Again I wasn’t rushed off my feet. With the SAR standbye it meant that you only flew every third day. For the co-pilots it was not a good appointment. They were all self improvers and, as a first officer, hours gained are most important. In normal offshore environment they would expect to have the requisite hours to obtain a command after five or six years. Here they were only getting ten to fifteen hours a month. One of them told me that after three years he might have enough hours to get a job. It was a three week stint and I averaged less than an hour a day.
I still had my Chinese licence to do so after that I went back to China. Two of us went to CAAC at Guangzhou and did the general ATPL exam. They must have put the contract out to CASA because the exam was so similar to the ones I had taken before; a computer with multiple choice answers. The questions were similar but the answers had been translated from Chinese and some answers were all right and some were all wrong. In this case you called the invigilator over and he told you which one to select. Again, like the Australian programme it flagged up a pass when you had finished.
The first hurdle being over then came the flight check. One of out junior captains had been nominated as the company flight checker. He hadn’t any training as a trainer or checker so he sat on the jump seat whilst my Aussie checker ran another test and then he signed me off.
I then had to do an English Comprehension Test. All expat pilots had to do this even if they were English. The reason why the test had to be taken was that English was the only language allowed in a mixed crew cockpit and some of the South American pilots had severe shortcomings in this department. The test was to be held at Xiaoshangou, close to Chengdu, as there was only one person who could mark the test and that was where he was. Everything was arranged and I was at the company awaiting transport to take me to the airport when the message came through that it had been cancelled for that month. The examiner had decided to go on holiday. Nothing could be done about it so a couple of days later I flew to the Solomons disappointed that I had not finally cleared up my Chinese licence.
I had been a away from home for a couple of months now so it was time to bring the wife out. Always, everywhere I worked, I would bring my wife to see how it was where I lived and worked. I arranged her flight out via Brisbane giving her a full briefing of where to go at Brisbane and she arrived in Honiara on time and in the right aeroplane. I had been there for a week and I planned a week in Honiara and then a week for her on the Brisbane Gold coast. I knew a week was enough because I know how she appreciates foreign countries. I was right. She summed up the Solomons on the first night with.
“Thank Christ I’m only here for a week.”
Strangely this time on completion I was routed Honiara-Brisbane-Sydney-HK instead of Brisbane-Singapore-HK and we met in Sydney terminal as she was enroute to the UK.
Back in China the priority was to clear up the Chinese exam. Whilst waiting for the English test I did the Law Exam. This was a farce. The examiner didn’t speak English I didn’t speak Chinese so one of out senior captains acted as interpreter. Basically I was prompted through the exam. Another hurdle crossed.
Then the time came to fly up to do the exam. I was accompanied by one of our Chinese captains who was doing the same exam as he wanted a Chinese ICAO licence and this exam counted as Level 4. We flew to Chengdu and he organised the taxi to Xiaoshangou and the hotel.
Xiaoshangou was a major PLA Air Force transport training base. The days when the Chinese aviations companies could cherry pick their students had gone. The PLA were now getting some seriously advanced equipment and training costs were being budgeted. They too required English in the cockpit because the Air Force was going international so this was where the test was held.
I had been to Sichuan before. I had friends there so I was familiar with Chongqing, Chengdu and Luzhao. When we went out for lunch we came to this small restaurant. The menu was in Chinese, English not spoken so I asked for my favourite Sichuan dish; Sichuan Boiled Beef.
It is easy to do. A handful of bruised chillies, a handful of bruised cloves of garlic, a handful of finely sliced beef plus a leaf or two Chinese cabbage or choy sum all boiled together for about fifteen minutes. It’s quite spicy. Captain Fei was not from Sichuan and he looked at it in horror. Even the kitchen staff came out not believing that this gweilo could manage it; but I did, easily.
The next day I did the exam. It was an ergonomical disaster. During the vocal bit you were supposed to wait until a blip thing counted down before you started speaking. I wasn’t told so half of mine was not recorded. At the end the machine counted down and I had FAILED. Do not worry, said the invigilator, we shall review it. So they did and two days later came the message that I had passed. I had, at sixty six, got a Chinese ATPL(H).
