Another Milestone Achieved!

We have now been in Doha 2 months already and we are another step closer to flying the real thing!

Since the last post we have finished all of the introductions, ground training and most importantly we finished and passed the simulator tests.

First thing we did was the first aid training. Although the flight crew are unlikely to need to use the first aid training in flight, it is a good skill to have as it could mean the difference between life and death if you happened to be in the right place at the right time. 

The CRM (crew resource management) was split into 2 days and for us we were joined by Cabin Crew. The pilots were split up and we were paired with the cabin crew. We had to introduce our partners which was a good way of getting to know a little bit about them. Over the 2 days we had various tasks and challenges to show us the importance of being a team and working together. 

The ditching course was in Bahrain so we got on a normal domestic flight in the morning and then went to the Gulf Air facility at the airport. For the first part of the day we were basically acting as passengers in an A320 cabin simulator and we were observing the cabin crew carrying out their procedures for identifying and extinguishing fires which were simulated by lights and a lot of smoke. After they had finished their fire training we were allowed to jump down the slides. Now I know why they say to wear jeans for this bit, my bum got rather warm from the friction. After that we got in a large raft on the floor so they could show us the equipment on board the raft like locator beacon and roof to name a couple. After that we got in a raft in the pool which we then had to jump in and then get back on the raft from in the pool. The water was rather chilly! 

A couple days later we had more classroom training but this was specific for the A320 flight crew. We had to do 2 days of performance training which was basically learning how to do take off and landing calculations both manually and using the laptops which you are given for each aircraft. Then we had a day for low visibility operations and radio navigation course which is not normally required until we have done 4 months of flying but for us they changed it so that we do it now. After the ground school we were required to complete some e-learning courses on the internet which took ages and had a test at the end.

Then came the simulator training. The first sim was with a stand-in captain because we are not qualified to do low visibility operations, so we were just there to monitor our captains and make sure they do what they are suppose to do. This was the first sim since June and so I naturally felt a little rusty. The next few sims were radio navigation and hard landings. The hard landings was quite fun, the instructor basically made the plane bounce when he landed and then he gave us control to recover by either landing or take off and go around for another approach depending on the situation. The next 2 sims were the official tests for the QCAA where we had to fly a normal flight and somewhere along the route you would have a failure of some kind to see how you deal with it. These are done with either a captain due for his yearly check or a stand-in captain. I had a stand-in captain which was really helpful when I was unsure of a few things. We worked well together and it was good to do a real flight even though we were the first test subjects for the new syllabus of cold weather operations. Every 6 months it changes so that a new area is covered to keep pilots current. After the flight, I was re-positioned to carry out some manoeuvres and some more failures/bomb threats. My final sim was the pre base training which was circuits around Doha airport and the instructor changed the weather settings for each approach. This was fun and I enjoyed it.

The next steps are for me to complete my base training in the real aircraft where I have to do 12 take offs and landings. I also have 5 observation flights coming up before I am put in the deep end on the right hand seat where I have to monitor the captain and do the radio calls for so many flights before I am let loose at landing and take off with passengers. I think the next few weeks are going to go past so fast it will be a blur. Lots of studying ahead as we are questioned on each flight to make sure we are up to speed on the procedures and aircraft knowledge.

Haven't done much exploring but have a few pictures to share. Next blog post will be in a few weeks when I get a chance after my first few pilot monitoring flights.

Funky designs in West Bay

Lagoona Mall towers

The towers at the entrance to the Pearl

Base training in the Sim

Jazz club

The tallest building in Qatar at night time.

The one ditching exercise

The Qatar subsidiary just will be going back to Qatar colours. 

Amazing Italian we found!!

West Bay from a distance

We Made It

So we made it to Qatar!

2 months sounds like a long time and I know it is a long time to wait for a blog post because I have waited for blog posts myself when following previous cadets. The 2 months went so fast! A lot happened in those 2 months, like catching up with family and friends which I haven't seen for a long time. I also did some shopping trying not to spend too much of my mum's money in the process and I went to visit a friend in Zurich for 5 days after I had worked a week at Farnborough International Airshow.

The first couple weeks seemed to go really slow, I was catching up on rest, trying to pack my stuff away from moving back home and I was also helping my dad out to do various tasks. I then worked at Farnborough Airshow to help CTC out to demonstrate an A350 flat panel training device. We were demonstrating the device to potential buyers on the trade days. A lot of important people visited on the trade days even if I didn't know who they were. On the public days I helped out on the CTC stand which was right on the flying line and had a lot of passing traffic. I had a great week and was super tired by the end of it, I hope that those that I gave advice to pursue their dreams as it really is worth the hard work and commitment!

