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!