Boeing777 – That 777 Pilot

Check to Line – My Last Chance

“This was the craziest flying I’d experienced yet. And I was loving it!”

A week-long vacation exploring the stunning beaches of southern New South Wales with my beautiful girlfriend, who had just finished her university exams, really gave me the chance to rest and recover. The much-needed quality time let my sympathetic nervous system switch off for the first time since May.
Even though I had had some time off from work, I hadn’t taken the time or given myself permission to fully switch off, disconnect and let myself unwind from the tension of being “on” and under pressure for the last few months. There was always something to study.

With a relaxed body and a calm mind, I felt recharged and ready to get back to work. I had committed the second of my two-week break to studying the flight manuals full time. As it turns out, I retain information far more easily with healthy stress levels. Also compared to six weeks earlier, I had gained some real commercial flight experience to which I could now anchor the theory.
I had actually seen the pages of the books I was studying, happen in real life.

At the beginning of this second week, I was blessed with a perfect roster for December. For the first half of the month, I had eleven days scheduled with one Training Captain. All flown out of Sydney to a variety of destinations in the network. Those thirty-two flights would lead straight into a line check on the 18th of the December.
This is more than I could have hoped for and exactly what I needed to consolidate my new skills and habits. And most importantly; build my confidence.

A problem I had faced with constantly flying with different training Training Captains; is I would end up being taught the same procedure or skill with different, often conflicting techniques and opinions. This lack of consistency created uncertainty and confusion. Also, since I kept getting lessons on the same topics, I missed or skimmed lightly over the topics that trainers found less interesting or more difficult to cover.
I learned from this experience and was able to avoid and mitigate this challenge during my training to upgrade to captain, which I’ll discuss in a later post.
I was excited to go flying again, I’d heard good things about this particular Training Captain, Hof as he was nicknamed.
I spent the week reading, studying and preparing for my upcoming flights.

With all my flights based out of Sydney, I would spend four days at a time living out of my small suitcase between a Sydney airport hotel and different regional town hotels. Then back to Albury for a day or two off.
With little free time at home, this conveniently gave me a distraction-free life, that was able to fully immerse me into my training.
Flying with the one training captain I became more confident; cultivating and consolidating my own habits and professional behaviours.

This was also the most intense flying I had ever done by this point. I remember walking through the Sydney domestic terminal at the end of four solid days of flying, barely able to keep my eyes open. I was exhausted, a good exhausted, the kind you feel when you’ve worked hard and you’re happy with what you have achieved.
The night before we had experienced the worst weather I had ever encountered. In early December, it is common for strong cold fronts and storms to pass through Victoria and Southern New South Wales.
That evening, while on our way to Parkes, a Town 300km west of Sydney, we found ourselves stuck flying at 8,000 feet dodging storms, much lower than the normal 16,000 feet. Even though flying low burns more fuel, it kept us below the freezing level and the cloud base, which was our best chance to avoid the worst of the turbulence and icing conditions. Unlike a jet that can out climb and fly over most weather, sometimes going low is the best or only option for a turbo-prop, especially in the summertime when the clouds are a typically a few thousand feet higher than during wintertime.
The Hof and I were working well as a team, we were on our third day in a row together.
While avoiding the frequent storm cells, I still remember the dark blue, grey and orange sky, as we flew west towards the setting sun which illuminated the clouds, making them look as though they were on fire.

A few moments later, we flew into the invisible wind-shear of a dry micro-burst, a down-draft of air from a nearby storm cell, that pushed the aircraft down several hundred feet. The autopilot pitched the nose of the aircraft up to a nose-high attitude, unsuccessfully trying to hold our cruise altitude. I pushed the power up from 60% to 80% of full power, cautious not to exceed the engine temperature limitation. I scanned the instruments to see our pitch attitude above 15 degrees up, the altimeter 750 feet low and still descending as well as the airspeed rapidly reducing below our already reduced speed (that was set at turbulence penetration speed) towards the stall speed. My thumb hovered over the red autopilot disconnect button on the control yoke, ready to manually correct the attitude and recover speed before we stalled. Then Hof, with a few swift pushes and flicks on the Mode Select Panel, reconfigured the autopilot mode, putting the aircraft into a descent which recovered our attitude and airspeed, moments before needing to perform a more drastic upset recovery manoeuvre.
Although potentially scary, this experience gave me even more confidence in operating the aircraft.

