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.
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| Dibden Manor |
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| View from my room |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| My UK CAA Flight Crew License arrived. Worked very very hard indeed to get this little beauty! |
