Post flight school (8 years retrospective)

More than 8 years later, a brief welcome back!

Even though I had plans to continue blogging even after graduation, that didn't happen and I realised the blog ended fairly abruptly why I want to apologise. I will not restart the blog now either, but just briefly summarise the last 8½ years for anyone who might be interested.

Shortly after my previous blog post on September 12th 2014, I passed my line check on Boeing 737 for Norwegian. I then seamlessly continued flying as a fully certified ordinary first officer, and was initially based in Tenerife for the winter season 2014-2015. During this time I also had to finish my bachelor's thesis in order to formally graduate from university, which I did in January 2015. Of us 12 students in the class, 11 graduated while one unfortunately failed the line check and was unable to continue. Of those 11, 10 chose to be full time pilots at least until 2020. One was offered a job but declined and pursued a different career.

After being based in Tenerife the first winter, I applied for a base closer to home and was allocated Alicante, together with three other classmates and colleagues. While sharing an apartment and spending most of the days on Costa Blanca was really fun, around this time I started living together with my girlfriend in Sweden why the commuting became more and more of a hassle. Since the outlooks for a Swedish or even Scandinavian base at Norwegian seemed slim at this time, I applied for a job at Scandinavian Airlines/SAS and got an offer for a fixed employment in Stockholm, which was my first hand option. So after 19 months flying for Norwegian (of which 4 was training in Scandinavia, 5 based in Tenerife and 10 based in Alicante) I started in February 2015 working for SAS.

The next roughly 4 years were mostly great - while I didn't earn as much money at SAS as at Norwegian I had a fixed employment, fixed salary and fixed base which suited me well and I really felt at home in Stockholm (where I hadn't actually lived before 2015). Unfortunately as we all know 2020 was a terrible year not least for the airline industry - and together with almost all other pilots around my age that I knew, I was sacked by the end of the year.

With SAS having accelerated the outsourcing of pilot jobs to subsidaries and other operators already before the pandemic the outlooks for a quick return to SAS didn't look great and therefore I had to find myself another source of income. I chose to study software engineering during 1½ years, combined credits from other courses taken years back to get a bachelor's degree relatively quickly and got a job as a software developer at a small company in central Stockholm. I worked there full time during 2022.

As a result of the SAS pilot strike 2022 all of us that had been sacked during the pandemic were promised to get our jobs back and I got the offer already during the fall 2022. So on January 3rd 2023 I returned to SAS, albeit being employed by the subsidiary SAS Connect. At the time of writing I'm still doing training to get back into the first officer seat, and I'm really happy to soon be able to take off again!

If you're thinking about becoming a pilot yourself, my personal take would unsuprisingly be to always have a plan B. This plan should preferably be a solid one, that will be available even during the worst downturns in the economy. Be prepared that your dream and career might come to an abrupt end at any time - perhaps because you fail a test*, because there are no jobs, because you simply don't fit into any airline's hiring profile or because you incur a medical condition that is incompatible with pilot duty. 

*Yes, you'll normally have at least two tries. Tests are numerous both during flight school, during training for a different aircraft type (which you might be forced to undertake by your employer) and for the rest of your career. That means at least once per year just in order to keep your licenses and ratings both when unemployed and during active employment.

Also be aware that the working conditions for pilots nowadays are probably worse than you think - and don't expect to be treated well. You might be employed through a staffing agency with little job security, have none or low guaranteed pay with a large variable part only being paid when you fly (which means much less pay when you're sick and during vacation). You might have a working schedule which is completely variable (up to 7 working days in a row, and sometimes as little as one full day off between working periods) with few to no opportunities for influence, including vacation periods. With that said, I don't regret my decision to pursue this career - neither do I consider voluntarily quitting. But then I was very lucky to have to pay almost nothing for flight school (since it's a government funded program) and then I immediately upon graduation got a full time job (and of course getting the first job is most difficult).

Thanks Norwegian for the initial climb of my career! My last day:

Some photos from the 5 first years flying for SAS:

After flying the Boeing 737 for around 4000 hours, I was retrained by SAS on the Airbus 320 which I flew during 2020 and will return to this year

Passenger on duty on a DAT MD-83 - fascinating!

Beautiful day over my beautiful hometown

Finally I'll happily and nostalgically present to you our graduation film superbly produced by Christopher:

Getting used to the tempo of commercial air travel

Hello! Longer time longer see again, thanks for coming back!

Since last post I've flown line flying full-time at Norwegian, gained my very first very valuable experience as a commercial pilot, and enjoyed every second of the 150 hours this far in a Boeing 737 cockpit. It's quite intense and I'm slowly getting used to the fast pace that is required for line flying on-time performance.

I've flown to 22 different domestic and international destinations in 13 countries with flight times from less than 30 minutes and up to almost 4 hours with 9 different instructor captains. I've accomplished 84 flights and have another 30 to go on so-called line training before I have my line check, which is an operational test of an ordinary flight together with a normal non-instructor captain. When I pass the line check, I will finally be regarded as a first officer finished with all initial training, and I will be able to fly with any captain on practically any flight in Norwegian's network. However, for my whole career I will have to do recurrent training in a simulator at least every 6 months when I will need to once again show my skills how to handle an abnormal situation that could occur, such as engine failures and fires.

