Prospective students in Ljungbyhed

A late happy new year!

This last 1½ month I've been quite busy. As I wrote in the last post, the final part of the fall semester was very hectic and while it felt relieving to go "home" to Falun I've been continuously busy all the time up till now. After a few days at home celebrating Christmas I headed eastwards for Japan, spent 16 days in my second home country, and then returned to Ljungbyhed via a short visit in Uppsala. Immediately upon returning, a course in human factors begun, which then finally ended, although temporarily, today. While we "only" have had six full days of classroom lectures, we've had to read literature on the subject in between and we also had a two full days slightly unexpected course on leadership during this period. I've also taught as a private teacher three evenings, had a visitor for six days and been to Falun four days during the same period. But from now it'll be just a little less intense for a while.

The human factors course is a sequel to the HPL - human performance and limitations - course that is part of the ATPL theory block and which we completed in October. The course contents is also similar, focusing on crew resource management, that is how to communicate effectively with other crew members in order to enhance safety. Even more than during the previous course we now discuss openly many different aspects of cooperation, organizations, authority, personality and culture etc. And we study many historical airliner accidents and incidents which could occur because the communication was deficient.

During the leadership course we discussed even more openly about personality, authority etc. using personal experiences and numerous self evaluation methods in order to learn more about ourselves and our qualities in a leadership situation. It was an interesting course while the objective of the course felt quite vague and I'm not sure if I've learnt much new things that will help me in the future. According to several friends  who participated in the same course at earlier occasions or in another similar course, I will apparently have use of that knowledge together with own reflections on my own behavior over time, so I'll simply have to be patient.

Having finished  the theory part of the human factors course, what's remaining is a written exam and a report about a specific airliner accident or incident whose cause is related to the subject. Starting next week we'll fly the PA-31 Navajo twin-engine slightly larger airplane for just around 8 hours, which we all look forward to a lot. And in two weeks and a few days from now, we will head for Linköping, hopefully in the same aircraft, in order to perform pressure chamber tests which will be really exciting. We'll get to experience hypoxia (lack of oxygen), using a rescue raft in a stormy ocean and more things.

Finally, I want to wish all the applicants for the 2014 TFHS class a huge good luck with the entrance examinations! Since I say this quite late I think all parts of the examination is already finished with the remaining 60 applicants waiting for the final results. For those who are accepted: huge congratulations! This is a great school and my picture this far of the occupation itself is that it's a challenging and exciting one. For those who are not or didn't apply: there is another chance next year and you're very welcome to try again! Think about what went wrong and your chance will surely we greater next time. Information about application and the school is to be found here:
http://www.tfhs.lu.se/

All applicants meeting the criteria of a high school exam with a grade in certain subjects, and having obtained a passing pilot's suitability test from a specialized psychologist are called to a full day of written exams. The applicants with the best results are then called for an interview at the school and the final decision depends on the total impression of each applicant including previous experiences, written exam results and psychologist statement. During this winter application period, about 160 qualified applicants carried out the written exams, and of them about 60 applicants were then interviewed. 20 students will be admitted each year. The full program is 2½ years long, is mostly located in Ljungbyhed and results in a YH (Yrkeshögskolan) degree of 500 YH points, an MPL, Multi-crew Pilot Licence including type rating on a Boeing 737 and a few hundred hours of commercial airline experience as a first officer. A high level of understanding of Swedish is probably necessary as well as an EU (or Nordic) country citizenship or long-term visa due to Swedish school fee policies.

I don't guarantee the accuracy of the above explanation of the application process, refer to the website!

A really nice video of Arlanda showing the beauty of aviation (author Jesper Rådegård):