Hours, hours, hours - airlines need pilots and pilots need lot of flight hours to be eligible. But does it always make sense?

I've logged about 700 hours as captain on the B737 by now. I've come to feel very comfortable with the aircraft - the flight hours have brought more confidence to predict what the airplane will do and what it won't.

It is particularly in the approach phase where the feel of the aircraft is important. This is because we try to descend with idle power as much as possible to save fuel. In such situation you need to have a good understanding of how fast the airplane will eventually decelerate to reach the maximum flap and landing gear speed at just the right time and distance.

If you come in too fast, you will have to make a go-around. If you come in too slow or low initially, you need to add power at some stage. While that is a safe way to approach, it is not very time and fuel efficient. So we try to balance and feel the situation ourselves to make a nice and efficient, safe approach for landing. We have just witnessed two unfortunate accidents (Moscow, Miami) that both seem to have a lot to do with too much speed/energy at landing. RIP.

Looking at the requirements that many airlines set for their pilots, captains at least - they seem very high for some airlines, even to the point of unreasonable. Yet the airlines are struggling to find pilots. Some airlines (or maybe it is the insurance companies) seem to think that flight hours are the only things that make you a safe pilot. Unfortunately this is sometimes far from the truth. I've seen pilots with 10000 flight hours but still with poor skills. And vice versa.

It is not only the hours that count, it is your personal aptitude, training, number of flights and kind of flying you have done.  Take Ryanair, for instance, they require 2000 hours on an aircraft weighing 30 tons. This rules out most turboprop pilots from applying to Ryanair. However, having been a turboprop pilot, I can safely say that those are the guys that can actually fly an airplane: 4-5 sectors per day, demanding conditions and less automation. So why does Ryanair not like these pilots?? Particularly, as the manual flying skills have become more highly regarded lately - using automation is not the only thing you need to master as an airline pilot. And even so, do you really need 2000 hours to master a sophisticated FMS that is only found on bigger airplanes?

Imagine a long haul pilot collecting 40 flight hours on a tour and maybe never even touching the controls during the 40 hours because of being a relief pilot. Still, this pilot soon has that 2000 hours of heavy ac time. But is he/she really a better pilot after all that when it comes to actually controlling the airplane? Compared with the guy who takes off and lands a turboprop at the controls twice a day, still logging only less than 5 hours of flight time?

  

Flying the Boeing after the lighter and slower ATR-turboprop, is it really so much more difficult?

My first six months at airBaltic have gone fast. I have already logged about 500 hours flying the line on the B737, which is a good start. I have also managed to survive without any major problems; the Boeing has proved to be a very reliable workhorse and fortunately I have learned to control it without big issues.

At London Gatwick, getting ready to fly back east.

 

Comparing with my previous aircraft, the ATR-500 turboprop, the B737 is about 40000 kg heavier, faster and has more sophisticated systems (even if it is an older type). For instance, the ATR did not have an Auto Throttle, which automatically adjusts the thrust lever position to maintain the airspeed selected by the pilot. On the ATR, we had to adjust the power manually, which made the workload a bit higher during the approach. Moreover, the Boeing also has a vertical navigation capability, which means that the aircraft will automatically fly a vertical path that has been programmed into the Flight Management System. On the ATR there was just a vertical guidance, but to follow it the pilot had to actively control the aircraft. So basically flying the heavier and faster Boeing is in some ways ways easier than flying the ATR, which is contrary to popular belief.

The front office of the B737 Classic. Oldie but goldie. 

In fact, some airlines, like Ryanair, frown on pilots with turboprop experience. I have to ask why?? The turboprop guys fly a lot of sectors and do not spend that much time on the flight level doing nothing. They fly with less automation and often in more challenging weather. They are the pilots who can fly the aircraft, not just manage the systems.

Of course, if Ryanair wants systems managers and not stick-and-rudder pilots, it is one way to go. But looking at the latest accidents, better stick-and-rudder basic manual flying skills might have saved the day.

And coming back to the airplane weight. Ryanair is currently struggling to find new pilots but at the same time they have a requirement of 1000 hours on an aircraft weighing more than 30 tons. So pilots with experience from business jets, turboprops, military jets are all out. If I think about my first flights on the Boeing (which usually weighs around 50 tons at take-off), I didn't find the bigger weight any issue at all. No runway overruns, no unstable approaches, no loss of control, not even near. My challenges have had to do with unlearning the previous aircraft and company procedures, but more about that in following blogs.

So what is it that extra special skill you get from flying aircraft more than 30 tons? Of course it is good experience, but is it really worth ruling out a whole lot of great pilots with experience on a little lighter aircraft? I mean, when you turn the autopilot knobs or punch the buttons on the FMS, the airplanes fly just the same whether they weigh 10 tons or 500 tons.

