Boeing 737 Initial Operating Experience - My First Trip

After three weeks of ground school, two weeks of simulator training, two written exams, an FMS evaluation and two back to back check rides in the simulator (one on my birthday), I finally signed in for my first trip this past Wednesday morning…but training wasn't over.  All the instruction I received up to this point had taken place in the classroom, a procedures trainer or the simulator.  In the past, when walking through the departure lounge in uniform, I've felt like people were sizing me up as a pilot...like they could tell something about my abilities based on my physical appearance (there might actually be something to that). Wednesday was no different, except as I smiled and made eye contact with a few people about to board my aircraft, I couldn't help but wonder how they might feel if they knew this would be my first time to pilot the real thing.

It hasn't been that long since airline pilots were required to receive at least some training on the actual airplane before they were allowed to carry passengers.  Typically, an instructor and two or three students would go out to the airport late in the evening to fly an airplane that had been carrying passengers all day. After a few approaches and landings in the middle of the night, bounces as we often called them, the students were all signed off and legal to fly.

Today, simulator technology has advanced to the point that pilots are routinely trained solely in flight simulation devices. On Wednesday morning, I stepped onto the airplane for the first time and safely transported 150 people who had no idea I wasn't line qualified.  I was, and still am, a little wet behind the ears, but I don’t think anyone could tell.  The training we receive is quite good and prepares us well for flying the line.

My first B737...sitting at the gate at DFW

I got home Friday morning after flying three days of IOE (Initial Operating Experience).  During IOE, the company displaces a regularly scheduled crew member, captain and or first officer, and sends a check airman out to fly with a newly qualified pilot…that’s me!  The only difference between the trip I just flew and any other, is that instead of swapping legs, I got to do most of the flying.   

If you've been following along, then you know that I spent the past 13 years and just over 9,000 flight hours on the MD80.  I was nervous about leaving that plane for what is basically a lateral move within the company, but I needed something different and I needed a challenge.  Ground and flight school certainly met that need and flying the real airplane for the first time was a challenge as well. It will take time to become as proficient on the 737 as I was on the 80…the two are starkly different…but I was immeasurably more comfortable piloting the aircraft as we made our final approach and landing on Friday than I was when we began three days earlier.   

The single biggest adjustment for me has been getting used to hydraulically assisted flight controls.  I've probably said this before, but flying the MD80 is like driving a Mack truck without power steering.  It takes large, heavy handed control inputs to make the aircraft move in the desired direction…the same amount of force or control movement would practically turn the 737 upside down.  I have learned to fly the jet with a light hand and often have only my finger tips on the controls, but old habits are hard to break and I’m still learning.

One thing about the 737 that caught me by surprise was cockpit noise…and I don’t think I’m going where you think with this one.  The airplane isn't anywhere near as loud as I expected.  I was a flight engineer on the 727 for a short time and I can tell you that that airplane was deafeningly loud.  The 737 has the same nose as the 727 and I've always heard that the 737 had one of the loudest cockpits in the industry.  Thankfully, Boeing has made a few physical improvements over the years that reduced some of the noise, but I think the most significant reason behind reduced noise levels is the fact that we don’t fly the 737 as fast as we flew the 727.  Not all airlines or pilots fly the same airplane in the same way, but our procedure is to climb at 300 knots, transition to Mach .78, cruise at FMS ECON speeds and crossover to 290 knots in the descent.  For an airplane with a max speed of 340 knots and .82 Mach, the slower speeds do a lot to keep the noise down.  I was able to use the same ear mold headset that I used on the MD80 and had no difficulty carrying on a normal volume conversation as we flew.

There are a number of features of the next generation 737 that I've learned to love.  One of my favorites is the cockpit instrumentation.  Learning to interpret these screens took some work at first, but now that I've gotten used to them, I hope I never have to go back to an old “six pack” panel.  The radar image in the picture below is also a major advance.  Set in AUTO, the system continually scans not only left and right, but up and down as well, constantly adjusting gain and providing a much more accurate image of the weather.  It even detects climbing radar returns and warns the pilots if a storm will climb into the projected flight path.  Not all our jets have it and I’ll feel naked the next time I fly without it.

ND (Navigation Display) on the left. PFD (Primary Flight Display) on the right.

Another feature I've learned to love is the automatic loading of the Flight Management System (FMS) computers.  With the push of a few buttons, the route, projected winds and even weight and balance data is remotely uploaded into the computer.  It automatically displays V speed bugs, minimum maneuvering speeds and acceleration and cleanup altitudes.  It even retrieves updated weight and balance data during taxi to fine tune the planned information loaded at the gate.  This has significantly reduced my pre-flight work load and gives me time to spend on other important tasks.