After my line check I'll also receive my unrestricted MPL-license which is valid worldwide on any airline in case I need to look for another job. I do hope to continue fly for Norwegian though, and initially the plan is to be relocated to the base in Tenerife together with another 7 of my classmates. There we'll be around 45 pilots during the winter and mainly fly Nordic, British and German tourists from major cities. I look forward to it a lot; exploring the island, getting to know new people and fly new routes. Before the relocation and after the line check I also have some holiday when I'll visit Japan for almost 3 weeks, that'll also be great!

Photos:

 

 Me at work.

 

 

The main screens showing speed, altitude, location on a map with weather radar (the colors show the intensity of the weather) and much more. In the first picture we're cruising at the maximum altitude of 12 500 meters. We always try to fly as high as possible because then we use less fuel due to the lower air resistance but depending on the weight (number of passengers and amount of fuel) we can seldom actually fly at the maximum altitude.

 

 

 

 

The view from my office is not bad, there are so many cool cloud formations and mountain landscapes to enjoy.

 

 

 And sometimes we see other airplanes flying closely (always with at least the safety margin of 300 meters in altitude difference), which also is really cool. Not least the first picture with a KLM Boeing 747.

 

 

 Sometimes we even have some time to explore other cities during night stops, like here in Aalborg, Denmark, and Luleå in northern Sweden.

 

 

Just because I now regularly fly 79 ton passenger jets, that doesn't mean I no longer enjoy flying private small propeller airplanes. I've joined the flying club in Borlänge close to my family home and done a few flights with friends and family, and had great fun!

Skill test and landing circuits - now it's for real!

When I wrote the last post, we were almost finished with the simulator training. So after completing the final simulator sessions, it was time for the skill test. While all simulator training had been done with the same teams of two students, taking turns doing the roles as pilot flying and pilot monitoring, on the skill test we were supplied with a real captain instead.

The skill test was 2.5 hours long for each of us, and began with preparations for a normal flight. Then we took off and climbed for a short while as part of test for the normal procedures. Then, as always in the simulator, we were presented with some failures we had to resolve, which as usual demanded us to return to the departure airport (nearest airport). There the weather was bad so we had to abort the first landing attempt, and then we could just make contact with the runway and land at the second attempt.

Drawing a line there for the first part, we then repeated and took off again a few times, each time facing a new failure. Mainly engine problems forcing us to fly with one engine only (which is more difficult). We also practiced encountering windshear (rapidly changing wind) and various levels of automation failure, so that we had to fly manually to a higher extent than usual. Finally, we were presented with an evacuation situation and we performed the evacuation procedures.

Except for the simulator test, we were also orally interrogated on theory and procedure knowledge. In the end, everything went well and me and my training partner could return home as happy certified Boeing 737 pilots.

However, we were still not completely ready to begin working. A week later we had a meeting with one at the planning office, and then me and two friends were given the opportunity to switch base during the training period (until October), so that I could have Stockholm instead of Copenhagen, which I'm very grateful for. The schedule for July was however already decided, so I will begin my career in Copenhagen on July 18th (tomorrow when this is written) flying passengers to Barcelona and then other passengers back.

During the fairly long gap between the skill test and first flight I've mostly been at home enjoying the summer and studying procedures to stay recurrent. However for the whole of June we were on standby to perform the mandatory landing circuits without passengers. Finally we could get planes not used for scheduled flights and complete them on July 2 and 3. I and three friends together with an instructor flew in the morning on July 2 from Arlanda to Västerås and then did 42 continuous landing circuits with touch and go landings (taking off again directly after touching the ground). Each student did 12 landings, however one of us had already done half of his landings earlier (why total 42).

I got the honor to fly the first part starting at Arlanda, and the whole session was a great experience. Mostly similar to the simulator, but yet a slightly different feeling, in a good way. The rapidly increasing amount of splatter bugs on the windshield reminded us that we were actually flying a real airliner.

The last thing to be done before we could fly ourselves was to sit as an observer in cockpit during two days of normal operation. This is done shortly before one's first own flight and usually includes return flights to 3-4 different destinations. As I had been an observer several times before during the simulator training period, I was not unfamiliar to it, but being able to take part already from the briefing in the terminal and during turn-arounds, it felt quite important and worthwhile. My first such flight was to Malaga and back, and the scenery around Malaga was quite amazing. I really look forward to flying there myself.

Photos:

There are a few 737-300 Classic s as well at Norwegian. It was quite interesting to see the differences for myself during a flight from Oslo to Stockholm but we don't do training on this 737 version since there's no need for more pilots who can fly them.

After the successful skill test at CAE simulator centre at Arlanda.

The plane that soon will suffer from hot wheels and brakes, coming in to pick us up. Actually I never flew on this flight because the time was too short, so I had to wait another week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally in the first officer seat myself!

The mandatory selfies! 

A touch and go landing by a friend who then switches seat with another friend while the captain continues with the circuit in preparation for another landing. With a fuel consumption of 40 kg/minute there's no time to lose!