It is also "funny" how this industry is doing things like they've always been done. Take the level of automation, for instance. The larger the airplane, the more automation it has. That's the way it has always been and no question about it. It means that the guys flying the smaller commuter airplanes are often faced with higher workload during the approach than the pilots flying big planes. The thing is, the big boys might do the approach maybe five times a month, whereas the commuter guys fly (at the controls) the same amount of approaches in two days! And that is very tiring and you could really use some help from things like Auto Throttle or vertical navigation (VNAV). Still the big boys get all the gadgets! Of course, a large airplane is a lot easier to handle with all the automation, so in that sense it must be justified. But still.

The B737 Classic Primary Flight Display. This photo displays my personal ground speed record 584 knots (1082 km/h) in a strong tail wind. The green captions on the top are very important; they tell the automatic systems are doing. MCP SPD: the autothrottle is on and controlling speed selected by the pilot (the speed can alternatively be set by the Flight Management Computer). ALT HOLD: the autopilot is holding the selected altitude - this could alternatively be the vertical naviagation mode from the FMS (VNAV). LNAV: the airplane follows a the lateral path programmed into the FMS. CMD: autopilot is on.

What makes a good landing?

First real autumn weather has hit the Baltics. It is pouring rain all the way to the ground. Yesterday landed in a really gusty wind conditions, which is an integral part of the autumn flying. Wasn't the best landing I've done but the landing gear is still intact and the airplane touched down at the right spot. 

This is the thing: what actually makes a good landing? The passengers seem to judge the pilot by the smoothness of the landing. But the smooth landing is not always the safe landing. For instance, in my case, if I had tried to fine tune the landing by skimming a foot or two above the runway, I would have wasted a lot of runway and perhaps would have missed our turn off intersection (to make the taxi time as short as possible => to get the passengers to the gate as soon as possible).  Moreover, I would have given the wind and the gusts more time to blow our aircraft off the runway centreline. 

Therefore, it is much safer and operationally wiser to just make the airplane land (even quite hard) within the given touchdown zone and accept the fact that passengers might think that I am simply a bad pilot. That's what I think is part of being a professional pilot. Silky smooth touchdowns that take place half way down the runway should not occur at least in professional aviation. 

Of course, on a good day, even I can make a smooth landing and still land at the right spot. But sometimes you have to choose either safe or smooth and then there should be no doubt as to which way to go. In fact, at least the Boeing manual actually tells us not to make a very smooth touchdown. This is because some of the airplanes systems might get confused about whether the aircraft is in the air or on the ground. So, if a Boeing makes a firm landing, it is only because the pilot did things by the book!

Long time no write

Last time I wrote here I was still in ground school. Now I have been flying the line for two and a half months. Right now in a hotel room in Tallin - on a layover, which we have plenty.

I started my ground school in March and started flying in May. The simulator training was covered in two weeks and it was a very intense period. This was also because I was flying with another captain, so we had to learn the First Officer procedures as well. Talking about procedures, my company is using pretty much the Boeing procedures. Many new things and concepts came up, such as the system where we do a procedure by heart (e.g. After Takeoff Procedure) which after the corresponding checklist is completed by the Pilot Not Flying.

Perhaps the hardest thing for me was to learn that the go-around button was now replaced by the autothrottle disconnect switch. In all previous aircraft I've flown, the button under the thumb on the thrust lever was the go-around button, but not on the B737. Imagine the difficulty of learning to find the go-around button under your index finger and not your thumb! It meant that during my first go-arounds in the simulator I would disconnect the auto throttle every time, instead of setting the auto throttle and flight director in go-around mode.

Gotta go running now. Later....

1,5 years from biz jets to turboprops to Boeing

I decided to get back to blogging after a long while. The first and last time I wrote here before now was when I was still a biz jet captain flying VIP-charters around Europe, Middle-East, Africa and Asia.

A lot has happened since. I became a Safety and Compliance Monitoring Manager of the VIP-charter company. I was happy doing it for about a half a year and wanted to get out for twice as long. I missed flying because times were quite bad and there were not enough flights for me. The only thing I made fly were sheets of paper into the trash can.

So I took a job as a regional airline first officer with a fast tract to captain - with a starting salary of almost ⅓ of that of the previous job. But I got to fly - in about 14 months I flew more than 800 hours and did about 400 landings as pilot flying.

We flew mainly several short sectors per day which was fun. The people I worked with were fun too. The only thing that wasn't fun was the airplane. The ATR-72-500 really is a strange design with many weird and unique features. A demanding plane to fly and operate.  The prospect of flying that thing for maybe ten years without a chance of an upgrade just wasn't the ticket. They say that planes like the ATR do not need all the fancy automation as the big planes have, because they fly only short sectors. On the contrary! We flew 4-5 sectors per day, if all that repetition and workload is not the place for automation, then what is??

So when airBaltic in Latvia offered a 2-year contract flying the Boeing 737 as direct entry captain, typerating provided by the company, I didn't stop to think about it for too long.

So here I am, in Riga, Latvia, after the very first day as an airBaltic-employee. Today was a long one, company conversion training from nine to six, covering EFB, safety, security and other matters. The company seems to be taking care of things and us, which is nice. But they make us work hard.

The atmosphere is very relaxed and western. We are, after all, in an EU country and about 22 % of the staff are expats. Now I need a rest, another nine-to-six day tomorrow. Happy endings.