Linetraining [English version!]

Owke, it has been already more than a month since my last post. But the time and motivation to write something lacked a bit most of the time. Now I have my day off before my busy month of November is about to start.

Lets start with the beginning, since the last post I have started my linetraining. That is the training we receive by performing normal flights with passengers but with a trainingcaptain next to you who judges your flights. He does this on the normal operation of the flight and during the progress of the training he will start to ask questions about abnormal procedures and the systems of the aircraft.

During the first few flights I had outside my captain and me another safety copilot on board on the jumpseat. He/She has to look that we don't forget things  and to make sure a fully qualified pilot is present in case of problems on moments we are not fully ready yet for normal operations. This safetyo only joined me for my first five flights and after that I got rid of him. This means that the captain thinks you are ready to perform normal operations without supervision of an extra person.

I was one of the lucky ones to start already this "fast". We are divided into three groups with the 38 people that need to receive linetraining. From my batch only two persons are in group one, Yannick and myself. Ivo and the others of my batch are in group 2 and 3. But the second group cannot start before the first one finishes and os on. This meant that Ivo wouldn't start for another month or more before he could start. So he went back to Belgium for about two weeks while waiting.

In the meanwhile I am already past half my linetraining with about 60 hours in the right seat of the A320. Phase 1, normal operations, is done just like phase two, non-normal operations. I finished that two days ago and that means I am in the final phase 3 right now. Phase 3 is about the supplementary procedures and systems of the A320. It is all about the knowledge from the several procedures we can have during normal operations not related to failure of systems. I am talking about things like manual start, volcanic ash, turbulence etc... and also the systems like hydraulics, engines, electrics etc.

So its going quite fast for me. In the month October I was on permanent standby since the schedule was already made before they got my validation. I had to wait everyday till I got a text to fly the next day. If I didn't received anything it means I wasn't flying the day after. But it happened that I received a text at 20h30 to fly the next day. Not really optimal to prepare but luckily it was already far enough in training that I didn't had the need to prepare for hours in advance.

I had about ten flights right now with around 60 hours and 40 sectors more or less. A sector is a flight in between two airports as part of the entire flight of the day. For example a flight can be Jakarta-Singapore-Jakarta-Denpasar-Jakarta where for example Jakarta-Singapore is one of the sectors. Mostly we have 4 sector flights but for the longer flights to Vietnam or Thailand we only fly 2 sectors for that day.

I experienced already a lot and visited some different big airports like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore where you can see a lot of big birds from big companies. An Airbus A380 isn't special anymore for us since everytime you go to Singapore you see at least 5. But you feel insignificant when you are standing next to one of those with your A320.

There is not really much more to say since I spend most my time flying, studying, sleeping, relaxing now and than and mailing or texting back and forth with some special people ;)

Next month I have a full schedule, about 107,5 flyinghours and 158 dutyhours. This is almost the maximum allowed (max 110h). A busy month ahead of where I expect to be finished before the end of the month to do my linecheck to be released for fully qualified first officer. I have to wait and see what is going to happen with the rest of my flights after that. It might be that have to leave those flights to others or that I will be planned as Safetyco for those ones. I will see it when the time comes.

Advantage of that busy month will be the pay-check  about time in my opinion. The loan back home keeps on running and if I will need to move fast to another base I can use the money for rent.

I also added some pictures in my Picasa map. The link remains the same as in my previous post so you can check it out there at the bottom.

The next post will probably be for after my linetraining in the beginning of December. Don't kill me if you don't hear from me a lot because I have been busy like hell and because of the added hour of time difference due to daylight savings time in Belgium (6h difference now ) and the awesome internet *sigh* I don't have much opportunities to call. Ask my parents, they only hear from me every two weeks or so. ;)

See you next time, I hope to be a fully qualified FO by than!