Of course, I've had my struggles too.  All that automatic uploading is something that isn't simulated during training, so the first time I did it was on my first flight with people on board.  It’s all pretty simple, but if you push the wrong button at the wrong time or out of sequence, you could end up with bad or duplicate data…and possibly a ticked off captain…neither of which sound appealing to me.

Landing the airplane has also been an adjustment.  I was proud of the fact that I could consistently land the MD80 the way you would expect from someone with so much experience on the jet.  Everyone makes a rough landing every now and then, but mine were few and far between.  Of the four landings I made during IOE this week, I wasn't particularly happy with any of them.  None were terrible, but they didn't encourage many compliments either.  I blame part of that on the fact that my instructor wanted me to experience multiple flap settings (we’re authorized to land with flaps 15, 30 or 40), so the sight picture kept changing.  Also, it's a known fact that flight simulators do not land anything like the real airplane...but as Ben Franklin once said “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” No more excuses from me.

Sporting new paint on a flight from MIA to YYZ

After my last landing on Friday morning, the check airman shook my hand and welcomed me to the fleet.  I am now legally qualified on the airplane and look forward to my first regular trip next week.  I'm also looking forward to a trip to the company store as I've been fighting off the urge to purchase any of the required Boeing swag (model airplane, stickers and the like) until I was fully qualified.  I'm not a superstitious person, but why tempt fate.

I’ll have more to say about this airplane as I gain experience and learn to love it.  While I miss the comfort level I enjoyed after spending so much time on the MD80, I look forward to a time when I’m equally as confident on the 737.  As I've said before, I’m here for the journey...and this one is going to be a lot of fun.  


*********************************************************************************

If you haven't already, please visit "You Have The Airplane,"  a new section of AirlinePilotChatter where I am inviting others to share their stories.

I've also added my bio, entitled "My Story."  Both of these pages can be accessed from the navigation bar on any page of AirlinePilotChatter.

As always, thanks for following along.  Questions and comments are both appreciated and encouraged. 

737 Flight Training Complete

I’m barely on the desired side of a thin line between asleep and awake.  I’m aware enough to know that I’m in bed but asleep enough to lose at least an hour between restless turns in bed.  It’s dark, quiet and cool…just the way I like it.  “Don’t open your eyes or look at the clock,” I keep telling myself. 

Somewhere just below the surface I’m barely conscious enough to allow some procedure, checklist or memory item to creep into my mind.  I’m fighting the temptation and try to focus on some distant relaxing place, but resistance is futile.  “Go-around, flaps fifteen, positive rate, gear up, set missed approach altitude…”  Damn!

The alarm is probably about to go off anyway.  A quick one-eyed peek…crap…3:30 am. Alarm won’t sound for another 2 hours.  I desperately need to sleep.  Long days and short nights have been piling up for weeks.  Sleep deprivation is cumulative and the fruit of all my labor hinges on today’s performance in the simulator.

The last two months have been a crescendo building up to one, all-important evaluation of my abilities.  It all started almost two months ago when I decided, after 13 years on the MD80, that it was time for change.  With a few key strokes on the company web site, my preferences were official.  737 First Officer wasn't on the top of the list, but it was the one I knew I would get. 

I immediately began preparing for class.  I was issued books, manuals, checklists and a paper mock-up of the cockpit.  I wanted to show up on the first day of class knowing the airplane well enough to pass an oral exam.  It took a lot of work, but preparation reduced the stress level to a manageable level and made it possible for me to extract much more from the program than if I had shown up on the first day with manuals still protected by shrink wrap.

I gave up around 4:45 this morning, stumbled downstairs and pushed the button on a coffee maker that wasn't programmed to brew for another hour.  This is how check-ride day usually goes for me.  I wouldn't say that I get a severe case of check-ride-itis; more like the sniffles as opposed to a full blown case of the flu.  It’s only natural with so much on the line, but the jitters can be counter-productive and I go to great lengths to ward them off.

I had two check-rides this week, one yesterday and one today.  Yesterday, my sim partner and I successfully passed what we call a Maneuvers Validation…MV for short.  The MV is designed to test just about every maneuver we've been taught during the past two weeks of flight training.  We took off and flew a handful of maneuvers designed to get us comfortable and warmed-up before jumping right into low visibility CATIII, RNAV and other non-precision approaches.  Throw an engine fire, a complete loss of one of the hydraulic systems and a few electrical and air conditioning faults on top for good measure and four hours later we were all signed off for today.

