it takes a long, long time to gather all the relevant signatures. It took me about four days to get it all done. It's all topped off with your PR1 (exit interview) with the head of training, Brian Haigh. He goes through your training report which is written by the chief flying instructor, Phil Bell and a summary written by Brian himself. It's based on what they and the instructors have seen from you and incorporate your results too. I was absolutely delighted with my report, I thought it was very complimentary indeed and I just need to keep up the hard work for three more weeks for the AQC.

I've got a week off now to wind down a little bit but also get the required pre-reading done for the AQC. 

WEEK 69: IR - CHECK #53

Airline Prep

This week brought an end to my IR training with a first time IR pass! It's needless to say I'm extremely happy and relieved, especially after last week.

A VERY expensive and valuable piece of paper

I started the week with my last lesson on Monday. I had a different instructor for that which I think did a lot of good because I went in with a fresh and more positive attitude and as a result flew a lot better. It was still clear there was a lot of confidence missing but it was slowly coming back. There were a few things to work on but I was feeling much better with myself and my flying. I did the Exeter route for this flight which is one of the most tricky so it was good practice and I thought if I could fly that route well then I could do any of them. I'd say Oxford is probably the hardest but Exeter would be next on the list.

The next day was my 170A check, which is basically a mock IR test. I came away from this feeling really positive. My confidence seemed to be back and as a result I flew so much better! It was my preferred Cardiff route which I know very well and rather than being heavily criticised, I was given a few complements and calmly prompted when I did something not quite right. I had to do a few theory questions afterwards about performance, law, airspace, the aircraft's anti-ice system etc.

Then after a couple of days waiting, I had my actual IRT! I arrived in the centre at 06:30 to get the pre-flight, performance, mass&balance, weather, notams etc done. I then met the examiner who gave a brief of the outline of the flight. I then finished off my planning and briefed him on the route and the weather. He asked me a few theory questions which I simply had no idea about. It was a little embarrassing actually just having to go, "errr, I don't know". It's bad enough once but I think I did that about three times which wasn't great. However, once I got in the aircraft I felt comfortable and did a good job! I was lucky to get the choice of where to go the night before and obviously I chose my favourite route, Cardiff, which I luckily got the slot for.

The weather was a little bit concerning because the cloud base was low, but high enough to make a landing at Bournemouth which is fine. The wind was calm which meant the flight was really stable, great news considering I had a broken auto-pilot. The issue was the visibility. To carry out an approach the visibility needs to be greater than 800 meters or the published minimum visibility on the plate (in Cardiff's case 900 meters). The forecast was showing less than 900 meters which meant we wouldn't be able to do a full approach at Cardiff which kind of ruins the test. Thankfully though, as we got close to Cardiff the visibility improved enough for us to carry out the approach.

Dad tracking my flight

I did the hold and NDB DME approach at Cardiff then a simulated engine failure on the go-around. We did general handling on the way back which consisted of stalls, limited panel compass turns and unusual attitude recovery. I then did a radar vectored ILS and a low level circuit at Bournemouth, with an absolute greaser right in the touch down box. I was told the result once the engines had been switched off and let out a huge sigh of relief. It's such a huge load off my shoulders!

I'm pleased to say that DJ and Luke passed on the same day as me. DJ and I were in the air at the same time which I thought was really cool and very appropriate. Ashurst lads doing what they do best! So there's been two partials and everyone else has passed first time. There's about three or four more to test and I'm sure they'll do really well.

So that's it, I now hold a multi-engine CPL/IR and 14 ATPL's with fist series and first time passes. I'm technically eligible to apply to airlines now but CTC give you extra training which is the three UPRT (upset recovery training) flights and three weeks of AQC. I then go into the hold pool and look for jobs. No more exams for a while though! I'm going to enjoy my weekend with a few cheeky beers, a game of cricket on Saturday for my club and a day at Lords watching England vs New Zealand on Sunday, then potentially a civilised game of golf on bank holiday Monday. Lovely!