We continued on, avoiding storm cells all the way to Parkes. Parkes just happened to have its main runway (the only runway equipped with runway lights and runway aligned instrument approach) closed for maintenance. So we were forced to circle and land onto the shorter secondary runway, with only dim, purple, portable runway lights for guidance. This was the craziest flying I’d experienced yet. And I was loving it.

Battery powered portable lights, for temporary lighting

Hof made the challenging approach and landed safely, before parking us on the bay. I skipped down the stairs with the buzz of adrenaline that had sharpened my sensors. The passengers disembarked, a little pale-faced, thanking me and expressing their delight to be safely back on ground after the bumpy ride.
I was finally feeling like I was getting competent at my job, this was a welcome feeling, and I had a big smile to show for it.
Hof and I continued to fly together, preparing me for my third attempt at my check-to-line, consolidating my skills and knowledge to a point where I felt that I owned my skills, not just borrowing or mimicking what I had seen or been taught.

A check-to-line is usually a single day, four sector duty for First Officers. For my third chance, I’d been scheduled a two day, seven-sector, “overnight” duty at the end of my third and last trip, operating out of Sydney.

Nervous as usual, I signed on in the Sydney crew room before meeting my Check Captain for the day. James, A very friendly guy with a big smile, he didn’t look much older than 26 and had a very relaxed demeanour, which helped my nerves.
Our duty took us up the north coast of New South Wales to Ballina and back, then out to Parkes to stay for the night.
Things were going smoothly, despite the nerves of knowing I was on my third chance, this time I could trust and rely on my new pilot habits that were recently well practised and consolidated.

That night in the Parkes hotel I could barely sleep. How could I? I was in the middle of the most important flight test of my career!
The next day was another long day, four sectors that I couldn’t wait to be over. I felt like I was going well. It seemed to be going smoothly, but I also was getting little to no feedback and I was beginning to feel the fatigue of minimal sleep.
On the last sector back to Sydney, James began to ask different questions that I didn’t expect or know the answers to from all my studying.
“Suppose you are flying with a Captain, and during engine start, you see him flick the igniter switch on with his left knuckle while holding the starter, which is, of course, non-standard, instead of switching it with his right hand as per the procedure. How would you handle this? Would you say something?”
I had to think about it, it was a weird question. “Well, It’s not SOP, but it’s also not unsafe,” I said, trying to avoid a definitive yes or no answer that could be deemed wrong.
James then went on to discuss a few more examples. Making the learning point that; flying with regular captains on the line, I might see some different things. “So first ask yourself, is it unsafe? If it seems unsafe or likely to be an unintentional mistake or slip, speak up! And speak up early. If it’s perfectly safe, but perhaps not really by the book, be diplomatic, it’s not your job as an FO to police the captain. Just make sure it’s safe. If you don’t understand or know how or why they do something, feel free to ask an open question about it in a time of lower workload.”
“However, do yourself a favour and stick to SOPs, try not to pick up second-hand bad habits that you see. Consult the manual if you’re unsure and try to understand why you’re doing things a certain way.”
This was good advice (and still is).
So if he’s talking about Flying with line captains, I thought to myself, maybe that means I’ve passed! I got a little excited, but only a little. This chicken hadn’t quite hatched yet, we still have to land in Sydney.

To my delight, the post-flight debrief was short and ended with “Congratulations” and a handshake. I was so happy and extremely relieved. The weight of my world had lifted off my shoulders. I was finally a regional airline pilot, just in time for Christmas.
I couldn’t wait to get out there and go flying again!

Thank-you for reading.
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Simulator Training – Do the Homework!

“I know you’ve never done this before, but why don’t you already know how to do this?”

I don’t know if that was ever said, but it’s what I felt. Right before I realised my, good enough study habits that got me through high school and flight school were underdeveloped and having me come up short.