This morning, my partner and I parted paths.  We were both training to be first officers and we've been together since the first day of ground school.  Once we made it to the simulator phase of training, I occupied the left seat and performed the captain’s duties while he received his training and he did the same for me.  It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s how we were expected to perform.  In the end, I’ll probably have a better understanding of what the captain is thinking and doing.  But today, we flew a LOFT (Line Oriented Flight Training), which requires the left seat to be occupied by a current and qualified captain.

A LOFT is flown just like a real flight, in real time, typically with realistic scenarios designed to get the student back into the mind set of flying the airplane from point A to point B.  Up until now, every time we booted up the simulator, we could be anywhere in the world we wanted.  High temperature and high altitude operations in Denver one minute followed by freezing drizzle and a stiff crosswind at New York LaGuardia a few minutes later.  With the push of a button the instructor could place us at any airport, with any weather condition or even specify a location somewhere on a particular approach.  If, for any reason, he didn't like something we did, he had the ability to push a button or two and put us right back at the outer marker for another attempt.  That’s not the idea behind a LOFT.

Today, we started out at the gate in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a short flight to DFW.  We loaded the FMS and prepared the cockpit just as we would for any revenue flight.  The instructor acted as ATC, ground personnel, flight attendants, gate agents, dispatch and anyone else we might need to contact.  Everything happened in real time and since I was the one being evaluated, it would be my turn to fly.  Everything was normal.  Taxi, takeoff, cruise and descent went the way 99.999% of all flights go…normal.  I knew, at some point, that all hell would break loose.  It always does.

We were vectored in for a VOR approach to runway 13R at DFW, so I set us up for an RNAV overlay approach.  With the LNAV/VNAV capabilities of this and many other modern aircraft, a non-precision approach is anything but non-precise.  As a matter of fact, we call them non-ILS approaches now instead of non-precision, since they are actually quite accurate and provide both lateral and vertical guidance all the way down to the runway.

The approach went normally.  We broke out of the clouds at about 200 feet above minimums with ample visibility, but as I maneuvered the aircraft to land, another aircraft taxied out onto the runway in front of us and forced a go-around.  I recited the line I woke to five hours earlier…”Go-around, flaps fifteen, positive rate, gear up, set missed approach altitude.”  The go-around procedure required a hard right hand turn and a climb to 3,000 feet.  With the aircraft banked into a 30 degree turn, the fire warning light lit up on the glare shield and the fire-warning bell sounded in the cockpit.  I feel sure passengers sitting in the last row of coach would have heard that bell if there had actually been anyone back there.

The captain took over flying duties and left me to the checklist.  It really wasn't a big deal.  I found the FWD Cargo light illuminated and followed the procedure to extinguish the fire as the captain set up for an ILS to runway 17C.  I finished the emergency procedure and completed the remaining normal checklist items just in time to watch the captain fly a perfect approach and landing.

By the time we landed, the fire was extinguished; Crash Fire Rescue teams assessed the situation and confirmed the fire was out before we taxied to the gate as if nothing had happened.  Taxi in, shut down, run the checklists and go home.  That’s all she wrote.

I haven't had a normal night’s sleep since early March.  I think I’ll rectify that tonight.  That fuzzy, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach has been replaced by hunger and a need for something cold to drink.  I think I'll rectify that tonight as well.  As for procedures and memory items interrupting my slumber, it may take a while for that to fade, but at least the stress is gone…until I return for recurrent training in 9 months.

737 Simulator Training...almost done.

CAE 7000 Series Flight Simulator

As I drove home from the Flight Academy today, I felt like a 737 pilot for the first time.  The first three weeks of training included self-paced computer based training and one-on-one review sessions with one of our ground school instructors as we learned everything we needed to know about the mechanics of the Boeing 737.  We spent a small amount of time each day in the simulator learning normal procedures, flows and the proper way to conduct checklists, but motion was never turned on and our time in the sim was, for the most part, stress free.  Before moving past the ground school phase, we were tested over everything we had learned.  Those tests were the source of a few restless nights for me, but I did well on the exams and was cleared to move on to the next phase.  This week, we hit the simulator hard, but today I can honestly say I'm getting comfortable in the seat and feel like I belong on the airplane.  I still have significant hoops to jump through, and it won't be official for two more weeks, but I feel like a 737 pilot.