During my time off I had all of the vaccinations associated with the locations I'll be flying to. I had a total of 8 injections and 2 blood tests which is a lot considering I don't really like needles. I also had a lot of paperwork to fill out ready for my arrival in Doha.

After leaving parties and preparations, the fly out day was upon us. The last week went so fast. It was hard to believe that I had just checked in with a one way ticket to the desert with 70kg of checked in baggage hold and 7kg hand luggage. Thankfully the send off was quick so wasn't too emotional. We started our journey by having some cultural Lebanese food in the terminal to get into the middle eastern zone and a great meal it was!

The plane was late but it didn't really matter for us as we didn't have a connection to make. This was my first time flying on Qatar Airways and first impression was how clean everything was, completely different to the easyJet flight I was on the week previous where you had to wipe your feet of food to get off the plane. The flight went seamless and after being met by the company accommodation people we were taken to collect our bags. We were then given our welcome pack and driven to our accommodation. The weather going from the terminal and car park was intense! The heat was made worse by how humid it was even though it was past midnight it was still uncomfortable. We got to our new home and we were very impressed! We were given a 3 bedroom apartment between 2 of us and it is so spacious.

After a day to settle in, we had the start of the induction process. We started off with welcomes and introductions to the other 12 candidates on our batch which would be starting on different aircraft to us. Most were there to start as first officers on the Boeing 777. 

These inductions include showing us around the various buildings that Qatar Airways are in as well as the operations centre for the global network (where all the magic happens). We also had our uniform fitting which was exciting. Finally got to wear the hat which I have been waiting to do since I was young. Other introductions included opening a bank account, safety and emergency procedures, learning how to operate a door, local air law exam, fire training and organising resident permit which will allow us to do a lot more like get mobile contracts and the all important liquor licence.

Coming up we have first aid training, crew resource management, ground school, ditching in Bahrain where we jump down slides and swim in a pool. We still have about a month and a half before we jump in a real plane and do our 12 take offs and landings. 

I'll talk more about adventures in the next post as there won't be so much to talk about from the training aspect. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:-

Barry Island

Worms Head, Gower

Colour changing lampposts on the way from the airport Doha

Our living area for 2 of us

West Bay Sky Line

Condom shaped tower

Our Hotel Lobby

Qatar Airways Tower 3

Our Lovely pool

Training to use a door

Dive pool at the national training centre

Our smoke hood for the training.

Under seat electrical fire simulation

Gondola at the 2nd largest mall in Qatar

Torch Hotel, Aspire Zone, Qatar's tallest hotel standing at 300m

The stadium being built for 2022

The floor rotates 360degrees in 1hr 30mins

The water sports building. 

A320 Type Rating

The advanced phase of simulator training consisted more of the same in the intermediate phase but refining the techniques and putting in more complex failures combined with flying short routes like between Leeds and Glasgow. In this short space of time we were given a situation like another bomb on board or smoke to deal with and for those 2 situations you basically need to land ASAP! There isn't much time to really brief a normal approach so you just brief the essentials and get the thing on the ground. Other failures included starting engines using different techniques because the apu was inop or the starter was faulty or even if you are doing a hot start there is a technique used. The advanced phase was also consolidation of the things we had learnt in intermediate phase like flying with single engine and then unusual attitude recoveries preparing us for our licence skills test.

I found the advanced phase the most challenging of all of the training which wasn't helped by a few 0615 starts in the simulator meaning I needed to be out of bed by 4am! I think I ended up having 5 or 6 early's by the time I finished advanced phase.

Before we knew it, our licence skills test was upon us! There were only 10 details before the big test. The licence skills test for the Qatar MPL is carried out by a training captain from Qatar so has no relation to CTC at all. We turned up for the big day not knowing what to expect and had been revising all possible scenarios he could chuck at us. He made us feel at ease a little during the briefing by discussing the main things we will be doing during the flight. I was up first with my sim partner monitoring what I was doing and doing the radio calls. The pressure of knowing it was a test got to me a bit and I thought that throughout my flight, I hadn't done particularly well. I can't even remember what my failure was now as there was so much going on. I had to put that half of the test behind me and do the best job I could do as pilot monitoring for my sim partners turn to fly. I certainly did a better job at monitoring than I did flying. I felt me and my partner worked well together. 5 hours later we had finished our test and shut down the plane. Thankfully we were put out of our misery as soon as we got out of our seats and congratulated us on our flight. 

