So, what happens when you come back from a few months off work…
There is a listed scale of time away, and training required, in the company manuals. Basically, less than 56 days, it will be a recency sim (more or less anything goes, just to get your hand in), plus any normal cyclic sims that you may have missed. Beyond 56 days up to 90, it will be the same, plus you’ll need to do one sector with a training Captain in the right seat. After 90 days to 180, it will be three sims, plus two training sectors, plus a route check. After that it’s left to the training department to invent an appropriate refresher course. Beyond a year, and you’ll have to do the entire course on the aircraft again.
In this case I was scheduled for 3 sim sessions. One recency, one cyclic that I’d missed, and another that was about to become due. I was originally scheduled to do a Melbourne Dubai London flight (when the rosters came out a couple of months ago), and I’ve kept that, but will have the training Captain along on the first sector.
The sims…
The recency sim had me paired with an FO who had been off for about the same amount of time.
You rarely do the preflight checks and procedures in the sim, as it simply takes up too much time. But, for a recency sim, you start as if it’s cold aircraft, and go through everything. At the end, you leave it shut down at the gate (as opposed to on the runway as we normally do).
The flying started with a circuit for both of us (using Melbourne 16). Circuits are something we don’t normally fly, and they’re always guaranteed to make you feel humble..but also to get your head moving in the right direction. The second one involved an abort, which meant that I decided at some point during the roll to abort the take off, and took the aircraft off the FO and stopped. These occur randomly in every exercise, at all speeds from very slow (which can be surprisingly hard to control) right up to V1 minus a knot or so.
After that we looked at normal takeoff, and then an ILS each. Then the same but with an engine out. After that we moved on to the low visibility sequences, which will always involve take offs with the vis around 90 metres, generally with one take off and one abort. Both are interesting as you cannot afford to let the aircraft get very far from the centreline, or else you won’t see it again. An auto land that works, and one that doesn’t. After that if there is any time left you can do whatever takes your fancy. Most like to practice the engine out, and we did the same.
You start off very rusty, but by the end are starting to feel like a pilot again.
Next morning…
This time it was a licence renewal sequence that I’d missed. The profile for this exercise was a change from all that had gone before, with much less emphasis on checking, and much more on training. So, getting something wrong was no longer sudden death, which makes you much more willing to experiment and see ‘what if’. Mostly these prove to be bad ideas, but if you’ve had a go, and it didn’t work, you do tend to remember.
The exercise started by taking off from Melbourne 09, flying out a few miles, and then joining the visual approach via SHEED (over Essendon) for a right hand base onto 34. This approach has recently been the subject of an incident with Virgin, and has, for many years, been banned by many airlines. It is day to day, bread and butter for the 737 and 767 drivers, but is rarely done on the 747 and 380, and even then it’s always at the end of a very long sector. As it turned out, both the FO and I flew it without any issues and landed on 34.
Next we jumped to Honolulu, where the scenario had us departing for LAX after a medical diversion. Weather was heavy rain. Depart, and during the climb we had a couple of fuel system related messages, followed by a fuel leak warning. Stopped the climb at FL200 and found a place to hold, whilst we worked out if the leak was real, and where it was. The ECAM had us shut down the #2 engine…fuel leak proved to be from #2 feed, and eventually drained away all of that tank’s fuel. Able to restart the engine, but now there was also doubt as to whether all of the other fuel (outer wing and tail) would actually be available. Still somewhat overweight, so we tested the availability by jettisoning it (that meant that we wouldn’t have any fuel trapped in the tail, or even worse, being pumped to the leaking tank). With about 30 tonnes left our options were Kona and Honolulu. Returned to HNL and carried out an auto land. In previous years, because sim time was always treated as precious, you always felt rushed in these exercises, but this was allowed to run its course in real time, with no pressure from the instructor to hurry things along.
Next up a couple of departures from HNL, one flown by each of us, which resulted in a TCAS resolution advisory at some point.
After that, back to the approach, but this time with go arounds being issued at varying stages in the approach sequence. Lastly some approaches that start with 40 knots of tailwind, converting to about 15 knots of crosswind at landing. It very hard to get an aircraft to slow down in the tailwind scenario, so the lesson is to always take lots of drag….amazing how flexible it can be if the first thing you take on approach is the gear instead of the slats.
Third day in the sim…and back for another cyclic, this one being the current exercise (until the end of the year).
This exercise is basically a series of smaller modules, so there’s no attempt to make it into one or two complete flights. Quite a few IPs, basically the sim just jumping to a spot in space, and configuration, without you having to get it there. Saves time, but it can be disorienting.
It starts off in Stansted in the middle of winter. So, some discussion about de-icing, and then the procedures needed. Constant swaps between the FO and Captain as to who was flying, so I probably don’t have this in the right order.
This one went right into it, with a major issue on the first take off. Just after rotate, a windshear warning, with the displayed wind rapidly rising to 60 knots of tail wind. Trying to fly the windshear profile and the aircraft was extremely unstable, and switched to alternate law in the middle of the process. We then realised that the airspeed was actually spurious (across the coughpit) and that the windshear warning was a spurious consequence of that failure. So, settled the aircraft down and flew out at a constant pitch until we were well clear of the ground. Then we used GPS ground speed and altitude to let us level out, and then ran the ECAM for unreliable airspeed. That removed the speed display and replaced it with angle of attack, and also gave us GPS altitude on the primary displays. The exercise ended at that point, but it’s relatively straightforward to land without an IAS display. A very nasty introduction though, as you simply cannot try to double guess a windshear warning.
Now that we had in in alternate law, we tried some stalls at low level, as we turned base for a landing in a visual circuit. So, recover from stall, and try not to hit the ground…..
Next the FO flew a take off. Engine failure after V1 (right on rotate) and then clean up and come back for an ILS. That resulted in a go around, for which they wanted you to fly the normal (as opposed to engine out) profile. Land off the next attempt.
Now to low vis again, this time with an engine failure and continue at max weight. Get rid of all of the fuel and come back for yet another 3 engined ILS and go around. Land again of the next attempt.
After a break, back into flight to look at some engine issues. High vibration and engine surging/stalling. Then looking at some of the automatic responses from the aircraft when it thinks an engine is shut down (like automatically reducing the target IAS to the engine out target, without any pilot input).
Next we looked at the aircraft behaviour in some close to stall cases. In one situation, whilst clean at relatively low speed (but still within what many might consider acceptable), we rolled into a turn….and then shortly thereafter simply selected full speed brake. That had the effect of raising the stall speed to the point that the aircraft automatics responded by rolling off the bank, retracting the speed brake, and going to ALPHA FLOOR…automatically taking TOGA power and locking it there. After that a bit of a play with the ALPHA protection system (select idle, put full nose up, and just hold the stick all the way back)…all very lovely. And then we did the same thing with the aircraft in alternate law, when, of course, you no longer have the stalling protection, only as stall warning. Ultimately we moved to altitude, and tried it in direct law, with the trim being manually selected to full nose up. From that scenario, you do not have enough authority through the elevator to get the nose to come down to break the stall, so you need to use some bank to help get the pitch under control…whilst retrimming the tailplane as fast as you can. If you don’t get it back quickly, you’ll end up in the AF447 situation, with a deep stall.
From there another bit of low vis, but this time resulting in a high speed abort, engine fire, and evacuation. Then you go home.