Before we stepped into the simulator on day one, someone told us the next five days would feel something like the old story about a frog being slowly boiled in a pot of water.  The premise of that story being that a frog would attempt to escape if placed immediately in hot water, but if placed in cold water that was heated slowly, the frog would not perceive the danger and would be cooked to death.  I wouldn't begin to describe the week that way.  Admittedly, day one was a piece of cake.  We performed normal takeoffs and landings, entered holding patterns, executed stalls, steep turns and unusual attitude recoveries and a few other maneuvers designed to get us comfortable with having the 737 control wheel in our hands.  It was an enjoyable and relatively simple day.  But instead of slowly turning up the heat, we were unceremoniously dropped into hot boiling water on day two and it really didn't let up until today.

Day two was especially difficult for me because we were performing maneuvers I had never flown with equipment I was still learning to understand and interpret.  The Primary Flight Display (PFD) on the 737 is a significant step forward from the "six pack" instrument panel I've flown for the last 13 years.  Everything is right there in front of me on one screen and every day I spend focused on it, I get a little more comfortable and see something I didn't see the day before.  My instructor told me I would have a myopic view of the PFD at first and that I would feel as if I was looking at the instrument panel through an empty paper towel roll.  He was right about that, but my peripheral vision has gotten much better and I see a little more with every procedure I fly.

On top of my struggles to understand the PFD, day two was also difficult because it was time to learn how to fly LNAV/VNAV approaches.  I was introduced to RNAV approaches years ago on the MD80 after the fleet was equipped with GFMS (GPS Flight Management System), but the simple act of adding VNAV to the equation threw me for a loop.  To be clear, LNAV stands for Lateral Navigation and refers to navigating over a ground track with the help of an electronic device of some sort.  I've been doing this for years on the 80.  Conversely, VNAV stands for Vertical Navigation and refers to directing the aircraft in a vertical motion.  If you put the two together on a single approach procedure, the airplane will arrive at the end of the runway at an altitude and position suitable for landing with no reference to ground based visual or electronic navigational aids.  It's a little like flying into a funnel with the end pointed right at the end of the runway.  I'm sure it sounds simple, but the vertical part of the equation if fraught with opportunities for small mistakes that could ruin an otherwise well flown approach.

With each new day in the simulator, everything learned the day before was a given.  We were expected to have mastered those skills and the next day's challenges would be experienced in conjunction with what was already covered.

Day three came with the addition of single-engine scenarios.  I knew I was in trouble when the instructor told me to set the airplane up for a takeoff from Salt Lake City, Utah.  Salt Lake and Denver are favorites among instructors not only for learning how to fly the airplane on one engine, but doing so at high altitude airports with excessively warm temperatures.  Both are factors that reduce the performance of the engines and wing and increase the workload for pilots.  The temperature was set at 38 degrees Celsius...just over 100 Fahrenheit.

Day four was basically the same scenarios as day three, except that the passage of 24 hours brought heavy snow and ice to the mix.  On one takeoff from Salk Lake City, the instructor turned me toward the mountains and refused my repeated requests for a turn.  He wanted me to see the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) in action.  We got to within 20 seconds of impact before he let me react to the threat, but the 737 climbs well on two engines and even though we waited far longer than I would in real life, the airplane out-climbed the mountain face with ease.  Later that same day, he set up a traffic conflict with two airplanes crossing my path.  The TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) came to life and visually displayed a no fly zone above and below my aircraft as I threaded the needle between two jets, one 500 feet above and one 300 feet below my altitude.  Each day was sprinkled with minor abnormal situations designed to get us into the checklists and paying attention to the jet.  Start malfunctions, hydraulic leaks, faulty electrical generators, fires in the cabin, engines and cargo compartments...just to name a few.  

Today, day five, was an easy day.  We flew a LOFT (Line Oriented Flight Training) from Albuquerque, New Mexico to the Dallas Ft. Worth International Airport.  We worked in real time and flew the trip as we would fly it for real.  It was nice to see all the normal procedures we had learned spliced together in one flight.  Before today, everything was segmented and almost nothing was done in real time. I was surprisingly relaxed and found myself constantly feeling like I should be doing something.  I've become so accustomed to things failing, burning or falling off, that sitting there with a normal airplane felt completely abnormal.