Our debrief went well, he was very pleased with how our flight went and the main pointers he had for us were basically things that Qatar actually do instead of what we had been taught. This is because there is a slight disconnect between CTC and Qatar, new information is slow to reach CTC so we are left learning old procedures. However, saying that, there is a new training manager at CTC who came from Qatar earlier this year and he is now updating all the procedures to fall inline with current Qatar procedures which will be good for future people coming through. 

On my way home I had organised a test drive in a few new Range Rovers to treat myself and get a feel of what I'd like to get in Qatar. The test drive didn't make my decision any easier because they were both really nice vehicles! Other things that happened over the last few weeks were that the flying Scotsman (steam train for those who don't know) came through town so I, along with thousands of other people stood in the rain to get a glimpse at it going past. Another big event that happened in Southampton was watching the worlds largest cruise ship (Harmony Of The Seas) leave on it's maiden voyage. The ship is huge! I went to Portsmouth with my parents for a couple days to see all the ships 

So that's it for me at CTC, I will be helping out at a couple shows for CTC but other than that, my next blog post will be after I have moved to Qatar on 14th August. Between now and then I will be busy trying to sort all the paperwork, vaccinations, medical renewals, deciding what I would like to take with me and of course catching up with family and friends before the big day.

Supercharged 5.0l sport....dream to drive and the growl is ace!

Real smoke in the flight deck simulation...scary stuff!

My workstation trying to revise all SOP's and possible failures for LST

Worlds largest cruise ship

Wandering at Nash Point with my mum.

A view of the centre console from the upper panel

Flying Scotsman

Portsmouth Dockyard

Intermediate Phase Complete

Sorry it's been a while, there hasn't been much to report. Another milestone has passed, we have now finished the intermediate stage and only have one phase left to complete before flying the real thing.

Before the intermediate stage simulators we had to do 2 and a half weeks of type rating ground school and 2 exams. These exams are the same exams that any pilot wanting to get type rated on the A320 type fleet would have to do. These 2 and a half weeks consisted of a lot of late nights to try and learn all of the content required. The type rating course is self taught using an ipad app which has a lot of different sections and you just work your way through them at your own pace. We then had an instructor on hand to go through questions with us and run through the virtual flight deck simulator sessions with us. It's safe to say that after the ground school, we had all had enough and our brains were bursting with so much knowledge that it was hard to recall small specific details on demand. It was a good job we had a few days off before our first simulator session to be able to consolidate and prepare for it. 

The first of our 10 simulator session began and it was clear to see that both me and my new sim partner hadn't been in a simulator for a while, for me it was about a month since I was in one. Overall we both learnt a lot and progress was made. The intermediate phase is similar to the basic phase of flying the aircraft except you start using the automatics more and more. We also start programming the Airbus computer to tell it where we want to go and all the little bits of information you need to get from A to B like optimum altitudes. We also get full motion on for all of our flights from now on. For me, I initially took a while to trust the automatic systems as I am so used to flying manually and trusting my own ability. When you start to see that the automatic systems are not there to try and kill you, it does alleviate some pressure when you are in a high pressure situation. That's not to say you put the automatics on and forget about them, they need constant monitoring to make sure they are doing what you want them to do. Also, an issue could arise and the automatics drop out at which point you need to know what is going on so that you can quickly take control. Just as you start getting familiar with the Airbus automatics, the instructors start failing systems and putting the aircraft in different configurations to demonstrate scenarios. By our test flight we had a bomb on board and dual hydraulic failures to deal with. 

The next phase is more of the same where we fly routes and then we get given more severe failures. I'm quite looking forward to the smoke in the flight deck sim session where the flight deck will actually fill up with smoke to the extent that you will barely be able to see the instruments in front of you. Scary to think that we have 10 sim sessions left to be able to become competent enough to fly the aircraft for real and to iron out any procedures that we haven't quite learnt properly before out skills test on the 11th and final simulator session. The skills test is carried out by a training captain from Qatar Airways and has no relation to CTC, so the only feedback we get is from the previous courses ahead of us. 

On the exploring front a have done a little bit more exploring back at home with some friends around the Brecon Beacons. Other than that not much has happened. The next blog instalment will be after my skills test hopefully with some good news that we have all been working so hard at over the last year and half.

Visit to Warwick

Epic ride at Thorpe Park

Visit to Big Pit

Trek up Pen-Y-Fan