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.
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| A very happy boy having just flown the airbus for the first time |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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.
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| How often do you see a cabin this empty? |
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| 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.
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| Observing from the jump seat |
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| 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!
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| Who said there's no leg room on easyJet? |
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