Very busy in graduation and Christmas times

Hi!

Winter came, I guess, but we haven't felt it much here in Ljungbyhed. We had a fair amount of snowfall one day a few weeks ago, the next day it all rained away and since that the weather has been way too warm for a proper December.

Anyway, the MCC, multi crew cooperation course, has progressed smoothly for everybody, as far as I know. I had my 9th lesson in the simulator the 16th and these last days before the Christmas break we audit the senior grade students' graduation thesis presentations. They are obviously all linked to the aviation industry, and several of them concern human factors, such as cooperation and fatigue. It has been interesting to listen to them!

So the senior grade, TFHS11, are graduating now after 2½ years of completed training. 11 students completed all basic flight training, all simulator training and theory courses, however 2 of them unfortunately weren't able to complete the final practical stage of line training at the airline. All 9 who have now successfully graduated were also hired by Norwegian, like all students who graduated one year ago. They will work full-time as first officer on the Boeing 737-800 being based separately at Helsinki, London and Malaga.

Each simulator lesson is 4 hours long plus up to one hour each of briefing and debriefing before and afterwards. We've experienced a lot during the first 36 hours in the simulator, mainly regarding the cooperation between two pilots, since this is the first occasion for us to practice that. We simulate engine failure, fire, failure of many kind of onboard systems at any time of the flight, again and again. Of course also different kinds of normal approaches and simply complete uneventful flights from point A to point B. It has been highly interesting but also a little frustrating to meet a new fellow student and a new instructor on each lesson, because instructors have different views on some of the procedures, and as students we all have different preferences on parts of the way of cooperation. Unfortunately the instructors have apparently not been given enough information about the current procedures at Norwegian, which we are supposed to exercise. Since they all have quite different backgrounds that leads us to frequently get conflicting instructions.

On the last day of the semester, on the 20th, there will be a graduation ceremony for the senior grade TFHS11 students. It will be followed by a party in the evening which is arranged by our grade, why we're quite busy with the preparations. Three friends rented a car and went to Germany the other day to buy large amounts of cheap alcohol and some other friends have been busy renovating the legendary Iso-bar, our very own bar in the basement of the dormitory, which will be open throughout the night after the party. I'm responsible together with a friend for the rental of plates and cutlery, and for the laying of the table etc. including the seat arrangement.

There is a website called LiveATC.net where it's possible to listen to aviation communication at many major airports around the world. In Sweden it means Malmö and Arlanda airports among others. My communication as callsign University 415, during a night VFR flight a number of weeks ago, can be listened to via this Youtube video that someone probably copied from there and uploaded. Communication from other aircraft of SAS, Malmö Aviation and more can also be heard:

From Saturday we have Christmas break for three weeks. I'll go home and visit my family for Christmas and then soon go to Japan for a two weeks of travel - hopefully my last trip abroad as a student without money. From the middle of January we return to Ljungbyhed for a three week course in Human Factors. I don't know exactly what we'll do, but I assume it's a sequel to the Human performance and limitations course we had as a ATPL theory subject recently. We will make and present a project in the subject, and much of the time is self-study.

After that we'll fly the twin engine propeller airplane PA-31 that the school also possesses. It's a small plane for a maximum of 8 people, and we'll fly in for a total of just 8 hours. Then we'll finish our MCC simulator training with another 4 lessons. Finally we have a two weeks course about the Boeing 737's features and systems before we, scheduled in the last week of March, move away from Ljungbyhed initially going to Oslo for a two week company course learning what we need to know to specifically work for Norwegian. After that, we'll fly the full motion Boeing 737 simulator. In other words, a lot to look forward to!

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!
PS. Please comment, and ask me anything or nothing at all! I know there are a few people reading this...

Many balls in the air

Hi!

Finally we're finished with all the ATPL theory studies. As usual we first had our school final tests on the same day, four subjects and around 6 hours total time. In reality it took around half the time to finish the tests. On the same evening me and a few more repeated the feat on the online-based Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) exams. A few other classmates finished 1-3 exams on the same day and left the rest to a later day. Another few waited with all of the Transport Agency exams. Since we get the results from the school exams a short time after we're finished we can do the "real" exams on the very same day or whenever we want. Since it costs 740 kr for each try on the real exams, one better be confident in one's preparatory studies.

Anyway, I passed all exams immediately, and so I will (probably) never ever again need to study "captain theory", which it's called since it's actually the theory studies that are mandatory in order to get promoted to captain, but in practice all first officers (co-pilots) have already completed it. It may indeed seem, and I agree that it is, strange that in order to become a pilot, for a short period of time (the length of each of the exams) you'll need to have quite detailed knowledge in a wide variety of subjects and then as an operative pilot you'll never be directly tested in that knowledge again. Of course the important parts of each subject will be needed, or at least useful, in my everyday work, but I'd say that it's quite a small part of the whole theory. I'll never again need to know the frequency band of GPS or weather radar signals, how to calculate great circle tracks on a polar stereographic map, the name and characteristics of high altitude fog clouds or which ICAO annex (chapter in the book of international aviation regulations) that tells me about air traffic services.