Most aircraft endorsements typically include about 10 simulator sessions of 3 to 4 hours shared between 2 trainee first officers.
Followed by a skills test with a regular line Captain supporting from the left seat.
I have left many Simulator sessions mentally and physically exhausted. They can be intense and brutal like a mental and physical workout. But they can also be super fun.

All of the easy familiarization things had been covered in the first two simulator sessions. Mostly what we’d been able to practice on a paper tiger (a mock cockpit made of paper) at home and stuff that wasn’t too procedural; basic handling and so on. so I could just follow the instructor and wing it, learning ‘on the fly’ to get through.

777papertiger — Practicing scans on my 777 paper-tiger. Yes, that is an ironing board.

Our third session was more procedural. We were practicing rapid depressurisation and emergency descent procedures, which require a number of steps in sequence, like a choreographed dance. Needless to say, I didn’t know all the steps. To be honest, I either completely forgot, didn’t even know to or totally overlooked, studying to understand and memorize the steps before the session in the first place. Maybe I thought the instructor was going to spoon-feed us. Maybe I was just overwhelmed with a workload higher than I’d expected or ever experienced. Or I was just being dumb and ignorant.

Fortunately, I am pretty good at “watch and repeat” and I probably do rely on it a little too much. Either way, I was sharp enough to let my buddy go first since the instructor didn’t demonstrate, so I could watch him.

Then it was my turn to copy. I managed to bullsh*t my way through 80% of it. Oxygen mask on, start the descent to 10,000feet, etc. But then; the turn 45° off track for 1minute to establish a parallel track offset. I misunderstood for; a 45° degree angle of bank turn for 1minute. So, I rolled into a steep turn maneuver and turned about 220° off track. I actually nailed it… I just nailed the completely wrong target. The trainer stopped the simulator. I don’t remember his words… but it was probably along the lines of “WTF are you doing?” It was quite obvious I didn’t study properly beforehand. It was pretty damn embarrassing.

Sometime after this, I was reminded of two important lessons, Just about everything you need to know is written in books somewhere. And, flight Training is always flight Testing, because you don’t start lesson 2 until you complete/pass lesson 1, and so on.

Saab 340 emergency descent SOP — The pages of the manual that I should have studied.

So here is the best piece of advice I can give to a student or pilot in training (and I’m sure its sound advice that applies to many other learning applications too):

Lead your own education or training. Don’t rely on the teacher to feed you information, simply use them as a respected guide and resource.
To quote, author and ex-Navy SEAL Commander, Jocko Willnik – “Take extreme ownership”.
Find out in advance what you will be covering in each lesson. ie, always have the course plan on hand and lesson plan for each class, flight, or Sim session.
Be outcome-focused, i.e. today’s class/Sim we need to perform successfully A B C and D (found on the lesson plan) to progress to the next lesson. That way nothing is a surprise and you can just go and check the boxes off.
What information and procedures do I need, to be able to perform A B C and D successfully. Then go find the information in the manuals, preview, and rehearse if needed.

This will allow you to turn up to your Instructor or teacher with all the knowledge and right building blocks ready to go. All he/she should do is help you put them together, help you build your own skills, and maybe contribute an occasional missing block.
Having your teacher go find and show you all your building blocks, is a waste of time! do yourself a favor, be a great student, and get the best out of your teacher.

At the end of each session’s debrief, confirm with your instructor, what you’ll be covering tomorrow, they might even tell you where to find the building blocks that you’ll need for tomorrow’s session.

Then go home, review today’s lesson if needed. Then find tomorrow’s building blocks, preview, and rehearse, so you can hit the ground running to check the boxes again tomorrow. Oh, and get some rest.
“Prior preparation, prevents poor performance” – Almost every Training Captain I’ve met.

Personally, I didn’t do this in my Saab 340 endorsement and first officer training. I also really suffered because of it. I only figured out this strategy and structure later in my career. And hopefully, I remember next time I’m doing an endorsement or upgrade and drowning in information.
“Structure and discipline result in freedom” remember that.

In Aviation, these building blocks are our Standard operating procedures or SOPs. They are the backbone of aviation. In the simulator, we can practice these SOPs, maneuvers, and simulated emergencies in a safe controlled environment.

