Getting Started

In just over 2 weeks I start on the first step of something I've wanted to do my almost my entire life, become an airline pilot. I thought I'd start a blog so that my friends and family could keep track on how I am doing and the process it takes to go from being sat in the back as a passenger to sitting in the right hand seat and flying a commercial airliner in around 20 months. On Friday 13th September (lucky for some!) I'll arrive at Oxford Aviation Academy to start my first step on this journey. I'm feeling very nervous about the challenge that's ahead of me and the shear amount of work there is to fit in but at the same time I'm very excited and looking forward to the end result of having a career that involves flying aircraft around the world.

I'll try to update this regularly when time allows and there's something interesting to update with. For the meantime I'll be finishing off my time at my current job (which after almost 5 years there I am sad to be leaving and will miss everyone I've worked, I've learnt so much in my time there that will be invaluable going forwards) and look forward to 13th September when I'll start this next chapter of my life.

So what's involved?
The training course is full time with a lot of elements to fit in, for those that are unfamiliar with what's involved to get a professional pilots licence I thought I'd quickly detail the main sections of the training course.

Ground School: The first stage of training is a 6 months of classroom based study for the 14 modules of the ATPL (Air Transport Pilots Licence) with 14 exams. To make life a little easier the ground school is split into 2 terms with 7 modules taught (and 7 exams taken) in each. I will admit this is going to be a bit of a shock for me since it's been over 5 years since I was last in full time education!

Basic Flight Training: For the next part of the course it's out to Phoenix, Arizona for 20 weeks for the basic flight training. This involves 110 hours in a single engine propeller aircraft (probably the Piper Archer) followed by 10 hours in a flight simulator and finally 10 hours in a twin engine propeller aircraft (either the Piper Seminole or Seneca). After completing all of this I'll then take my CPL (Commercial Pilots Licence) skills test and return to the UK as a licensed pilot. All the flying at the stage of training is VFR (Visual Flight Rules) which basically means flying outside of cloud where you can see the horizon, there's a little more to it than that but it'll do as a simple explanation.

Piper Archer - Image from www.cae.com

Intermediate Flight Training: This stage teaches you how to fly on sole reference to instruments with no view of the outside world. It's split between around 30 hours in flight simulators and 20 hours in real aircraft (again a twin engine prop aircraft) finishing with the IR (Instrument Rating) skills test. The simulators can be set up with whatever weather the instructors desire for the training needs that day, for the aircraft training screens are used to block the view to the outside world so that you have no choice but to fly on instruments (the instructor can still see outside for safety reasons however).

JOC/MCC: The Jet Orientation Course with Multi-Crew Co-operation, this section of the course comprises of 44 hours in a 737-400 flight simulator learning how to fly jet and also how to work as part of a crew in a modern flight deck environment. From what I've heard the lessons start out simple enough with normal flights between airports as you'd expect in a normal airline environment. It soon starts to ramp up though as systems failures, ATC requests and other elements are introduced to increase the workload and teach you to effectively prioritise tasks to ensure the flight continues safely.

At the end of this stage I'll have a licence which is officially the CPL(MEIR), with MCC & ATPL theory credit... for simplicity it's referred to as the fATPL or Frozen Air Transport Pilots Licence.

After all this is complete it'll be off to an airline to complete a type rating and base and line training, although I'll go into these in more details nearer the time.