Features

How to be a pilot: Blue sky dreaming

1 Jan 2006 by intern11
Are you friendly, smart and responsible? Then you may have what it takes to be a pilot, says Brent Hannon I am sitting in the captain’s seat of a Boeing B737 simulator, flying peacefully along at 2,000 feet. Just for fun, the Aussie behind me punches a button, causing turbulence and thick fog. The runway disappears. I ease the nose down, looking for the landing strip. I finally spot it – but it’s too far to the left. Should I abort? Forget it. Hard left, nose down, and wham! we hit the runway. We shook up some passengers, but we landed safely. With this safe landing under my belt, it’s time to fly a real plane. Together with instructor Matthew Sheehy, we perform a preflight check of a single-engine Socata TB10. Matthew is a detail guy: he checks the altitude indicator and the air speed indicator, then the lights, then the flaps, then the air intakes, then the props. I watch, bored to death, but trying to look alert. As Matthew talks, dark black clouds surround us. Eventually, we take off into the only patch of blue sky. Below is the peaceful Adelaide coastline, and straight ahead is a pretty orange sunset. Ignoring the sunset, we keep a sharp lookout for other airplanes. Then Matthew says: “You’ve got control.” Tentatively at first, then with increasing confidence, I turn the plane right and left, then up and down. The little Socata is remarkably responsive, and a lot of fun to fly. Matthew tells me to bank 30%, and we do, with the lovely countryside swirling below and the blue sky high above. It’s a blast. Half an hour later, we land safely – rather, Matthew lands safely – park the plane and walk across the tarmac. The flying that I’ve done is just a lark: the Socata is a student plane, with dual controls, and Matthew can steer it whenever he wants. Here at Flight Training Adelaide, one of Asia’s premier pilot-training schools, the genuine students spend months in a classroom before they can fly a real airplane. So the good news is, Flight Training Adelaide didn’t make me into a pilot. For one thing, I am short of the necessary qualifications. The cadets at this school are also young, friendly, smart and responsible, while I am none of those things. Also, they seldom drink, and they never drink on board, while I prefer to pound beer or red wine for the duration of any given flight. In fact, the flight-school pub, used only by staff, is for me one of the highlights of the school, although less fun than the front seat of a Socata TB-10. The fact that the school hosed me – or would have hosed me, if it ever got that far – speaks well of the quality of pilots that they graduate. Flight Training Adelaide trains pilots for some of Asia’s premier airlines, including China Airlines, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, and Dragonair. It has 55 instructors and 40 airplanes, along with classrooms, dormitories, simulators and other gear. The training is rigorous, and the cadets are serious, sober, and hand-picked. China Airlines (CAL) cadets, for instance, must be under 30, college-educated, and English-speaking; because so many people apply, CAL can choose the very best of Taiwanese youth. The school is far from easy: the students must pass seven courses, including aerodynamics, aircraft systems, meteorology, human factors, air law (395 regulations to memorise), navigation, and flight planning and operations. Then they must then pass seven tough exams in nine weeks, taken at a nearby university. With the classroom training is the flying instruction. The cadets first get computer training, then simulator training, and then they fly small planes. Most start on a twin-engine Beech BE76 Duchess, a very stable aircraft, then graduate to single-engine planes. After a year at Flight Training Adelaide, they return to their respective airlines, where they get another year of intense instruction, before becoming first officers in a commercial jet. The school’s overall rigor and discipline is reassuring, given the pressures faced by modern pilots. In the early days of aviation, mechanical failures caused 80% of all accidents. Now, with aircraft reaching new states of perfection, most accidents are caused by “human factors” ie pilots, mechanics, and air traffic control. The onus has shifted to pilots, and by extension, to schools like Flight Training Adelaide. “The challenge for us as aviators is to solve the human factor,” says school director Keith Morgan. That challenge is especially intense in Asia, where Confucian obedience to authority remains a problem. Deference to authority doesn’t work in a cockpit, because if the captain is wrong, accidents happen. The history of aviation is filled with dictatorial captains ignoring their co-pilots and crashing airplanes, a problem that is especially acute with ex-military pilots. To combat this tendency, Flight Training Adelaide stresses procedure and teamwork, with two pilots discussing flight conditions as equals. The flight school has kicked Confucius out of the cockpit and into Economy Class, where he belongs. Only, they don’t call it kicking Confucius out of the cockpit, they call it “flattening the authority curve.” That concept is stressed from day one, says Morgan. From what I can see, these students will be good at following procedure and questioning authority. The CAL cadets that I met – Ashley Chen, Frank Wu, Richard Lu, Stacy Yang, and Gary Han – were all bright, smart, polite, and familiar with western thinking. Cadets like this will not be burdened by undue deference to authority, a positive change that will make future flying much safer. Most modern cadets are also good with electronics, says director Morgan, which is another positive, given aviation’s growing reliance on computers. Modern flight deck computers are so superb that a plane can fly across the Pacific and land safely in thick fog at San Francisco, all by itself. “Nowadays the computers fly the airplanes,” says CAL Airbus A340 captain Thomas Chang. “So you have to know how to put the information in, and make sure that the information you put in is correct.” Once a year, says Chang, CAL operates an autopilot-only flight across the Pacific to test the computer systems, a procedure that passengers never notice. “The plane will fly to cruising altitude, level off, descend automatically and land, without the pilot doing much at all,” he says. In fact, it would be easy to dispense with pilots altogether, and fill the skies with computer-piloted aircraft, a prospect that cash-strapped airlines would embrace. There’s just one problem: passengers would not stand for it.“We could have a Boeing B747 or A380 with no pilot, but would you fly on an aircraft with no pilot?”asks Morgan.“Most passengers say ‘no’.” A related issue is the growing length of long-haul flights. Some B777s and A340s can fly more than 15 hours, and the longest scheduled flight is SIA’s A340-500 Singapore to New York service, which can take 18 hours. The next-generation of B777s and A340s will bring even longer flying times and greater distances. This leaves pilots whiling away the hours at 43,000 feet, with little to do, and it limits the number of times they can practice landings and takeoffs.“Judgement below 1,000 feet is the most difficult skill to learn,” says Morgan. “With modern long-haul flights, there is not as much decision making. It’s 15 hours of doing nothing followed by 20 minutes of sheer terror.” Airlines respond to this challenge by starting younger pilots on short flights, where they get more practice. So much the better if they can fly a traditional aircraft, like a B737, rather than a computer-heavy fly-by-wire plane like the B777 or A340. “We prefer to put them in the short-haul fleet for a period of time, preferably two years,” says Captain Chang, who is also an assistant manager in CAL’s flight operations training department. “They get experience by flying takeoffs and landings four or five times a day, and then they graduate to long-haul flights.” One key quality instilled into pilots by Flight Training Adelaide and by airlines, is strict adherence to procedure. Well-trained pilots never panic, they just keep checking aircraft systems. “When the ground’s rushing up at you, if you are well trained, you will still be going through a checklist, until the lights go out,” says school director Morgan. So there it is: the new pilots will be calm, cool, collected and well-trained. All in all, my three days as a quasi-cadet (emphasis on quasi) were comforting. The pilot training course is rigorous and thorough, and the cadets are disciplined and committed. Flight Training Adelaide doesn’t turn out mavericks or show-offs; it turns out professional pilots who will be capable of handling the newest generation of commercial aircraft. And that should be reassuring to every frequent flyer.

