WEEK 65: LOFT #49

Airline Prep

It's certainly been a busy time for me this week! I think this is the first time I've been in six days in a row and therefore required to have the seventh off.

Monday to Thursday was spent in the simulator doing the LOFT flights. Luke and I were on the late shift (18:00 - 22:00). The routine was wake up about 11:00, start planning at home around 12:00, head into the centre around 16:30 for the debrief from the previous flight and brief the next one then do the flights back to back, get home around 22:30 and go straight to bed. The two of us then had a brief on the Friday which lasted about four and a half hours and another brief, which thankfully was only about twenty minutes on Saturday. It was good to be busy and progressing, I'd much rather be busy than bored but I definitely feel a relaxed day off is much needed. The briefings covered the contents of the instrument rating exam and the possible routes that we will be flying and the shorter one was preparing us for the radio phraseology test that we have to do at some point in the near future.

Private 747 rocking up outside CTC.

The LOFT flights were pretty hard work and intense and required a lot of planning. They were treated as commercial flights where we were the captain. The routes I did were Birmingham to Manchester, Manchester to East Midlands, Heathrow to Birmingham and Bournemouth to Oxford and back which was more of an IR routes flight than a loft flight. I think the last one was meant to be Oxford to Liverpool.

The first one was reasonably relaxed, as in we weren't given any failures to deal with, it was just flying the route and I think a go around was required due to poor weather but generally not too bad. The next two were difficult as there were a few failures to deal with, along with some re-routing and poor weather. On one of the flights I had an approach into Birmingham which resulted in a go around due to poor weather, another go around on the next attempt for the same reason then I had a left alternator failure followed shortly by a right engine failure. This meant I had a maximum of thirty minutes flying before I lost all my electrics and engines. I made another approach into Birmingham and managed to land just in the knick of time! Everything cut out just as I came over the threshold. It was fun but seriously hard work. In the sim the emergencies are treated as real emergencies so you get to do all the actual checks and make decisions as you would if it happened for real. It's certainly good practice.