The next time I’ll be at the controls of a real aircraft
will be an empty British Airways Airbus A320.
That’s a surreal thought, and one that’s both exciting and rather
daunting in equal measure. For now, I’ve
completed the basic training element with CTC and from here on in I’ll be in
the simulators until I join BA and fly the A320 for real for the first time.
Another Farewell
I have now upped sticks and moved home again, another mini
life that was created in Bournemouth has now finished. Of course, the nomadic lifestyle will
continue with the next phase back down in Southampton which starts in about a
months’ time and will last for approximately 3 ½ weeks. I am pleased to have finished in Bournemouth
though, it was a busy few weeks and we certainly had to hit the ground running there. I am pleased to say I passed my Instrument
Rating test a couple of weeks ago now, so I have sent off my licence
application and await for that little bit of paper to return to prove that the
last 15 months and vast expense was worth it!
The flying through my time in Bournemouth was brilliant fun, I flew
various routes to Exeter, Cardiff, Southampton (well that one wasn’t a very
long flight from Bournemouth), Oxford and Alderney.
On test day I flew down to Alderney to do an approach at the
airfield down there before heading back across the channel to Bournemouth. The test itself wasn’t too difficult as we
were familiar with the format from our previous flights, and Air Traffic Control
are especially helpful when you come over the radio with the “Exam” callsign –
they will do their best to give you exactly what you want which takes some
pressure off at least. My approach back
into Bournemouth was one of the most difficult I’ve done to date however, with
a ‘windshear’ warning given to me over the radio. This basically means the wind is likely to
rapidly change in speed and direction, making the approach much more…interesting! In any case, it was tricky and wasn’t the
best flight I’ve done so I was all the more relieved to have passed. We
spoilt ourselves with a well-deserved weekend break to the Isle of Wight – it seemed
only right to have another holiday while the sun is still shining.
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| The Isle Of Wight - backseating down to Alderney |
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| The Isle of Wight - from the ground this time! |
Upset Recovery
The final three lessons here focus on ‘upset recovery and
prevention’ – essentially it is designed to allow us to experience putting the
aircraft into an unusual situation which we need to recover from. This could be a very steep angle of bank,
speed rapidly increasing with the nose pointing to the ground, speed rapidly
decreasing with the nose pointing high into the sky, etc. – all situations that
you don’t want to be in particularly.
The general idea, however, is to not get into an ‘upset’ situation but
we still need to know what to do should the situation arise. There have been various accidents where
pilots have not recovered from an upset situation which should be recoverable, so
it’s a really important skill to learn at this stage and why it has been
introduced so recently into our training.
With the aircraft rapidly gaining speed and the nose pointing down towards terra firma, it’s a little disconcerting initially to say the least (don’t worry, we do this from plenty of height so no need to have visions of shearing a few sheep with the prop as we level off inches from the ground). It’s this ‘startle factor’ which we also hope to mitigate through this training, by experiencing this situation in training it allows our brain to kick into action with the recovery rather than being startled by something unusual and losing time to react.
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| The Firefly |
JOC (Jet Orientation Course)
What’s next? We move
back to Southampton in a month for our Jet Orientation Course – where we begin
our transition onto jet aircraft in the simulator and learn how to operate in a
multi-crew environment. I am looking
forward to both aspects of this phase, having operated as a ‘single crew’ pilot
for the training so far I think it’ll be both really interesting and a lot of
fun to work as a team while also learning to fly a jet and all the differences
that entails from the Twinstar until now. This phase is also part of our induction into
BA, as we will use the BA operating procedures while flying the sim – all bringing
the end goal even closer!
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| Not everyday you get to see the Red Arrows taxing by |
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| More planespotting: Typhoon in it's commemorative Battle of Britain livery |