Click here for a short video of pilots practicing an emergency

So when you’re not getting your butt kicked and brain saturated with new information. The Simulator is actually really enjoyable. It is always an invaluable resource that builds experience and can confidence rapidly. For example, you could practice 5 landings in 10 minutes. In the real world, that would take an hour to get the same focused practice.

And on those days that we finish our training efficiently, we sometimes get a chance to have some fun. Barrel roll? No worries! Fly UNDER the Sydney harbor bridge? too easy. 50 foot fly by at 300knots? you bet. Can we try gliding it onto the runway, with both engines failed? You bet your ass we can try that! All the fun things you can do when your instructor doesn’t have to waste time showing you where to find building blocks.

These fun extras we occasionally get to do in the simulator, I have found to be surprisingly beneficial when it comes to confidence and handling. Even though I’ll never practically do it in the real world. The exercise lets you see outside of the envelope of normal operation. Therefore you’re less startled and more confident if you do ever find yourself outside the envelope. Which should lead to a better reaction, decision and outcome.

Fortunately that day, with a bit of retraining and block finding, I got through the training session and continued on to complete my endorsement with one extra training session to improve my new skills and gain some more confidence. Far from perfect, but good enough.

Now, for the real deal. Flying the real aircraft!

Trust your Instruments

Flying is easy! Keep the sky above you and the ground below, point the aircraft in the direction you want to go, look out the window occasionally to know where you are, with towns, lakes roads and so on. Easy, Right?
During the day time with clear blue skies in small aircraft with Visual Flight Rules (VFR), it is at least. What about at night or in the clouds, fog or rain? Or in big heavy aircraft, travelling at 900km/h? How do pilots know where they are going and not crash into each other?
If that question makes you a little anxious while you fly, don’t worry. You can keep sipping your champagne and relax, knowing that your Pilots have studied and trained hard to know where we are and where we are going, using accurate instruments and systems.

For those curious, we do this using Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). A set of rules and navigation systems using; aircraft instrumentation, ground based Navigation beacons and facilities, inertial navigation systems and more recently GPS. Combine with Radar and radio communication procedures with Air Traffic Control, to organise separate and control aircraft. Kind of like an invisible, three dimensional, multi-layer, sky highway. Learning how to fly these “highways” takes a while to master. As always, it starts in the classroom with theory, then simulator or synthetic trainer, a computer simulator where your mistakes don’t kill you. And finally the aircraft, where your mistakes can kill you.

synthtr — Synthetic Trainer (Photo IG: aapa_rex )

26798_0 — Approach procedure chart – Sydney

This was my experience
January, the hottest, driest month of the year, and this day was no exception. The air was hot and dry, not a cloud to be seen and I was ready for my first real IFR flight: Mangalore to Shepparton for a few practice approach procedures then back to Mangalore.
I had practised these procedures countless times in the air-conditioned comfort of the Synthetic Trainer and on my computer, using Microsoft Flight Simulator, a very useful study tool, But I was far from mastering them.
We began taxi by mid-morning, much later in the day than I’d like. The summer sun had begun heating the earth, pushing the temperature past 35 Degrees Celsius, on its way to 40. My shirt already damp from perspiration, the first few buttons open, along with the aircraft door, trying to promote any sort of fresh air flow while we taxied.

Things didn’t get much better once we were in flight. The heated earth was sending intense thermals into the sky causing constant turbulence, bouncing our little plane around the sky, requiring constant control input. To make matters worse, I was “under the Hood”. An awkward device that you wear on your head which prevents you from looking out the window, forcing you to use only instruments to fly and navigate.

With frustration and difficulty, I focused on the bouncing instruments, gripping the controls with my sweaty hands. I needed a third hand and a second brain to manage the workload. But all I had was an instructor beside me watching and critiquing, “Altitude, Heading, Tracking, Altitude”
I couldn’t wait to get back on the ground. I persevered, trying not to let the rough conditions frustrate me, taking the sortie one step at a time. The two-hour flight left me physically and mentally exhausted. And I didn’t even see a cloud.

