Pilot_man’s Blog

Well its 5:26 AM on tues morning, I cant sleep. I got in from my sim this morning around 3:30 AM, which is just another day at the office. See in this business seniority is everything. Well  I am the youngest in my class and instructors have confirmed that I am the youngest in the company. Woo hoo! Yeah that seems like a big achievement but in all reality what it gets me is midnight to 4 AM sims, bad lines and basically its like getting picked last at dodge ball. I dont mind it so much right now,  I guess because I am young and I can handle it. The other part is while im sitting here training and eventually flying all these people around I still have accomplished something even if its at 3 AM.

So per the syllabus we have 8 sims to learn everything we need to know about this airplane. We have learned how to take off, how to fly approaches, how to land. Then we start learning dangerous things about the aircraft and if these things happen, how to get out of it and save the lives of the people in the back as well as our own. We learned how to get out of dutch roll’s, unusual attitudes, and even upset recoveries. Then we started getting into engine failures, wind shear, and v1 cuts this morning. All this is only 4 lessons and thats not all we did! I should explain the sim to you a little bit. The sim is this giant box that moves around on hydraulics. On the inside is a mock up of the cockpit. All the knobs, switches, lights, bells and whistles work in it just like if you were in the real thing. They even have screens that look like windows so it looks like you are looking outside the airplane. This thing is realistic, so realistic sometimes it seriously feels like your in the airplane flying.

Today was one of those days where I needed a little bit more sleep before I came in. I was tired to start off and we had a tough lesson and so needless to say those to things do not really work well together. I completed everything as I should have and was within standards, but what really got me was that I realized that my job isnt all that easy nor is it all that safe. The past couple of sims we have been doing things that you would only see in abnormal situations in the airplane. For example we actually crashed today. We had severe wind shear on landing. There was no way my partner could have gotten out of it. He did a lot better than I would have, but still we crashed. As we were coming in just past the minimums on our ILS approach we got the wind shear warning.  “MAX POWER, SPOILERS IN”, check I did it. Now hold on for dear life. As we were attempting to climb out the wind shear was so bad that my partner was losing control of the airplane. The downdrafts were severe enough that it pushed us down and lucky for us we hit the runway soft enough were there was no damage done…yet. Now we are still at 147 kts just touched down and we cant really stop with all this wind shear or we will have big problems. So we have to keep going. We start to lift off again and as we are climbing out we still get pounded by all the shear, and battling the stick shaker that we finally crash. No remember this is in the sim, this did not happen in real life, and with all the fancy high tech equipment we have now days this probably wont happen. This was just to show us what could happen. I have actually felt nervous but not necessarily scared when doing all this stuff because to me it feels so real. I love flying and I know I always will, but I have finally realized that if im not careful my job could really turn dangerous, and in the real plane there is no reset button. I appreciate all my instructors and the company for putting me through all this training because not only will it make me a better pilot but I will be safer too. Now I am really going to sleep and I will post more later. To all the pilots out there be safe and happy landings forever.

Well so far I have been in training for 4 days. I am in what is called Basic Indoctrination. Basically its a 2 week class where we are learning about all the different operations that go into flying for our airline. We also cover cold weather operations, and regulations and all kinds of fun (sarcasm) stuff like that. On the first day we met our instructors and we bid (picked) our airplanes. In the airlines everything is based on seniority. So the oldest guy in the class has the most seniority. So the guy with the most seniority will have a better chance in getting the aircraft he/she wants. Everyone made their picks and the next day we got the paper that had our awards on it. Turns out that I was awarded the CRJ700. Which is a Canadian made regional jet that holds 70 passengers (PAX) and 2 Flight Attendants (FA’s). What that means to me is that I will go through training on the CRJ200 (50 Seater) and then I will have to go through differences training on the 700. So that means my training will be extended a little bit. Its all good though. I fly a bigger faster airplane and I get to go on the longer trips. Tomorrow I get to go to the fire house and go through fire training. We will be in an airplane mockup (big tube on the ground) and there will be smoke. So we will have to run through the procedure and put out the fire. Then get to play with the crash ax mwahaha. HAHA. So tomorrow will be an easy day and the whole class is excited because our brains are on over temp mode. Well I am off to get some rest I will post more when I have more interesting things to say.