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!
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| 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.
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| My sim partner, Ben packing up after a late VFD session |
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!
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| If only! |
