Winter Operations

Transition from Type Rating to line operations wasn't quite smooth, to say the least. With some 50 hours already logged on type, I am kept fairly busy with the flying itself and flight preparation.
The weather we have at the moment isn't too helpful, de-icing on most sectors, freezing conditions (and special checklists for those), CAT II and III approaches, Low vis take-off (LVPs), diversions, ...
However, this environment makes the learning experience very useful.

The worst we had so far was 50 meters reported visibility (and 150m RVR) on take-off, 50 meters VIS / 250 meters RVR on a CAT III approach (we were not visual by 60ft radio-altitude and we saw the runway at the very last second), 50 kts crosswind on the final approach, ...
To give an idea, 50 meters visibility is the equivalent of standing in front of the aircraft and not being able to see the fin or the horizontal stabilizer.

Flying days are very interesting, that's for sure.
I cannot give specific details but I got to fly long sectors (5 hours), short ones (1 hour), I really like the diversity in the flying itself.

On the other hand, the flights can be quite stressful, there is a lot to do especially as I'm learning and very little time to actually enjoy the view or set back, even on longer trips.
Overall, the job is quite a bit different from what I expected, not to say it is not as good as I imagined it but you realise what it is like only when you're actually on the line.
The greatest surprise was the crew-environment, obviously very different from single-pilot flying. The atmosphere in the cockpit does depend a lot on the other pilot, someone you seat next to for 5 to 10 hours on a regular day.
Some flights go by very smoothly and as planned, some other flights don't. Last minute clearance change from ATC, delays, various passenger issues, diversions, anything that doesn't work as expected make it a lot more stressful and difficult to deal with.
In the end, some days are extremely enjoyable while others seem very long and tiring.

Still, every time I look outside, the view is always outstanding and it's never disappointing.

Is there anything better than eating breakfast on top of the Alps at sunrise?

A few scenes from the cockpit

I finally bought Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 11 (the cheapest one), superb software to edit and render 1080p Full HD videos. Camera used is a Sony HX9v (compact camera), soundtracks by Audiomachine. Hope you like it !

View from the Flight Deck

Last few days before first scheduled operations in the right hand seat, I got to observe a dozen flights as a transition from Type Rating to Line Training with the opportunity to do some of the tasks I will be doing on my own thereafter.

In the crewroom, gathering airfields and performances charts, weather and various documents we then use in flight. At the aircraft, walkaround (outside check of the aircraft), FMC and navaids setup and once we're ready to go I take care of the radiocommunications for the remaining part of the flight. I also offer to complete the in-flight reports, which most of the crew appreciate as this is not the fun side of the job.

Hopefully it will all help once I start operating from the right hand seat, as there is a lot of getting used to for a young First Officer, and a lot to do in a very limited time scale.
The jumpseat is probably the best place to take pictures so I didn't miss this opportunity either (all pictures are taken with a compact camera, if you ever wonder. I will take my DSLR someday but this camera does a great job in the meantime).
Some of the crew are very experienced and have great stories to share, it is always a pleasure to learn from them.

Airborne life continues...

 

 

First Flight at the controls of the 737

At the front end of the 60-ton Boeing 737, there is a calm and quiet atmosphere amongst the three crew in the flight deck.
My right hand on the control column, left hand on the thrust levers, I gently advance them onto a mid-position. The mighty CFM-56 engines spool up and some light vibrations start to travel through the metal structure of the aircraft.
The N1 fan blades are accelerating to around 40% of the full thrust setting, and all gauges are in the green as I hit the TOGA button and advance the levers fully forward. The roar from the engines almost immediately arrives to our ears.
Airspeed is rapidly increasing (in fact, very intense acceleration as we're light with no passenger), the Captain announces "80 knots", then "V1" and "Rotate". I gently pull the yoke and seconds later, we're airborne.

This is it! After years and years of achievements and failures, dreams and disappointements, I am flying a Boeing 737NG!

Positive rate, gear up, and away we go.
The feeling is just incredible! The 130 foot long airliner punches through the freezing cold air of this peaceful winter day.
Not a lot of souls onboard, just the three of us and the collegues from the Type Rating course at the back, awaiting their turn and probably as exited as I am.

It takes only 10 seconds from take-off to initiating the first turn, we aim to fly a tight circuit around the airport and come back in for a visual approach on the active runway for a series of touch-and-goes.
Despite the stress related to this being my first flight, the feeling is just outstanding.
Nothing comes close to that. I remember my first solo on the "One Filthy" (Cessna 150) almost 10 years ago, the most memorable event of my life. Well, I think this flight has just overtaken my first solo as the most intense and worth remembering day of my career!

The Captain possesses excellent airmanship and teaching skills. He keeps a clear and calm voice as he talks me through the procedure. He completes the checklists for me as I manually fly the plane on a rectangular-shaped pattern.
Turning final, the centerline is nicely coming in, I ask for flaps 30 and intercept the approach path visually (ILS beams are turned off) and reduce the speed to our pre-calculated approach speed.
The approach is eventless, I'm very impressed with the stability of the aircraft. It is said that the simulators are tougher to fly, I reckon this is true.

The threshold slides beneath us as I flare, the main gear touches the asphalt and the Captain starts to re-configure the aircraft for an immediate take-off (trim back in the take-off range, flaps back in the 15 position), full thrust again and back in the air for another circuit.

After six of them, we make a full stop landing and taxi back the holding point, a couple of handshakes and I leave the seat as one of my collegue seats in for his very first flight.

