I welcome
you back as well as the summer, I've missed you both!
The last
month has been packed with simulator lessons. They have been primarily in Oslo,
and a few in Copenhagen why I've had to travel a lot from my home in Uppsala. With
free commuter tickets and paid hotels it has worked quite well.
In total we
as MPL students at TFHS/Lund University have 24 sessions in Boeing 737
simulators. Most of them, 21 sessions, are in full motion flight simulators,
which means they move according to control inputs, acceleration and turbulence
etc. and it all feels extremely real. The instruments in the simulators are of
course practically identical to the real
airplane. Three sessions were in a fixed based simulator, which means they work
the same except they are stationary.
Each
session is 4 hours with 2 hours of briefing before and 1 hour of debriefing
afterwards. During the first two hours of each session one of the two students
is pilot flying while the other student is pilot monitoring. The pilot
monitoring communicates with ATC, monitors the pilot flying's actions and
configure anything the pilot flying asks for. After two hours there is a short
break and then the pilots switch place. Since we're training to be first
officers (co-pilots) the pilot flying always sit in the right hand seat, while
the pilot monitoring sits in the left hand captain's seat.
After
having done 20 sessions now we've experienced and practiced practically all normal
and non-normal procedures that we need to know. On the 23nd session we'll have
a final progress check reviewing the most important parts ahead of the skill
test a few days later. The 24th session will just be some more repetition on
aircraft handling doing 14 approaches and landings manually.
During the
skill test which for me and my colleague will be on June 11th, five days after
the last simulator session, we'll be paired not with each other but with a
stand-in captain whom we've never met before. As I've understood it, we'll only
be tested on our role as pilot flying and the captain who we'll fly with is
supposed to act as in real life, giving us all the help we ask for. This means
the skill test will only be roughly two hours for each of us. Some skill test contents
are mandatory, like a fully manual approach ("raw data") and one
engine inoperative approach and landing. Many other items may or may not be
present on the skill test, and the instructor from the civil aviation authorities
will decide. Taking the skill test costs around 7500 SEK, taking it once more if
we got a "partial pass" costs around half of that.
After the
skill test we need to do one more thing to get our certificates, and that is to
fly an empty Boeing 737 without passengers and perform 12 landings. Typically a
few students, probably 3-6, will board a plane in Oslo or at another large base,
fly to a smaller airport like Västerås or Kristianstad and then take turns in
completing our 12 landings. When everybody are finished the plane will be flown
back to its base. The landings are done as touch-and-go landings which means
we'll take off immediately after touchdown without stopping and do a narrow
visual circuit around the airport. The whole process takes roughly 1 hour for
12 landings, and will surely burn off a lot of fuel and cost a lot of money...
Having got
our certificates we're supposed to start flying normal airline operation from
the beginning of July. We'll then be scheduled to ride passively two full days
in the cockpit just observing routine operation, and then on the third day fly as
first officers. During the first few days we're actually flying there'll be a so-called
safety pilot (experienced pilot) sitting in the cockpit ready to take control
in case we feel unwell being nervous or so.
Photos:
A left-over
group photo from one of the very last days in Ljungbyhed, in front of a Piper
PA-31 Navajo. Also one of the last opportunities to use our school uniform,
next it'll be Norwegian's flight crew uniform!
Two more
left-over group photos, from the hangar during the company course in Oslo in March-April.
Three happy student pilots on their way to some intense simulator training in Oslo.
A Norwegian
Air Force Hercules on short final runway 01L at Oslo Airport. The hotel we're
staying at in Oslo is adjacent to the runway why we naturally do some flight
spotting now and then. The second photo is from the threshold of runway 22L at Copenhagen airport.
The cockpit
of the newest simulator with cutting edge graphics in Oslo: A Boeing
737-800WSFP. By the way there are two Boeing 737NG (NG means
737-600/700/800/900) simulators in Oslo, one in Copenhagen and one in
Stockholm. All are located in simulator centers owned by the Canadian company CAE
at respective airports. The Stockholm centre is the largest and the one in Oslo
the smallest, but the aircraft types available differ a lot.
The SAS museum is also located nearby our hotel. I'm curious how Norwegian's museum will look like in 50 years from now!