After such a relaxing beginning to the period, we finished the day with a few final scenarios that were anything but relaxing.  My sim partner and I each got a few more engine failures, one where the engine actually FELL OFF the wing and the second engine failed a short time later.  With nowhere else to go, we were able to reverse course and land on a parallel runway with neither engine producing thrust.  After that we reset the sim on short final to runway 17C at DFW and flew the infamous Delta 191 windshear event and finished the day with windshear on takeoff before we packed up our books and headed for the house.

I'm at home now and feeling good about the week.  There have been a few times during the past month when I second guessed my decision to bid this jet, but as I become more and more comfortable in the seat, I am increasingly glad that I did.  As I pulled away from the Flight Academy today, I felt like a 737 pilot for the first time.  I still have a week left of simulator training to go and will take two checkrides before they send me out to fly an Initial Operating Experience (IOE) trip under the watchful eye of one of our instructors.  After that it will be my turn to be the new guy.  It has been said that a Private Pilot's License is a license to learn.  They don't, and really can't, teach you everything you need to know in school.  My most valuable knowledge comes as a result of personal experience, not from what I read in books or was taught in a classroom.  I've learned a lot over the past few weeks, but when I head out for my first trip two weeks from now, my new sign-off will be just that...a license to learn.

FAA Systems Validation in Progress…Do Not Disturb

Today is the day I have been dreading for more than a month…a day that marks the end of the first phase of my Boeing 737 First Officer training and the day the FAA tested my systems knowledge.  I started preparing well before class actually got started, but ground school officially began three weeks ago.  As with any airplane I’m not trained to fly, the first time I peered into the 737’s cockpit, the sea of lights, switches, gauges, levers and buttons meant very little to me.  I must admit I was more than slightly concerned about what I had gotten myself into and even wondered a time or two why I had elected to leave the relative comfort of the MD80 and an airplane with which I was intimately familiar.

With each day of class and each system mastered, the cockpit began to make a little more sense.  One panel at a time, the 737 cockpit has become less of a mystery and more like home…small, cramped and noisy.  Don’t tell my wife I said that! 

The honest truth is that school isn’t much fun.  I can’t name a single pilot who actually enjoys going to school on a new airplane.  There may be people out there who enjoy the process, but I’m certainly not one of them.   Of course, there are gratifying aspects of the training experience, but the rare moments of pleasure are often overshadowed by the stress of it all. 

The majority of phase one took place in the classroom.  I showed up on day one expecting this part of the course to focus primarily on aircraft systems, but by day two I was in the simulator with a hand full of airplane.  Granted, I haven’t been through a new airplane course in 13 years, but ground school encompassed more than I expected and uncovered more than a few holes in my preparation, mainly in procedures and flying techniques that I wasn’t expecting to have to know at such an early stage.  The idea was to teach the details of a particular system in class then hop in the simulator to see how it actually worked…and more importantly, what happens when it doesn’t work as designed.

During my first training session in the simulator, the syllabus called for pre-flight, before starting engines and taxi checklists only.  But after those were all complete and with time to spare, the instructor asked, “Hey, you guys want to fly this thing?”  What were we going to say...no?  Not a chance.  This is my first experience with an airplane equipped with a Primary Flight Display like the one on the 737NG, so it was good to see it in action.  It’s the sort of thing you can read about all day, but until you see it in motion, it’s terribly difficult to grasp.

Yesterday, we attended what is lovingly known as “stump the dummy.”  No, that isn’t an official name and no one but the students use the term, but it’s an accurate description of the day.  After completing ground school, the assumption was that we knew everything there was to know about the airplane, and that was a bad assumption.  So they sat us down in a room with an instructor who grilled us for hours.  Not surprisingly, he discovered a few additional holes in our knowledge.

Today, we took three tests.  The first was an FMS evaluation which we completed on an electronic trainer in one of the classrooms.  We were required to prepare the cockpit for departure, load the FMS and demonstrate proficiency with just about anything we might need to do while on the ground or in flight.  We didn’t get a grade on the FMS test, but we weren’t allowed to make any mistakes either…so I guess I got a 100 on that one.  That’s my story anyway.

The second test covered emergency memory items.  We were required to make a 100 on that one or we’d have to come back for another attempt.  I’m amazed by the number and nature of the memory items on this jet.  We had 14 procedures to recite and several of them were…well…verbose!  Reciting such a long-winded emergency procedure when an engine is on fire or the air is being sucked from the passenger cabin just seems silly, but Boeing writes these procedures and we follow them to the letter.  I strongly suspect this is an issue of liability, since the Boeing Company would most likely wash their hands of any accident where the crews didn’t use the accepted manufacturer’s procedures.