One hour of pure joy this was, manually flying a 737 in circuits like we would do in a Cessna, there's just no word to describe how great it feels like!

Some 10 years ago, I was taking my very first lesson on the small Cessna 150. I was young and full of hope.
I feel like this first flight on the Cessna was yesterday, and I never stopped believing.

Airborne life continues...

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !

Boeing 737-3/900 Type Rated

Perfect timing for Christmas celebrations, two months and a half after enrolling in the B737 Type Rating course, the group of people I trained with and myself are now qualified First Officers and will start line operations within just a few weeks.

The training isn't complete yet as we still have to complete the Base Training (6 to 10 circuits flown on the actual aircraft, without passengers) and the Line Training which will last around two months.
The Line Training envolves normal operations however the first few flights are supervised by a third pilot (safety pilot) and all flights are flown with Training Captains only.
At the end will come the Line Check which we will have to re-take twice a year from then on.

The LST (Licence Skills Test) goes through the same process and has to be re-taken once every 6 months during recurrent simulator training (RST), to keep current with emergency procedures and failures management.
As pilots, we are tested all the time and in some ways the training never stops.

The Full Flight Simulator sessions (40 hours) included all the aspects of the fixed base training but added much more complete decision making processes and line operations.
We reviewed pretty much all the phases of flight where we could have any kind of engine issues (failure, fire, overheat, abnormal vibrations, high EGT, severe damage, etc ...) whether this is on the ground, on the apron, during take-off, just while taking-off (between V1 and VR), after take-off, in cruise, during descent, on landing, etc...
Some airports have circle to land procedures (visual maneuver) in place and we practiced them in the simulator.
We are now CAT II and IIIA ILS approaches qualified (minimum 50ft cloud base and 200m RVR for autoland on our operations).

We reviewed so many failures or critical scenarios that I stopped counting. The worst we had were probably the loss of all AC power, manual reversion (complete loss of all three hydraulic systems, which makes it almost impossible to move the flight controls and maneuver the aircraft) and double engine failure on take-off.

Next step: First flight on the real aircraft.

Airborne life continues...

 

 

B737NG Type Rating - Simulator Phase (2)

Learn it the hard way, make the mistakes!

That's what the Fixed Base part of the simulator training (first 10 sessions, 20h as crew and 20h as observer) is all about. 

The first 5 sessions were designed to learn and practice normal SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) on A to B flights. All the rest of the training is focused on systems failures, emergencies or non-normal situations, different types of approaches and decision making, on top of the usual SOPs work. The Full Flight sessions (another 40 hours of simulator training) will bring the opportunity to practice again some of the situations we've been through before, but it adds the motion, more realistic airline environment (talking to Ops for example) and our required self-performance is set much higher. Yet the fixed base part feels really tough as every session brings more new stuff. The instructors let us make the mistakes and we learn from them.
It is undoubtedly much more intense than the Instrument Rating (IR) of the initial airline pilot training (which wasn't easy either).

Some of the failures and situations covered in the last five fixed base sessions include:
- APU (Auxiliary Power Unit, used to provide power and bleed air mainly when the engines are not running) Fault, i.e. not working,
- Bleed trip off (bleed air is compressed air taken from the engine compressor stages or from the APU, and is used to provide pressurisation, air conditionning and equipement cooling),
- Soure off (when a power source is no longer supplying energy as it should),
- Aborted engine starts for all kind of reasons (wet start, hot start, hung start, ...),
- Landing gear stuck in the up or in the down position,
- Loss of System A and Loss of System B (those are 2 of the 3 hydraulic systems (the third one is the standby system), driving flight control surfaces but not only, thrust reversers, landing gear, flaps and slats, brakes, spoilers, etc...),
- EEC Alternate mode (Engine control),
- Engine failure, Engine shutdown in flight,
- Engine Overheat,
- Engine Fire,
- Engine severe damage,
- Auto Speedbrake failure,
- Double FMC failure (resuming conventional navigation, manual calculation of speed references),
- Rapid depressurisation followed by:
- Emergency descent,
- Flight deck Window overheat,
- Rejected take-off,
- Passenger evacuation,
- Display failure,
- Stabiliser out of trim,
- ... and a few more.

There is a course of action for each of them, almost all systems are redundant and none of those conditions should develop in an uncontrolled situation. That's if we apply the correct procedure, and those simulator sessions are here to train to do exactly that.
Some of those situations require memory actions (Boeing refer to these as memory items) and a lot of decisions are to be made.

During Full Flight simulator sessions, some of those failures will be practiced again and lots of new failures will be introduced. There will be occasions when several failures will happen at the same time with procedures requiring to do opposite actions, resulting in the crew having to make a (correct) decision.

But the training is not only about failures and emergencies. We have to practice all kind of approaches on each flight, as well as go-arounds, take-off and approach briefings, and all normal checklists.
Amongst approaches we've been flying so far, other than the usual ILS Cat I, we did a few non-precision approaches (NPAs) such as LOC (Localizer only) approach, VOR-DME approach, NDB-DMEs, and circle-to-land (visual circuit after breaking off from the approach on one runway, to land on the same runway in the opposite direction, probably the most interesting type of approach).
There are two ways to fly NPAs, using VNAV (the FMC creates a vertical guidance based on DME, GPS and IRS position) or VS (Vertical Speed) as we would fly an approach on a Cessna.

Airborne life continues...