The JOC (Jet Orientation Course)

It's been a couple of weeks since I finished JOC (Jet Orientation Course), which was a month long course based back in Southampton.  The purpose of the course is to be a transition between the light twin-engine single-pilot operations to flying a passenger jet in a multi-crew environment.  Basically, it means that we move more into the commercial airline environment, working together as a captain and co-pilot to ensure a safe operation.  As we aren't yet captains(!), one of us plays the role of captain and sits in the left hand seat which the other is the first officer in the right hand seat. 

The view from the right hand seat, on the ground at Heathrow

The course is run by BA, so we start to incorporate the BA procedures and are hereon in being moulded the BA way!  The simulator we use is the Boeing 737-700, which is not the aircraft we are ultimately going to fly for BA (we'll be on the Airbus A320).  This means that any aircraft specific procedures that we have learnt for this course must swiftly be forgotten, but as I mentioned one of the main aims of the course is to start working in the airline environment and lots of those skills will be transferable. 

We were assessed in this course as much for the 'non-technical' skills as we are for our flying ability, things like leadership, workload management, decision making, etc.  Hence there has been a lot of emphasis on how to effectively manage the airline operation - which involves a lot more than simply flying from A to B! 

Approaching Geneva in the B737-700 simulator

In the simulator, the instructor has to act as the various people that a pilot works with on a daily basis: dispatcher, ground crew, cabin crew, air traffic control, the company, etc.  This actually works fairly well, and they even add a bit of realism by throwing in a radio call when they can see you are busy - just to test our capacity!  In addition to all this, we have to deal with 'non-normals' - i.e. when things go wrong!  During the course of the programme we dealt with poor weather, engine failures, rejected take-offs (something very topical given the recent BA one in Las Vegas), simple hydraulic failures, medical emergencies, rapid descents and a few more I've forgotten.  That might sound quite a daunting list, but when something does go wrong, we use a framework from which to base our decisions on and action any checklists to rectify a technical problem.  In a lot of cases, if it was a simple failure the aircraft has more than enough redundancy built in to continue to our destinations, however if it was more serious (like for a medical emergency) then it would be an immediate diversion to the nearest suitable airfield.  In that instance, we also had further considerations as to how we might get the rest of the passengers to their destination, which stand might be best to taxi the aircraft to in order to reach the ambulance quickly and much more.  As you can see, any one issue can have a huge knock on effect, so we are quickly developing our thinking process to assess all the options, all while making sure the aircraft is flying safely.

Coming up next... the A320 full motion simulators

The course was actually a lot of fun.  I think moving into the jet environment has felt like a real step toward the end goal, and working in a multi-crew capacity is really effective when flying a jet and especially when dealing with any issues or when things start to get busy on the flight deck.  For now, we have a bit of a wait for our Type Rating which is the next phase of training.  Basically that's when we learn how to fly the A320 in the simulator, and it'll be another two month long course.  However, once that is over it'll be straight into BA to fly it for real…!  

That's all for now folks, I imagine I'll next be blogging in the new year, once the Type Rating starts!