With respect to memorizing the emergency procedures, we basically memorize them two ways…verbatim, to satisfy the instructors and the FAA, and practical action, where we’re more concerned about completing the procedure quickly and correctly than we are about getting every insignificant word in the right place.

I made a 100 on the test, so it was on to the third and final hurdle.

Preparing for the systems exam is where I spent most of my efforts in the weeks leading up to training.  The last time I did this, the systems validation consisted of a one on one oral exam.  That’s my preferred method primarily because I enjoy talking about airplanes and I’m much better at verbalizing my knowledge than I am at interpreting a written exam.  Unfortunately, the current method for testing our systems knowledge is by written exam.

From a bank of questions that we never saw ahead of time, the computer randomly generated a 100 question test.  It may be a flaw in my personality…I choose to think that it is not…but merely passing this exam would not be good enough.  I spent the better part of a month before class started learning this airplane for a number of reasons.  First, I wanted to reduce the stress level as much as possible.  Second, I genuinely want to know as much about the airplane as I possibly can; I think my passengers deserve that.   Third, I wanted to ace the test. 

I made a 99 on the exam…and I’m ticked that I missed that one question!  

Week two of 737 Ground School.........Check!

I just read a blog post from my buddy Swayne Martin about a difficult lesson he had this week while preparing for his Private Pilot's License.  There were several learning opportunities that occurred during the lesson that caught him by surprise.  He expressed more than once that he was "disappointed" with his performance.  I can relate to that sentiment. Sometimes the difficult lessons are the most beneficial, but they aren't always the most fun.  Today marked the end of the second week of a three week ground school program preparing me for three exams I'll have to take next week.  Of course, the end goal is to prepare me to be the best line pilot I can be, but right now, the focus is all on those darn exams...one step at a time.

So far my instruction has been focused on aircraft systems, emergency action items that must be performed from memory and the use of the Flight Management System (FMS) installed on our Boeing 737s.  Next week, I'll have one more day of instruction, followed by two days of what we affectionately call "stump the dummy."  My instructor will use those two days to ask me everything I need to know to pass the exams.  Once the exams are completed, I will be able to focus my attention on simulator training.

I had a few difficult lessons this week as the training schedule seems to close in on me when I most need extra time.  Each day, I have around three hours of instruction, two students with one instructor, followed by three to four hours of self-paced computer based training.  After I've checked those two items off the to-do list, I spend hours reviewing past lessons and preparing for what will be discussed the next day.  There simply isn't enough time to do everything I would like to accomplish.  

Another part of my instruction takes place in procedure trainers like the ones I described in my last post.  Fortunately, my instructor successfully scheduled a full motion simulator for most of these lessons.  The sim is a much more useful instructional tool that accurately represents almost anything we might experience while flying the real airplane.  The up-side to using the sim is that I will be much more prepared for the next level of my training.  The down-side is that I'm expected to perform far more procedures than I would if we were using one of the paper trainers.  I keep reminding myself that the extra work will pay off.

 

We flew the sim again today...this time with me in the left seat and my sim partner acting as the first officer. We learned all about the HUD today, so I dropped the screen and utilized it for takeoff and landing just to get a feel for how it works.  The HUD is only installed on the captain's side of our 737s, so I won't get to use it on the line.  One of the bad aspects of training in both seats is that I've gotten a taste for the left seat again. I can't explain it, but the world looks very different from over there...and I like it a lot.

Since I was well prepared for class, the first week of training was relatively low stress.  So far the instructor hasn't told me very much that I didn't already know.  The stress ramped up this week as my duties in the simulator multiplied, reading assignments got longer and next week's tests got a little closer.  I'll spend my weekend seeking out quiet places to study...not an easy task with my wife and two young girls in the house.  I think I see a trip to the library in my future.  

Enjoying the journey.

737 Ground School...One week down!

After nearly 14 years at this job, I'm finally getting back on track with my original career plan.  It's almost comical now, but I sat down during basic indoctrination back in 1999 and made up a plan of what aircraft I wanted to fly, in what order and when I thought I would be awarded the positions.  The MD80 that I've flown for the last 13 years wasn't actually on the list (I explain this in an earlier post entitled "Bigger Isn't Always Better"), but even though it wasn't part of the plan, I feel lucky to have flown the "Mad dog" and I must admit I've already driven past the airport and looking longingly at the old girl climbing away into the sky.

I got started with 737 training this week and I think I've already flushed most of what I knew about the MD80 in a desperate attempt to make room for new information.  There's only so much room in my head, and with weeks of school left to go, it's already getting quite full up there.