My first moment flying in clouds, real IMC (instrument conditions), is still very memorable. I remember it so well because it’s burnt deep into my memory, along with a good human factors lesson. Because in that moment I realised how quickly I could kill myself.
My instructor and I were heading towards Melbourne at 6000feet, on my first IFR navigation flight at night. Fortunately, as it was a cool summer night, the air was as smooth as silk.
With my attention focused carefully on the instrument panel of the ‘Autopilot-less’ aircraft, my instructor asks; “Have you flown in cloud yet?” “No, not yet” I reply. “Well, you’re about to,” he says, switching the landing lights on. I lift my eyes, fixating on the illuminated oncoming clouds. There’s something captivating about this moment, as we are swallowed by misty cloudiness for my first time.
Seconds later I break my fixation and I re-focus on the instruments, finding the aircraft banked 30degress to the left, pitch 5 degrees down, altitude 250 feet low and quickly descending. I yank the controls correcting the attitude and my flight path. The deviation was so gentle I hadn’t even felt it; I was seconds away from a spiral dive and had no clue. I’ve read stories of pilots dying like that!
Now I had a new problem. The aggressive correction as confused my inner ear. It now feels like we are banked 30 degrees right, but my instruments are saying we are straight and level. This spatial disorientation is known as Sensory Illusion or The Leans. Our caveman vestibular system isn’t designed for flight; it can be a dangerous situation for an inexperienced pilot, with the potential of a Graveyard Spiral. This is my first real experience of this illusion. I’ve heard “Trust Your Instruments!” so many times in training that it’s ringing in my head automatically. So do, I trust my instruments and tilt my head to the left to help my ear feel more normal, a tip I had read about in an old theory book.
A long 30 seconds later, I regain my senses. The instructor quietly monitoring me gave me more confidence. I am still not sure if he, himself a young pilot at only 21years old, was expecting that situation to occur. But it was a valuable lesson.

A week later, Victoria was hit with devastating Bushfires; Black Saturday. 50 Kilometres away, fires raged out of control for weeks, blanketing the state in smoke. When the smoke was thin enough to allow us to take off and land, we were able to fly. The smoke giving an eerie unpredictable environmental condition to fly in. The positive being, it was real instrument conditions and it was better than being under the damn hood

With my training coming to an end and a successful flight test. I took my first flight as an IFR rated pilot. I couldn’t wait to exercise my new licence and fly anywhere without being bound by cloud or rain.

It was a beautiful day heading into Canberra, I was eagerly expecting vectors onto an ILS (instrument approach). Then to my surprise and disappointment, I hear “X-ray Delta India, You’re cleared for a visual Approach runway 35.” What the hell? I was IFR! – I hadn’t realised this obvious point since we never practised it in IFR training: You can still do a visual approach (a simple VFR procedure) when you’re IFR, as long as you’re in visual conditions (VMC).
After the “WTF?!” moment followed by the “Well Duh” moment, I looked out the window, pointed the aircraft towards the airport and landed. Easy!

Tip for the young aviator.
Throughout my career, I have supplemented my flight training with hours and hours of playing Microsoft flight simulator (FSX), even during my training for the 777.
Obviously, you can’t log any of it. But it is a great and affordable training tool. Especially with real flight time or full motion flight simulator time starting around $300 per hour and going into the thousands of dollars per hour. Flight Sim is free after the small purchase cost. You can practice anything from circuits and radio calls to Instrument approaches and procedures, failures, Scan-flows even rehearsing full flights. It gives you a real time learning scenario, with time pressure to force errors and highlight weaknesses and deficiencies which you can learn from.

FSX Cessna 172. used instead of Piper PA-28

saab — FSX King Air similar enough to SAAB340 to practice procedures

I highly recommend it if you are studying to be a pilot. Plus, it gives you a break from the books. Just don’t get too distracted trying to get a good score flying the Redbull Air Race.

777fmc — PMDG B777 with Virtual CDU on tablet, wirelessly connected to fully program FMC

I highly recommend PMDG, Virtual Avionics and Aerosoft. I used the PMDG Boeing 777 as a training aid and have played with the Aerosoft A320. All buttons and switches function as they do in the real aircraft.
I will use their products again for any other future aircraft I get to fly. Just make sure your computer is powerful enough to run the programs.
https://www.precisionmanuals.com/
http://www.aerosoft.com