AQC - Week 3

For the last week of AQC, the remaining 4 flights were all flown manually. The first 2 flights were a review of the previous weeks profiles (take-off, approaches, landings and single engine work), however this time without the automatics. For me, I found the 737-300 quite easy to fly manually as it just sits at the attitude you set and does what you want it to; its sheer size and weight clearly helps it from getting knocked about in the air, compared to the props we’ve been flying. I found, the most challenging part of manual flight is when operating with a single-engine – a lot, and I mean a lot of rudder and precise control is required.

The remaining 2 flights were LOFT exercises. Both mine and Jonny’s flights went really well and we managed to land all safely so was a pretty good result really. Fortunately there were no engine failures on the last flight but I did have a passenger suffer a cardiac arrest and had a drug smuggler on board, so a diversion was required.

After our last flight, we got an AQC report summary from our instructor, which me and Jonny were really happy with. Now the whole 3 weeks get reviewed by the training manager and we should get his report in the next week. After that we then get passed onto ARL, the company responsible for airline pilot placement, and we will all be hopefully entering the holdpool.

So that is the end of the 18 month CTC Wings course for the 8 of us on the AQC course: Jonny, Tom, Christian, Sean, Ben, Ross, Tessa and myself. Now there is just the wait for an airline job. Recent news has suggested a positive outlook for the months ahead, so with any luck it won’t be too long.

For now though, thanks to everyone who has read my blog over the last year. All being well, I will continue the blog when I commence training with an airline. In the meantime, if anyone has any temporary jobs going I’m open to all offers…..

Groundschool....where it all began