A day in the life of a very shorthaul Co-pilot under linetraining
Inspired of all the posts, I feel I want to contribute. We've now seen 737, 777 longish haul and Exec Jet ops. How about really really shorthaul in a Saab 340?
Day starts with check in at 14:00 L. I'm new to the game so I show up one hour early to make shure I can really go into the briefing items such as Notams and weather. Print out the flightplans and calculate the minimum fuel. Planned trip is a triangle leg to HEL-SVL-VRK-HEL. Training Captain is the same as the day before and we discuss yesterdays flight which was a 6 leg nightmare. We recall items that I need to focus on for this flight. Our cabin crew shows up and we call a crewbus. Then we're off to the buisness terminal to go through security. This isn't a good solution but it works ok in the summer weather. While the captain and cabin crew talk in finnish I figure I'll need to buy proper winterboots if this is to be done in slushy finnish snow.
Finally at the aircraft I head straight into the F/D and check that the radar is off. Cdr does the walk around and I start with the preflight checklist. The plane has flown previously during the day and I need not go through all the tests. The avionics comes on and I pick up the departure ATIS. For some reason I go through it several times before I get all information. I take the temperature and go into the gross mass chart and calculate the performance for rwy 22L int ZD. Performance turns out to be way above structural limits and this tends to be the case at HEL in favourable weather. Conditons are within the quick reference limits so I take the lowest power setting and jot down the mass limitation and then I put away the GMC's.
By now the Cdr has entered and made himself comfortable in the left seat. He has anticipated the departure and allready set up the navaids and FMS. Kind, although I somewhere feel this was my job... I call for clearance and get the filed route without any deviations except for the initial climb wich limits us up to 4000 feet.
Passengers step out of the bus as we are on remote stand and we switch on the seatbelt sign to wake up our CC. We run through the crew at their stations checklist and I listen to the Cdr's briefing as he will act as PF the first two legs. We call ground for startup and taxi. The taxi clearance is uncomplicated. I know this on forehand and I do not take out the pinto to write it down. We get to the correct hold line but forget the off block...
I also forget to check the X-ponder setting in the navaid check. Cdr points this out and I try to make a mental note. Cdr does his take off briefing and I listen. We line up after a Finnair airbus that just landed and PF does the las call: Heading, indicated, FD, Ready? Ready, Timing.
I call outocoarsen armed and set the power upon PF call.
Some hundred feet after the gear has been retracted we get a heading and we abandon the SID. I struggle to set climb power in the correct order. Cdr helps me out and once the climb checklist is completed I review the order of setting climbpower. We do, apart from many other Saab 340 operators, turn of the autocoarsen before doing anything else. This is to avoid any prop from autocoarsening incase one torque should for some reason drop below 60%, which has happened to a few unlucky Saab pilots. Then we, turn down the CTOT and put on both bleeds. After this, we reduce PRPM and set the torques according to the chart.
Cruise proceeds inevitably and I try to keep up with the paperwork. Since its a triangle leg I try to do the next leg paperwork which is basically remaining fuel statement for the rodos loadsheets that we get on the outstations. We have a laugh at Tampere ctrl which has to reclear heaps of flights bound for stockholm as the Arlanda radar went down during the morning. Air traffic seems to be in chaos on the FIR border.
The descent starts and due to some explanations from the Cdr about some operational related topic, he gets a little high on profile. I use the first of the three excuses we learnt on the company conversion: "My fault captain". It disarms the situation somewhat and he opts for a downwind on the opposing runway.
Nice landing and short taxi to the apron. After landing and preparing left immediately. Then shut down the right one at the stand. Once the door is open the PAX trod out and allmost immediately the next batch comes out of the terminal. Turnaround is made all within 14 minutes. My head is aching from quick calculations, although they are horribly simple. The thought of this makes me feel slightly simple aswell...Next leg is to VRK, just accros the pond. Cdr decides to do thisone as PF aswell because of the short distance and high workload. We take off and scream across the lake, leveling out at FL60. Although I managed to work ahead on the previous leg, I'm once again faced with a mountain of paperwork that has to be done before landing. I race through the climb checklist and then I listen to the approach brief whilst completing the fuel statement. Descent checklist is called for and I do this and then I call the VRK office and inform them of our arrival in 3 minutes and amount of fuel. As it turns out, we touch down a mere 11 minutes from take off and block on at 16 minutes from block off. Tight.
We pick up a couple of pax and head off to HEL. This time I act as PF and I try to remember in which order to do the briefings. I look at the flightplan and set the initial course on the EHSI. We do a tailwind departure and I brief it as a flaps 15 T/O. The flight proceeds at a much slower pace and I get a chance to breathe and ask about things that we did but which I'm unclear on as to why. Sounds odd perhaps, but comming from a pawnee into a JAR 25 plane, everything is new and I really find it hard to keep all the items taken up on the company and TR course, fresh in mind.
The landing resembles more a positive arrival than a greaser. I'm happy though because I didn't use up 300 metres by pointless floating. The after landing checklist goes smoothely by heart and the extensive runway and taxiway system gives me ample time to read through the lists thouroghly and to prepare the left. We park and read through the last list to the last point. By now the temp in the cockpit is horribly high and we head out onto terra firma. Crewbus drops us off at the hangar and we head for the office where we fill out training reccords, sort out all the fuel reciepts, flightplans and loadsheets together with other additional info. We debrief the shift and conclude that I'm progressing on profile. Little bits here and there that need to be fixed. There is still a lot of time to rectify the faults before basecheck so I decide to spend the afternoon NOT worrying about my future. We check out and I head off towards the terminal in the hopes of catching an overbooked flight towards stockholm. I succed. My baggage doesn't, but thats a different story.
Regards/ LnS