ONLY THE BRAVE

Many people dream of piloting a small plane, or even taking the wheel of a large commercial jetliner. This can be done, although it is not easy. Would-be commercial pilots have two basic choices: they can be hired by an airline, which then pays for flight school, or they can pay for school themselves, and then try to land a job with an airline. The second option — paying for school as a private student — is expensive and time-consuming, but still very possible. Before it accepts a private student, Flight Training Adelaide will recommend that the student talks to aviation authorities in his home country, to see if the Australian license is transferable, and it will recommend that the student check with airlines, to make sure the job market for pilots is robust. The school will then put the candidate through a lengthy aptitude test, called the Flight Grading Program, to make sure he or she is trainable. “We don’t want to take someone’s money if they can’t convince us that they can pass the course,” says school director Keith Morgan. But if the would-be pilot passes the grading program, and has US$74,000 and 12 to 14 months, they can check into a dorm room and start their course. This option is not for the faint of heart. For one, the airline-hired cadets are handpicked, and are young, smart and diligent, so the bar is set very high. Also, for anyone accustomed to fine hotels and five-star food, the dorm rooms — four to a house, with a small living room and a simple bathroom — will seem spartan. Then, there’s the food. Three times each day, Flight Training Adelaide cadets face stainless steel tubs filled with nondescript meat floating in nameless liquid. But the cadets that I met — all from China Airlines, and all sharp as a whip — didn’t spend much time complaining about the food or the accommodations. They were too busy studying, three hours per night, even after a full day of classes and flight training. Would-be pilots can also choose to earn a general aviation license, and then upgrade to an instructor license. Here too, Flight Training Adelaide can help. Attached to its commercial pilot school is a private school, which offers general aviation and instructor licenses. Once a student passes the instructor course and begins to teach, he or she can gain thousands of hours of flying time, a key consideration in the airline hiring game. During an aviation up cycle — like right now — airlines hire lots of instructors. So if the blue skies beckon, this might be a good time to consider a new career.

AVIATION LING0

  “Follow that twin, yankee tango foxtrot, ‘round we go – the TB 10 is hot on your heels.” What? Are the flight school cadets learning how to dance? Actually, no. They are taking English lessons, to help them hack through the jungle of jargon that bedevils the aviation industry. All cadets at Flight Training Adelaide speak excellent English, but they still must take 140 hours of language instruction. Otherwise, how could they understand such phrases as BTO 10 degrees to the left, or, track for oblique base runway 23? “The control tower says many things and they say them very quickly,” says English language instructor Malcolm Woodrow. The school records conversations from the control tower, and plays them back for students to practise and commit to memory. It gets worse when the cadets return to their respective airlines, where they start their APQs, which teach them about CAA, ICAO and FAA regulations, which can have different RVSNs, and on and on it goes. (Translation: Airline Pilot Qualifications, Civil Aviation Authority, International Civil Aviation Authority, Federal Aviation Administration, Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums). But eventually, the big day arrives for every cadet, when they don their wings and become the PIC, or Pilot in Command, with responsibility for the ultimate safety of every person on board. However, flight attendants have another name for the PIC: “They call us Pig In Cockpit,” says China Airlines Airbus A340 captain Thomas Chang. I bet they don’t teach THAT in flight school.
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