So far things have gone smoothly, but there have been a few unexpected bumps in the road.  One of those is the fact that my training partner is another First Officer.  Usually, when two pilots are paired together for flight training, one is preparing to be a Captain and the other an FO.  It's seems so obvious and simple, but it doesn't always work out that way.  In my case, there were more First Officers than Captains in need of training this month and my partner and I drew the short straw.  When he's in the right seat, I will act as his Captain and he will do the same for me.  Unfortunately, this adds a lot of extra work for me as I now have to know my job and the Captain's too.  I'm sure there will be some leniency with respect to my work in the left seat, but it adds a level of difficulty I really didn't need.

On a positive note, you might be surprised to learn that my class only has two students.  We meet every day with an instructor who reviews the information we studied the day before through self-paced computer based training modules.  The instructor review takes about three hours, then we move on to a procedures trainer where we practice checklists and learn muscle memory for standard flows.  These trainers come in three basic types, paper, electronic, and full motion simulators...I'll get to that next.  Then we head to the computers where we spend another three hours on the computers packing our heads with more systems information for the next day's review.  After finishing the lesson assignments for the day, we're on our own to review and study.   

Below is one of our paper trainers.  This one happens to be back-lit, which helps a bit.  It's only a photograph of a Boeing 737 cockpit, so the switches don't work, but that isn't really the point.  The idea is that the student has a way to practice checklists, flows and memory items without taking up space in a multi-million dollar flight simulator.  Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get a simulator anyway.  

The next picture shows my favorite new toy.  It's very similar to the one above except that the instruments are shown on touch sensitive computer screens that allow the student to push buttons and flip switches.  Better still is the screen mounted above and to the right the instrument panel (the one with the black background) that shows system information.  In this picture, I was performing the initial power-up and pre-flight inspection.  As I powered up the airplane, the electrical schematic showed every move I made and how the switches I was flipping were affecting the electrical system.  We spend a lot of time working with schematics in ground school, but I've never seen one that interacted with a cockpit procedures trainer.  The student can choose to view any of the aircraft systems...hydraulic, pressurization, fuel, etc...and view the affect moving any switch in the cockpit has on that system.

We spent part of day three and four in a full motion simulator, which is about as close to the real airplane as you can get.  The first picture below is what the airplane looks like with the lights on, but before position initialization.  Until the POS INIT procedure is complete, the airplane doesn't know where it is or which way is up, so the attitude and heading displays are mostly blank and full of failure flags.  The second picture below shows the instrument panel after everything was initialized.  You might notice I was performing the Captain's duties at the time. 

The initial cockpit procedures, checklists and initial pre-flight preparation take a crazy amount of time when you are first learning how to do them.  Once I'm comfortable in the jet, I'll be able to complete them all and be completely ready to fly in around 15 to 20 minutes.  Right now it takes me more than an hour. We were only supposed to complete the items required to be complete before takeoff, but the instructor decided to let us go ahead and fly.  

We took off from DFW and flew the airplane to MEM to get a better idea about how the Primary Flight Display and Navigation Displays actually worked.  I wasn't really prepared for that and hadn't studied some of the procedures we were doing, but actually seeing the instruments in action helped me to better understand some of what I had been reading.  It also helped me to realize that I'm going to like these new displays a lot.  Everything I need is on that one screen.  It took at least six instruments on my old airplane to display the same amount of information.

Now I'm off for two days...although "off" doesn't accurately describe how I'll be spending my weekend.  I'll spend the next two days reviewing what I learned this week and cementing some of the procedures and checklists I've put to memory.  I have four more days of ground school next week, two more days off, then a few days of review before I'll be tested over my systems and emergency procedures knowledge.  

That's it for now.  The closer I get to exam time, the less time I'll have for updates, but I'll post as I can.  Thanks for checking in.

Preparing for an Airline Ground School

Getting ready to sip from the proverbial fire hose...

If you've been reading along, then you know that I've been an MD80 First Officer for a very long time...much longer than intended on a plane I didn't actually intend to fly.  Someone I know and love dearly told me not to stay on the 80 too long or I might decide I liked it.  Well...it's far too late for that, because I've decided I like the old girl a lot.  She may be old, but she is reliable and I am exceedingly comfortable in her cockpit.  However, for reasons discussed in previous posts, I recently decided the timing was right for a change.  Boeing 737-800 First Officer training started earlier this week.