I've been given an AQC date (15th of June) which is pretty exciting, meaning I'll be totally finished with my training at CTC early July! where on earth has that time gone?! 

WEEK 68: A LONG WEEK #52

Airline Prep

It's certainly been a hard and eventful week for me! I've had to wake up at 4 AM every day and my duty hours have generally been 05:30 - 14:30 each day.

Monday and Tuesday were very frustrating because I was cancelled due to the aircraft being un-flyable and having to go into maintenance. For most of Tuesday there was just one operating aircraft. I think it's because if a small problem occurs with an aircraft, rather than fixing it straight away, it's put on a deferred defects list and these build up until the aircraft has to be grounded and therefore takes a while to fix. On Tuesday I back seated Luke's flight to Alderney which went very nicely, no issues. We had a quick turn around and I set off to Exeter but shortly after take off I lost half of my comms and most of my nav aids which meant I couldn't continue the flight so had to return to Bournemouth. How or why that happened baffles me. I guess it just wasn't to be.

However, I managed to get flights in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (all early morning shifts). I flew approaches at Cardiff, Exeter and Oxford, all potential routes for the IR exam. I thought I handled these OK but there were obviously things to touch up, such as radio calls, certain decisions which come with experience and precision with the notoriously poor and unpredictable NDB's!

Ryanair and Flybe at the gate

Leaving Bournemouth behind

Me in the cruise to Alderney

Alderney off in the distance

Bit of mid-air camera work from me. blondie_141 on instagram

Hello again Bournemouth

Luke on Final Approach at Bournemouth

Time to fly

Massive twin star with a tiny Boeing 747 in the background

Spectacular and dramatic sky

On the approach at Alderney

Missed approach

CTC Twin Star waiting for Take Off clearance

Who's the clever person that can tell me what this is.........

Sadly though I walked away from all these flights feeling like I'd failed an exam! The instructor I had for this stage really rubbed it in and made me feel a foot tall if I made a mistake, even if it was a minor one. I've been very lucky so far and really enjoyed my flying. The feedback has been positive and I feel as if I've learnt a lot and been progressing well, and if I do make a mistake, it's fine, it's just a gentle reminder and discussion and "don't do it again", not being criticised and given a hard time whilst in the air! It got to the stage where I felt apprehensive to make a mistake or ask a question and was censured. I also like to have a chat to instructors on the ground and in the air during relaxed phases of the flight, I find it eases the tension and creates a good working atmosphere, however, it didn't seem possible this time. Normally you have to drag me out of the aircraft but this week you couldn't get me out quick enough.

My confidence was very low which isn't ideal when there's just one flight to go until the) mock (170) but I'm sure things will be better next week and I'll have regained my usual self-confidence going into the test. I know that other cadets, on my course and courses ahead of me have had similar issues with the same person.

I also had to do my RT test (radio test) on Thursday after a morning of flying. Having arrived in the centre at 05:30 I left at 17:30 and it's needless to say I was absolutely knackered.

The RT test was odd. You have a short brief with the examiner then fifteen minutes to prepare for it. You sit at a computer with a screen (as shown) and on the other side of the wall sits the examiner. You wear a headset as if in the aircraft and a basic route is displayed. You have to fly the aircraft along the route by adjusting the heading and altitude. You also need to input the required frequencies and squawk codes as if in the plane. The examiner is making the calls as if he's ATC and you respond as you normally would in the plane. What's strange is the test is based on VFR calls, and for the last few weeks/months all the calls I've been doing have been IFR so it was quite tricky having never done VFR calls in the UK. It lasted about half an hour and I'm glad to say it was a pass. Another box ticked! I just need my IR now and I'll be fully qualified!

The RT Test screen

I'm going to relax and recover this weekend and hopefully go into next week with a fresh mind and more positive attitude. The test is looming!