Studying how to, and how not to pilot an aircraft

Blue skies!

We've been fairly busy lately having had four exams in the last three weeks, with another two exams next week. This far I've been spared from having to retake anything, but I'll have to study more than I have to be confident in meteorology and air law. Air law is filled with complicated details about everything which could make you think that every pilot should be able by heart to build an airport, make instructions on how to organize air traffic around the airport, act air traffic controller, organize rescue operations, and establish and design his own government authority so that it follows the wonderfully bureaucratic traditions in the industry.

The navigation course is comparatively interesting and easy, but as a former newbie physicist I regret that the geometry we learn is so simplified, and that course content seems actually designed in order to not make us understand the math, but just memorize formulas for the tests. Meteorology is by far the course that's most connected to science, among all courses that we will take until graduation. It's a very interesting course, while pretty difficult.

Besides studying I've devoted a lot of time to two things in my spare time. One is Microsoft Flight Simulator which I installed immediately after buying a new desktop computer (my old one was broken) and a joystick. Apart from easing my longing to fly for real again in spring, it can be quite instructive if you play it seriously. All buttons and switches from the real aircraft are present and the aircraft act very real. The other activity is watching documentaries from aviation accidents – I've watched around 20 episodes in the last two weeks.

One thing that's becomes very clear seeing all these documentaries is that the aviation industry should not be blamed to see lightly on accidents or not trying to avoid mistakes to be repeated, at least not in late years.  Another thing is that an accident never occur by random – there's always a series of avoidable events that lead to an accident. Practically all airliner accidents with fatalities or major airframe damage are thoroughly investigated and when solved lead to improvement of procedures or regulations that should prevent a similar accident from occurring in the future.

Youtube suggestions:

 

Maybe you've already seen documentaries about the Gottröra crash but this one is really good. A SAS airplane crashes after take-off from Arlanda on a field and everybody survives even though the airframe breaks apart. After this accident, checks that the wings have been properly de-iced were made more rigorous and the captain must actually touch the wing surface to check for invisible layers of ice. Training on engine surges and an automatic throttling system the pilots were unaware of was introduced.

A very long video about the famous 747 runway collision in Tenerife – the deadliest aviation accident ever. Because of a bomb in the Las Palmas airport terminal, many aircraft are diverted to the small Tenerife airport. When the aircraft finally can continue to their original destination Tenerife airport has been covered in heavy fog. A KLM 747 is at take-off position while another 747 of Pan-Am is taxiing on the same runway, and the KLM captain tries to take-off forgetting he has not got permission, and the collision is inevitable.

This accident led to a major standardization of aviation radio communication phraseology in order to avoid misunderstanding between the pilots and the air traffic controller. It also demonstrated the dangers of a social hierarchy between the captain and the co-pilot, and soon airlines started training their pilots in Crew Resource Management where the importance is emphasized of intervention by one pilot when the other one makes a wrong decision or is incapable to handle a situation.

Bye bye sky (sigh)

Hi!

The fall is about to turn into winter here in Ljungbyhed, with frost on the car windows and the grass in the mornings and the sun setting at 4 p.m. My last flight this year was 16 days ago – soon after my previous blog post. I was looking forward to it a lot – it was a solo flight from Ljungbyhed to Kristianstad Airport (doing a ”touch-and-go-landing”) after a detour to southern Småland region, then to Malmö Sturup Airport (ditto), and then flying along most of Skånes west coast to Höganäs, and finally return to Ljungbyhed. It's a two hour flight, almost twice my longest flight before that.

Anyway, on the morning when I was scheduled to leave at 08:30 the sky was quite cloudy and the wind pretty strong so I was pretty sure it would be cancelled. However my instructor was positive – even though the the cloud ceiling (height) was only barely acceptable she thought it would not be worse than our limits, and regarding the wind she said that if the wind would be too strong to land at the other airports I could just skip the actual landing and then continue as planned. The forecast said there would not be any problem at Ljungbyhed airport. So a quite happy student could fly as scheduled.

Since it was my first solo flight to other airports, and only my second altogether, I was not used to the communication procedures at the other airports, and so the air traffic controllers had to correct me several times, but there was no problem with the flight itself. The weather was ok for most of the time however a little hazy at Kristianstad which was unpredicted.

My solo Skåne-roundtrip was on October 25th, and since the following day was cancelled, that also marked the start of my roughly four months of pure ground training (theory classes). During the first period, from now until the end of January we will study general navigation, meteorology and air law. Meteorology is what it sounds like, and pretty much a more exhaustive repetition of the meteorology course we took for the private pilot licence (PPL). General navigation is a lot about coordinates and angles why my math and physics skills will certainly be useful. One important fundamental problem is to calculate the track (route angle) and distance between two points considering the spheric nature of Earth. Meaningly to learn how to fly the shortest route across the Atlantic ocean etc. that looks like an arch on the map. Air law is of course about the legal regulations on the air industry, this time from a commercial pilot's perspective. E.g. the maximum number of passengers per flight attendant and other essential knowledge.

Photos:

 

I don't want to read the PPL literature anymore, so I sold everything. I won't miss it (I hope)! I will probably have the same feeling for the ATPL (commercial licence) literature in a year, that's four more books and probably three times the total number of pages.

 

My brother visited me a weekend for some Skåne sightseeing and try out sitting of the school's airplanes. The colours of the Söderåsen national park fall leaves were fantastic!

I've still been far from busy lately so I've seen a lot of movies and played videogames. Airplane! (in Sweden ”Titta vi flyger”) is probably the best aviation comedy film out there, here's one of the countless unforgettable scenes. The pilots' names are Roger, Victor and Clarence Oveur.