This period will contain CRM and MCC: crew resource management and multi crew cooperation. Yes, I also think those two phrases mean the same thing, but in aviation we make up as many and as complicated labels as possible for everything, so that non-pilots think we are more competent than we really are. I guess that's how it works in most technical professions however... Anyway, for us CRM means two full days of a theory course that discusses the importance of efficient usage of the knowledge and capacity of the both pilots in a modern cockpit. MCC then consists of as much as 52 hours of simulator training spread out over 7 weeks, during which we will fly for four hours and two students at a time, acting as captain half of the time switching after the first two hours.

The CRM theory course was supervised by a first officer at SAS and was really interesting and instructive. It was a practical course giving us lots of useful tips on how to be friends with the captain, how to cooperate efficiently and about consequences when cooperation doesn't work well. Since the main reason there must be (at least) two pilots in all commercial airliners is the active monitoring of each other's actions in order to avoid dangerous errors being made, almost all pilot errors could be blamed on flawed crew cooperation.

During normal operation, one of the pilots is the pilot flying (PF) and the other is the pilot monitoring (PM). It should be decided before each flight who has which role and it has nothing to do with the rankings as captain and first officer. Usually pilots take turns acting as pilot flying every other flight. Acting pilot flying means that your main duty is to manually steer the airplane at take-off and landing, and control the autopilot when it's engaged. Acting pilot monitoring means that you'll monitor the actions of the pilot flying, help him with any tasks he orders you to (lowering or raising flaps/gear etc.) and communicate with air traffic control.

Consequently, if the pilot monitoring detect any action or circumstance that seems in error or that the pilot flying doesn't seem to know it, he must tell what he sees. If the pilot flying doesn't answer or doesn't seem to handle it, the pilot monitoring must take control of the airplane and correct the situation himself. It can look like this (this time the captain is pilot flying and the first officer is pilot monitoring), start look from 4:49:
http://youtu.be/rAstLZHjOi0?t=4m49s

Here's an example of poor CRM, where the captain overloads the first officer with tasks:

Last week when most of us had just finished their Transport Agency exams, half of the class went on a study visit to Sturup/Malmö Airport, specifically to the airport tower, ATCC and Entry Point North, the only (?) school for air traffic controllers in Sweden. I had already been to Ljungbyhed tower and Kristianstad tower, so I already knew roughly how they work, but it was nice to see the fantastic view they have at a comparatively large airport such as Sturup. And to see some larger aircrafts take off and land. ATCC means air traffic control center and is a place where air traffic controllers direct air traffic on radar screens over large areas. There are two ATCC in Sweden, one in Malmö handling the traffic in roughly the southern third of Sweden's area and another in Stockholm (Arlanda) handling the more sparsely populated parts of Sweden in addition to the Stockholm region. The whole study visit and especially the visit to ATCC was well worth the time. Having seen how air traffic controllers work definitely helps understanding their situation as a pilot in any case there is a disagreement on the frequency. And it's important to remember that we are completely dependent on they doing their job in order for us to fly our passengers safely to their destination.

Finally I've now started my night flying, having completed one hour of touch and go landings at Ängelholm airport, and one hour and a half of navigating around western Skåne. Approaching Malmö airport with a full approach light system, as well as seeing Malmö at night and Copenhagen in the distance was thrilling! I still have 2 hours of night flying practice to go, then I'll earn the qualification to fly at night privately at any time.

Photos:

My final exam results, I can't say I'm disappointed! The only thing that feels strange is that my worst result was in Principles of Flight, meaning Aerodynamics, which basically is physics which I should know quite well after having studied it for three years before coming to Ljungbyhed.

Malmö by night. Since the photo is taken with a mobile phone camera in the dark it's difficult to see any recognizable objects. However the Öresund bridge and Turning torso building was cool to see at night as well!

The view from the outside platform of Malmö Airport tower.

Instrument flying completed

The autumn this far has offered mostly warm good weather and everything in school has gone well. Since our fantastic week of fjord flying in Northern Norway we have continued to practice instrument flying. When we do instrument flying in good weather, we wear a large cap (keps) that obstructs our view outside simulating that we're flying in fog. Unfortunately, the weather was generally quite good during the whole period of instrument flying and then deteriorated just in time for our next step - visual night flying - that we're doing simultaneously with the last ATPL theory (theory needed for pilot license as a captain) period of four.

In the last part of instrument flying, among other things, I did an international flight to Odense, Denmark via Roskilde together with another student and the instructor. Since the ATC (air traffic control) procedures differ a little between countries it felt like a valuable experience, and it was of course fun to fly to a new country (even though it's very close I had never been over the Öresund strait before). The last flight was a so-called "final progress check" - a simplified exam testing that we had really understood the important parts of instrument flight during the last 18 hours of flight training and 23 hours of simulator practice.

