Pilot Pete
9th Aug 2001, 02:17
Early last year I posted my story of how I ended up in the rhs of a 757 with JMC. As the training progressed I added a couple of update posts and after these some people suggested the full story from start to end in one post would be a good idea. So here it is. It's also a tester to see if any of you think it would be worth sending it to Pilot Magazine as was suggested last year. Comments more than welcome.
---------------------------------------------
A ten year career as a computer operator with British Gas and the offer of voluntary redundancy due to privatisation cutbacks got me thinking about my future career. I’d had it good up ‘til then, nearly £40k for very little, a nice 1 bed flat on the outskirts of London and the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
The money was a factor. £20k to leave, but I knew that due to yearly increments in a nationalised industry my salary had escalated to twice the market rate for the job. Compulsory redundancy on much less favourable terms would follow, so I took the leap and thought I would survive and have £20k in the bank.
It was May 1996 and I had been using the professional resettlement services afforded to BG employees and came up with the great idea of I.T. recruitment. I could do that. Ok it was mainly commission but I knew about I.T. didn’t I?
What a change of scenery. Instead of the 3 x 12hr shifts per week I was expected to do five days.......urghhh! On top of that I had to commute on the train into London Bridge. My God. After several years with the TA where I had learnt to become an Arrest & Restraint Instructor, PTI and Recce Platoon Commander, my patience was severely tested by this bunch of animals from Middle England. I wanted to ‘lamp’ every one of the buggers within a couple of weeks!
During this change of scenery I had met Suzie, an Independent Financial Advisor who was going to show me how to ‘consolidate’ with my new found millions!
The recruitment agency was just a fine place to work...................if you had no ethics. I was expected to tell the biggest no-hoper and the highest-flyer (no pun intended) that I had the perfect job for him/her, and to tell the biggest employers that I had the perfect candidates! It just wasn’t me. Now the guy sitting opposite me on the desk was inspirational. Well sort of. Let me paint the picture.
Tim-Nice-But-Dim. That was him. Bloody hilarious without knowing it! Can you believe that he didn’t want to do this job for life either? No, he had much grander plans. He wanted to be a commercial pilot!!
He pulled from the drawer a glossy brochure from a training school at Cranfield............”let’s have a look”, I asked.
That was it. I hadn’t had the boyhood dream or anything like that, but as I read further into the leaflet it was like a shining light leading the way.....no crap, that’s the best way I can describe it. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. This is what I wanted to do, this is what I was cut out to do, and this is what I could do for the remaining 30yrs of my working life and enjoy it.
The enquiries started and within the month I had left, after discussing it in depth with Suzie; I needed her support for the ‘year or so’ of training that my £20k would fund. Well only £5k short according to the brochure!
Trial lesson at Biggin Hill in August 1996 with said company. All they appeared interested in was my cash, and £6k of it at that for a PPL! They even sold me a bloody logbook on the day to ‘log’ my first flight! Took a look at Redhill where I found the most helpful of instructors hanging around who gave me 2 hrs of his time to take me through all the options and routes to a CPL/IR, first stage being a PPL for £2300 including NVQ! I did my PPL at Redhill.
First flight October 1996 after all the background information had been checked etc. Then came the bad weather.
Suzie had moved into my 1 bedroom flat and let her 2 bed out to bolster her wage from the House of Fraser. Then came the news that almost changed everything. We were expecting a baby. I’d have to go back into I.T. and earn a wage, it was over before it had even started.
After many heated discussions we decided that our relationship would be all the better if I stuck at what I really wanted to do. February 1997 and 5 hours in the logbook................it was like starting again, and I’d been at the airfield 5 days a week 9-5 and weekends if I could get an instructor. March saw the weather change and I polished off the rest of the hours by the end of April. What a feeling. I was a pilot.
May and June saw the IMC course through. All was in place for the birth of Harry on 23rd July. My hour building was booked for 30th in Florida for 1 month at Naples Air Center................what could I do? Put it off? Suzie went to her parents just before I went to the US and she had maternity leave for several weeks. Now really was the ‘least worse’ time to go.