School never came easy for me.  That's not to say I didn't make good grades, but it always seemed to take twice the effort to produce the same grades as my peers.  During Junior High and High School, my next door neighbor and I were in the same grade.  It quickly became apparent that I was rarely halfway through with my schoolwork by the time my buddy was out playing ball and enjoying what was left of the day.  Once in college, I did not pursue an aviation degree because I wanted something in another field to fall back on.  So far I haven't needed my fallback position and I hope I never will, but studying subject matter in college that didn't really interest me made for a long four year educational experience.  With all this in mind, one might think I would choose a career field that didn't require quite so much continued education, but once bitten by the aviation bug, there was no turning back.

Airline ground school would not prove to be easier than any of my previous educational endeavors, but for the first time ever, I was studying something I actually liked and cared about...that was a small distinction that made a huge difference.  Even so, finding a way to retain such an enormous amount of information in such a short amount of time was daunting to say the least.

If you aren't an auto mechanic, this might put it into perspective.  Walk out to the garage and lift the hood to your car.  What is all that stuff? Crawl around on the ground and look at all the mechanics under the car.  Lots of stuff under there too!  An auto mechanic knows what all that stuff is...I don't.  A mechanic knows what every component is and how it works.  He could take it all apart and put it back together again.  He knows what happens if one component stops working properly and how it interacts with all the other stuff under the hood.  Most importantly, he's able to diagnose a problem when the car it isn't working properly and fix it.  I'm that guy who lifts the hood on a broken-down car and stares at the engine like I know what I'm looking at.  I never do, but when it comes to the airplane I fly, I have to know what all that "stuff" is and how it works.

I've been through a number of airline ground schools over the years, EMB-120 First Officer, ATR-72 First Officer, EMB-120 Captain, Boeing 737 Captain, Boeing 727 Flight Engineer, MD80 First Officer and now Boeing 737 First Officer.  You probably noticed Boeing 737 Captain on the list and might think training as a First Officer now would be no big deal, but I initially trained on a 737-200 almost 20 years ago.  Not only have I long since flushed everything I knew about that jet, but the 737-800 I'm training on now is a significantly different animal.  I'll be starting from scratch.

I've come up with a process that works for me, and the name of the game is preparation.  I see guys showing up for ground school with their class materials still in the shrink rap they came in, putting their books together and perusing a thing or two before the first day of class...completely unprepared.  That isn't me.  In a perfect world, I could sit down on that first day and pass an oral exam.  Many would claim that's overkill, but it's what works for me and it turns a potentially stressful month long course into a much more enjoyable and productive experience.

Unfortunately, there have been a few schools over the years that caught me by surprise or for one reason or another and did not present an opportunity for preparation.  My first airline ground school was EMB-120 Brasilia First Officer training at Atlantic Southeast Airlines.  Not only was this my first, but with only two weeks notice of new hire training and no way to obtain a copy of the manuals, I was one of those guys unwrapping his books on the first day.  To make matters worse, the Brasilia was a complicated airplane, far more complex than anything I'd ever flown before...training was a challenge.

While in Brasilia school, I spent a few days studying with my father, who was a Boeing 767 Captain at the time.  I vividly remember his comments after spending an afternoon reviewing the electrical system.  "If you can learn this airplane, you'll never have trouble with another ground school."  I spent every waking moment with my nose in the books and my lack of preparation resulted in a generally unpleasant experience.

This time was different.  I thought long and hard before bidding the 737 and started preparation before I had officially been awarded the position.  One thing that made that possible was online Computer Based Training (CBT).  Through a website only accessible by pilots working for my airline, I was able to access all the books and training materials I would need to complete the course.  The CBT included 9 days of online lessons that covered every system on the plane and I was able to supplement that information with online manuals.  The company has since provided me with the shrink wrapped books of past schools, but I wasn't allowed to have them until I actually had a class date...by then I didn't really need them, but they look good on the shelves in my office and as a relative "old guy" I still prefer paper manuals to those available on my company issued iPad.

Class started on Wednesday and showing up prepared has already reduced my stress level.  During my Brasilia training at ASA, I often felt like my head might explode.  I constantly felt as if I couldn't possibly put one more morsel of information in my head without doing irreparable harm.  Mental melt down was a constant possibility and the old term "drinking from a fire hose" took on new meaning.

Stay tuned...the blog will probably look a little different in the coming weeks.  School will be my first priority, but I'll try to make regular...if not shorter...posts about my progress.  I should be out on the line by mid-May, posting comments and pictures from another cockpit.