Another sim exercise. I've done this one three times, once for myself, and twice supporting others.
It starts with the standard (optional) circuit for each pilot. Once in a suitably embarrassed frame of mind, you move on to the real exercise.
As usual, it will randomly include a couple of stop/go decisions during take off.
Firstly, with the captain flying, you depart from runway 18C in Amsterdam. You're cleared for a complete SID, but you only do the first part of it. All of the flight displays are then turned off, and you do a couple of minutes flying on the standby attitude indicator. Almost a pointless exercise, given that you can bring up a real AI on six of the displays, but it's a CASA requirement.
Next you're cleared back to Schipol to carry out the NDB approach for 18C. That involves are fairly rarely seen procedural hold, in which a single holding pattern is actually a part of the approach, and which the aircraft will automatically fly and exit. Basically it's a bit of a lesson in reading some of the things the FMC is saying. You need to modify the approach if you want to carry out more than one holding pattern. From there the approach is flown to a landing. Once on the ground, the aircraft is jumped back to a point on the approach (about 8 miles out) from which a visual approach is flown, but without any approach slope guidance (another CASA requirement).
The exercise is then repeated for the FO, only this time there's a go around. That in itself is interesting, as the level off is at quite low level, and things happen pretty quickly. The FO doesn't have to do the no guidance landing. Throughout all of this the cloud base and vis are being varied to suit, but the wind stays at a pretty steady 20 knots of crosswind.
We then jump to London for a low vis package. These are always flown by the captain, and supported by the FO. A couple of take offs are done, with the visibility at 125 metres, and 10 knots of crosswind (both of which are limits). There will be an engine failure resulting in an abort, and another from which you continue the take off. You might even do one where things work. In all cases the engine failures are worked to completion of the ECAM and passenger PAs, so just stopping on the runway isn't the end. The GO case invariably involves an outboard engine…the hardest case.
After the 3 engined take off, you clean the aircraft up, and then go through the steps you'll need to consider. Can you go back, or must you divert? As the vis is so poor, to go back you'll need CAT IIIB, but with a generator gone, you're reduced to CAT III A, so can you get the capability back? Will the engine restart (it virtually never will, but it needs to be considered). We elect to go back and start the APU to get another generator. The approach is normal until about 200 feet, at which point the localiser tracking goes outside of limits, so a 3 engined go around. Shoot the approach again, and this time land.
After that the only item left to cover is a two engined approach. This time they've decided to give the dual failure simultaneously, at about 1,000 feet during departure. It isn't covered procedurally, as it's starting to fall into an area in which the only rule is not to crash…and how you do that doesn't matter. Weight this time is an unusually light 391 tonnes (max landing), but I expect it will be ramped up over the next few sims until we near the point at which it can't be done. When the failure occurs we immediately level off, and accelerate, whilst cleaning up. Once the aircraft is clean and accelerated to green dot, it flies away quite well, and the remainder is a standard two engined approach. Initially though, you're right back at VMCA2 (or even slightly below), so maintaining control is an issue. At heavier weights, we'll need to descend to accelerate, and fuel dump will have to be started immediately. Once you land, that completes the exercise.
