I am currently preparing for an application to CTC Wings to embark on my career as an airline pilot. This is my first post on this forum and I look forward to integrating myself with this community.
I have been informed that a question I am likely to be asked in my interview is 'describe, in detail, a day in the life of a pilot'. I have begun researching this but it has been difficult to find a detailed schedule of an average day in the life of a short-haul pilot, at least as it will apply to me.
So I am asking if anybody can provide me with information on what a day as a short haul pilot looks like. Typically how many legs will you complete per day? How long are your layovers? How often do you have a chance to eat? How long are briefings and what do you normally cover in them? How long do pre-flight checks take, and what are the most common issues spotted in them? What kind of additional security measures are pilots subject to? And any other information that you'd be happy to share.
Ideally, I would like to know all the things you get up to from when you wake up, to when you get home.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to your replies
I earnt my stripes on short haul but thankfully fly medium to longhaul but nevertheless this is what I used to do.
When I was a newbie things took much much longer as I knew very little. Hence I had to allow a lot more time for proper planning. I would get up and have a look at metars, tafs for destination and alternate airports. Grab some notams for the same and see if there was anything unusual such as closed runways, airports, out of service approaches etc. Then a perusal of high level sig weather charts looking for turbulence areas, thunderstorms, cyclones prevailing jets or anything that might have an impact on your day. There are apps these days for your tablet or smart phone which make this a relatively painless task.
Once in work you would get into a "flow" from entering the ops room depending on how the flight information your company presents you. It will generally involve swiping in to let crew control know you have arrived and then looking through any company noticeboards before finding a seat and printing out the flight plans for the day. Much of this now is going electronic and is company specific so there may be little to no printing and only syncing to an ipad or efb.
I would then start working through the flight plans from start to finish. The weather and much of the notams should come as no surprise since you would have had a feel for them based on your review at home before going into work. Other things will pop up as they always do such as phone calls from the planners advising you to tear up the paperwork as they are refiling you for whatever reason. Slot restrictions which could ruin your dinner plans. There may be a tech issue on the aircraft which will require you to grab the MEL and check the implications and if its legal/sensible for despatch. Lots of things can crop up in the operations room before you even head out to the aircraft.
Once the captain has arrived and is happy with the paperwork and ordered fuel then you will head out. Its probably going to be your turn for a walk around - especially if its raining! A walk around is not nearly as complicated on a modern jet as it would have been on a cessna or suchlike. For a start nearly all of the systems are monitored electronically and any defects will be plain for all to see on the respective systems pages/ECAM etc. Still we go and kick the tyres looking for odd ball stuff such as bits hanging off, gear pins left in, doors/hatches left open, damaged panels, leaking fluids, tyre tread depth, brake pads. Any examination of wing or control surfaces is made harder by the height of the aircraft itself so apart from a check from a jetbridge or through the windows in the cabin its largely left to the engineers.
You will probably find that you will be in the cockpit 20-30 minutes prior to departure depending on the company policy. This will allow you enough time to set the aircraft up, program the fmgc, brief the other pilot on how the taxi and departure will be flown.
Legs flown in a day are airline specific. You are restricted by the number of hours you can legally fly in a day without rest so a flight from the UK to the Canaries would probably only result in 2 legs. However, short UK flights LGW-MAN or similar length could see 4-6 legs. Again any layovers will be company specific. The low cost operators generally have no scheduled overnights whereas the legacy carriers do. In BA you could be away flying short haul on a trip for say 5 days staying in various cities across the week flying into and out of your home base multiple times.
As a general rule I find security screening much easier and less stressful when operating. Our security checks are usually away from public eye and I would say we are in a lower risk category compared to the many thousands of intrepid travellers looking to endanger you with their water bottles and baby food. So security is a lot more relaxed. The TSA in the States are brilliant to deal with as an example.
I will let someone else fill in the blanks.
Quite a lot of it is company dependet. The general stuff is already covered by the post above, just can give my description how i do stuff.
In general we fly between one and (theoretically) five sectors per duty, but usually between 2 and 4, its been more than 8 years that i have flown five sectors, sector length varies between 35 minutes and up to 6 hours. We do have up to five days away from home, however, quite a few duties without nightstops as well, i do prefer to sleep in my own bed so i have a standing bid for early duties without overnight stay. Which makes the flightplanning system think i like nightflights, which is the worst kind of flying in my opinion.
Anyway, on a usual duty day, lets say four sectors with the usual close to 12 hours duty time i start at home by making sure my iPad is up to date, download the briefing package so i can have a quick look in the underground on my way to work. In the crewroom, which is airside, i have to swide my badge to get my crew briefing sheet which tells with whom i'm flying on which sector, on good days one crew for everything, on bad days a new crew on each sector. Up to the pilot briefing room, meet the captain, discuss weather, fuel, operational requirements (MEL items, tankering etc) and then decide on fuel. All that takes around 2 to 5 minutes. If there is something special it might take longer. Then off to the briefing room for the flight, meet the cabin crew and brief the topics of the week, talk about special passenger requirements and off to the airplane where we have to be latest 35 minutes before departure. The complete checkin time starts 60 minutes prior departure, but other airlines use as little as 45 minutes, our longhaul colleagues start 75 minutes prior departure.
Somewhere during the briefing the captain will usually ask the FO which sectors he prefers to fly, or the other way round, and at some point a decision is taken. The pilot who flies the sector sets up the FMCG and cockpit, the other one does the walkaround and sets up the fueling panel if that isn't done already. During winter he is also responsible to check the wings, stabilizer and rudder for snow and ice and decides if we need deicing or not. Up in the cockpit the PM has to set up the ACARS journey log and start filling out the OFP on his iPad. Both pilots do an initial performance calculation independently of each other, the PF briefs the PM on departure, taxi-route and so on out of the FMCG while PM checks it with the charts on his iPad. Once the loadsheet has arrived on the iPad and ACARS the PF enters them into the FMCG, the PM has to independently check that those entries are correct, both recalculate the performance with the latest figures and compare them and then its doors closed and off we go. The rest of the day is rinse and repeat until the last landing.
After that the crew will finish their after-flight duties, clean up their working space and prepare it for the next crew, leave the airplane and either get driven to the hotel or go back to the crewroom for a debriefing (during nightstops that is usually done during the drive to the hotel).