Moving On

I’m writing this from a sun-soaked New Zealand, sitting in my new room in the Clearways accommodation block just next to Hamilton Airport.  It was fairly blustery and wet for the first few days but it’s looking nice at the moment and it certainly feels like spring!  I’ve just about recovered from the effects of jet lag and the seemingly never-ending 40 hours of travel from the UK, and starting to feel nicely settled.

The End of Ground School

It’s been a busy few weeks, seeing off the final seven ATPL exams at the start of the month through to saying all the goodbyes (many brunches with friends) and the travel down here.  The last six months in Ground school was fairly gruelling, however I know I did learn a lot in that time and there certainly is a sense of achievement having ticked off our first milestone.  On top of that, I met some great people and it was sad to see our group of 16 split down into two groups with 10 of us out here in NZ with the remaining 6 heading over to CTC’s new training centre in Arizona.  I wish those guys the best, and look forward to reuniting at some point back in the UK!

Traversing the Globe

Our journey from the UK was made all the more interesting as we got to experience an A380 for the first time on all three legs of the trip.   We swiftly put our recently acquired Aircraft General Knowledge to good use, keenly discussing various parts of the aircraft – I guess some things don’t change!  The journey itself was pretty uneventful, and it was a relief when we finally did arrive here - the first meal was an unceremonious Pizza Hut, although it was gratefully received.

CTC set us up really well to start with here - we've got a fleet of hire cars between us to share over the first two weeks before we eventually source our own.  The rooms are great and the Clearways accommodation is well kitted out.  We are split into a series of blocks, each with their own large kitchen and common room area as well as two separate gyms.  There are around 200 people living here, although it has seemed surprisingly quiet so far.  CTC train people from all over the world, so it's a real mix of cultures which is nice - plenty of people from Europe and Asia as well as some Kiwis who are a little closer to home!  Although the site is in a fairly rural area, we are right next to the airport so CTC aircraft are constantly buzzing around which is nice to see and we can get into Hamilton centre in around 10-15 mins.

We spent the weekend mostly shopping it seemed, a few trips to Pak ‘n’ Save to get all the essentials (NZ steak, of course) to make the room feel a little more like home.  We had a quick explore in Hamilton centre, it felt pretty quiet for a Saturday afternoon but it all seems friendly and has everything we need.  There is a large river running through the city, so we spent some time down there (and a paddle for some...) before heading home for a well-earned steak.  Sunday was spent visiting Raglan which is a beach around 45 mins from here.  New Zealand certainly delivered stunning scenery on the drive, and the beach will certainly come in useful once the summer hits…

Back to Ground School!

Monday was the first day back in uniform since our time in Southampton, and we headed over to the training centre at Hamilton airport (only 10 mins away) for our induction.  The training centre itself is a great facility (not least due to the free hot drinks machine) and to finally see all the CTC aircraft lined up outside the centre was exciting.  The first day consisted of a lot of introductions and, importantly, the allocation of aircraft type for the first part of the flying training.  I’ll be on the Diamond DA20, and I’ve now been laden with various manuals and inductions which will all need to be digested in due course.  Slightly daunting, yet exciting all the same. 

Tetris in the CTC hangar

DA20s lined up in the sunshine.

Unfortunately for us there is yet more ground school in the way before we start flying within a week or so as we have to pass a Differences exam and a New Zealand Air Law exam.   The differences exam was fairly straight forward, and we all passed that yesterday.  The Air Law exam takes a little more preparation and we’ll sit that on Monday.  Still, it’s nice to feel part of the flying side of things now and it won’t be long before we get started.

The first taste of the beach

Outside of work it’s been nice to catch up with familiar faces from courses ahead of us who we have now re-joined, and last night we found ourselves in an Irish pub doing a pub quiz (run by a Scotsman) which was quite amusing.  The standard was pretty high, so I think we’ll have to improve our New Zealand general knowledge before the next one…

The grand photography field trip begins - stars over Clearways.