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