I can’t believe that it is already a year ago to this day since I completed
my last day of training at CTC, walking out of the simulator feeling proud that
I had completed all that training that I once dreamt about, and the hope that
a job would be not too far around the corner.
Now a year on, I have been with Flybe for 6 months and have accumulated
just short of 300 hours on the Q400 and am just 43 minutes (to be precise) away
from 500 flying hours in total. After passing the Flybe interview and sim check
in late January, I only had to wait a matter of weeks before starting my 2
month long company induction and type rating in Exeter.
The first month (March) was at Flybe’s training academy for
the induction and Q400 groundschool, which meant getting back into the books
for the exams (but this time without question bank!!!). It especially helped
having a great bunch of people on my course so we all supported each other to
pass first time. April was the challenging month. where we had over 40 hours in
the full-motion simulator learning how to fly the ‘Dash’, and dealing with the
problems and emergencies should they arise. Luckily the great trainers helped
with that and before we knew it, it was the beginning of May and the day that
we had all been waiting for – base training. With an instructor and an empty
aircraft, 3 of us flew from Birmingham to Doncaster Airport where we had to
demonstrate 6 take-off and landings; with the weather on our side, it made for
a brilliant and fun day out.
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| Licence Skills Test & Q400 Type Rating Complete |
After a week off, we then began our line training. This
involves around 2-3 weeks with a line training captain where we put together
everything we had learnt during groundschool and the simulator and applied it
to real life commercial operations. It was a tough few weeks, but by the end I felt
very confident ‘flying the line’. After completing much of my line training in
Manchester, at the beginning of June I began to fly out of my base in
Edinburgh. From Edinburgh we only really fly short routes within the UK. It
means we can do up to 6 sectors a day and get very good at time management (but
it means we don’t get much time for reading the newspaper and doing the crosswords!).
A couple of night stops we do, allows us to fly a bit further afield to Jersey
and Amsterdam, and positioning to other bases adds variety. As I have only been
flying during the summer so far, I’ve been quite fortunate not to have had that many bad weather
days (especially considering I’m based up in Edinburgh), however I’m
sure the next few months and a Scottish winter will soon sort that out.
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| UK Sunset |
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| Northern France after departing Jersey |
It has been a great start to my aviation career and would
advise anyone thinking about becoming a pilot, or to anyone who is currently
doing their training, it really is worth it in the end.