Visual night flying means what it sounds like - flying at night and under visual flight rules. This is quite an uncommon type of flying since it's difficult to both navigate and see other airplanes during the night. And visual flight rules (VFR) means that it's my own responsibility to know where I am and avoid colliding with other aircraft. Anyway, it's surely a good experience to learn to find places in the dark, since of course we'll all be flying at the airline all times of the day, however under instrument flight rules. I've not yet had the opportunity to try it out together with half of my class - because of the bad weather we have not been able to stay on schedule.

During this last theory block, we'll study four subjects (the previous blocks were three subjects each): human performance and limitations (HPL), flight planning and management (FPM), IFR communications (I-com) and radio navigation (R-nav). HPL is a fairly large subject and parts of it is very interesting talking about how our senses can betray us making us believe the aircraft is behaving in a different way than it actually is.

For example, during an approach in fog of an Airbus A330 jet to Tripoli airport the crew first misinterpret their position before the final descent why they start to descent too early and therefore are on their way of hitting the ground long before the runway. That's not critical as long as you don't continue descent below a certain safe altitude unless you have the runway in sight. When this crew reached this altitude, they decided to abort the landing since they didn't see any runway, and the pilot starts to accelerate and climb in order to prepare for another try. Our sense of balance has a hard time knowing the difference between acceleration and pitching up, and so the pilot felt the acceleration and thought he was climbing while he actually continued to descent and crashed at a high speed straight into the ground. The pilots made many mistakes during the whole procedure, but the most important part is to not trust your senses but your instruments. Instruments in an aircraft rarely fail but the brain is very bad at knowing how you're situated without visual references. See a video (6 minutes) about the crash here:

After we've finished the theory block we'll have our MCC course. It contains some ordinary classes and then mostly simulator training where we'll finally learn to work together as two pilots. In total around 50 hours of training during a period of 1½ month.

Photos:

 

When we had navigated to Växjö there was a Citation Bravo business jet there waiting for their passengers so we talked with the pilots. They were really nice and had interesting stories to tell, one of them had even worked for Norwegian earlier. It must be awesome flying business jets all around the world, staying at luxury hotels, having dinner with all kinds of rich people and having lots of free time on exotic destinations.

On the way back from Växjö with Jesper flying, we climbed to flight level 100 (about 10 000 feet above ground), which is the maximum altitude school allows us to fly at, cool!

This is the Isobar. It's a small bar in the basement of the dormitory and around once a week we meet up here and play games, listen to music etc. Really nice atmosphere!

One of the best things flying IFR is that we can fly through and above clouds why we see all kinds of exciting cloud formations and weathers.

 

 

Incoming Bornholm on my very last daytime visual navigation at TFHS. It's Danish territory but actually belongs to Swedish airspace.

The school mascot Smiley was my co-pilot on the Bornholm flight. He was however too fat to sit in the front seat...

Congratulations to the class of UiT 1101 who informally graduated being finished with all flight-related training and everything in Ljungbyhed. They only have their graduation thesis before they're completely finished. I wish them all luck in their future careers!

Söderåsen national park is so beautiful this time of the year.

In school we have a mock-up of a Boeing 737 simulator that consists of many LCD screens, keyboards, a joystick etc. and an advanced software expansion to MSFSX. We had a long briefing with the IT manager at the school about how it works. 

A page of my logbook. We must always keep  track of every flight and simulator session  so that we can prove we have enough experience for the certificates, qualifications etc.

Some Norwawsome flying

Long time no see as usual.

During the last month we have continued to study instrument flying which means to fly with the help of radio beacons, GPS and instructions from air traffic control, see previous post.

Also, all students have been to the small city of Bardufoss close to Tromsö in northern Norway. My class stayed there for 6 days and flew among steep mountains, deep valleys and fjords. It was really awesome, and though we only flew about 6 hours per person it was a really valuable experience. This post is mainly for showing a bunch of photos from that week.

All flying was visual and the weather varied a lot so our ability to make important decisions when the weather deteriorates was also tested. We also flew two students together every time so that we can practice to cooperate which of course is a highly necessary skill when flying commercially.

While I'm present at each location of all photos, this time most of them are not my own, so I've put letters in front of all pictures taken with cameras belonging to classmates. R marked photos are Rickard's and G marked photos are Gustav's. Thank you, Rickard and Gustav!

Photos:

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Me and three classmates flew to Norway in this nice PA-31 Navajo that two teachers piloted. It took two refueling stops and about 5 hours flying time to get to Bardufoss. After a while we were pretty tired...

 Soon after departure from fuel stop Borlänge we passed over Falun! Nice to see from above!

 

 

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 The coastal fjord scenery was just stunning.

 

Lunch break in Kiruna. The ramp personnell was so kind that they gave us a ride to central town to get food since the only restaurant at the airport was already closed. This was the local recommendation and they had really good hamburgers!

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Cleared to land runway 10 ("one zero"), Bardufoss.

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School aircraft parking at Bardufoss. There was regular flights of Norwegian to Oslo from here, nice to watch their take-offs.

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One of the days we flew to Sweden, landed on Kiruna and Gällivare airports and flew around the mountain range  where Kebnekajse, Sweden's highest mountain, is. The clouds were however too low for us to see the top of Kebnekajse but flying beside it under the clouds was fantastic.