100hrs of flying to every airfield in Florida saw the hour building completed along with the 300nm x-country qualifier by the end of August and back I came to nappies and bottles and groundschool at London Guildhall.
Suzie had to go back to work when the maternity leave was up so we needed a childminder. “HOW MUCH?” “£100 per week and that’s cheap?” my god! And then you have to find one who is suitable. We saw dozens and settled on a grandmother who was in it for the love of it and not for the money. She was just perfect.
The routine started. 14 weeks at Guildhall, oh no, not back on the London Bridge route again! September to Christmas saw us swapping the chore of driving Harry to the childminder, leaving the car and walking back to the station to go up town. Study in the evenings and weekends, play at families and remain happy in our one bedroom flat.
Christmas was spent at Suzie’s parents with me staying on the extra week to study in peace before the Nav sittings in January. I put so much work in, 14 hours a day head in books. And Suzie, back at home playing the working single mother. God bless her. And Harry? throwing up a lot at the worst possible times – in the car en route the childminder.
Tech course was booked at Guildhall for March, so when my results came through for the Navs I was more than happy with 8/9 first time. I gambled on not doing any climatology for met theory and got 69%. ****. I elected to resit the met after the Techs.
April saw me do the Night Rating at Leeds/ Bradford which was fairly straight forward.
Being quite technical I enjoyed the tech course, only six subjects helped somewhat too! Life was continuing but becoming more and more abnormal. Harry was throwing up more often and we just couldn’t get a nights sleep to save our lives. He’d have his milk and an hour or so later bring the whole lot back up and get so distressed. Suzie caught me one night holding him up and asking him after hours of no sleep “what the f*cks the matter with you?” I felt terrible. We’d taken him to see the doctor several times and spent fortunes on different types of milk on their advice due to a perceived allergy.
The tech course finished and I had a week to prepare for the exams. Back up to Staffordshire for some quiet study to cement that knowledge. This was broken 2 days before the exam by a frantic phone call telling me to come home now as Harry had been admitted into hospital. Suzie had been on her way to the childminder, rushing as usual in the morning and Harry had just started vomiting and didn’t stop until he was almost unconscious. The GP’s was just round the corner and that’s where she headed. He was sent straight to hospital.
By the time I arrived he had already been moved on to St George’s in Tooting SW London. Here I was with no car, on public transport trying to get there as quick as I could. 8 hours from Brum to Tooting. Suzie was in a state when I got there. They didn’t know what was up with him but the ultrasound had showed up an abnormality. 2 weeks later his childminder ended up in the same hospital diagnosed with cancer. She never came out. God bless her.
5 weeks later I was still sleeping on the hospital floor due to no facilities being available for parents, but now we were in King’s College, Camberwell. The poor lad had had every test known to man and was been fed through his jugular vein. He had lost so much weight. My techs? Who cares at that point. I phoned the CAA and cancelled ufn.
It turned out Harry had a pancreatic cyst which had never been operated on in the UK before. We had him Christened the day before his pioneering op and shed many tears over the next couple of days in intensive care. As babies do, he recovered very quickly from the operation and has gone on to make a wonderful recovery. My techs? I cancelled the May sitting and sat them in June along with the resit. Getting them all in one go felt like a triumph over adversity.
At this point money was getting pretty low and it was decision time again. BCPL and instruct or BCPL/Upgrade. The sales literature got the better of me and we decided it would be best to get the licence as quick as possible. If we could have afforded a PC I might have found pprune earlier and got some opinions!
OATS was chosen after looking at all the 509 schools for both BCPL and then the Upgrade. Redundancy had gone, shares were all sold, 16v Calibra went for an old Passat Estate and the BCPL/upgrade and LOFT would need £15k remortgage and £8k career development loan.
I rented a room for £50 a week in Kidlington and travelled up and down each weekend on the ‘Tube’, cycling to the airfield each day to save money on the bus fare! I ate pasta and rice and became a hermit. BCPL took from mid August to early October 1998. The GFT was in my opinion the hardest flight test of all. I was so pleased to pass it.
The Upgrade course was immensely enjoyable, 80hrs to do a twin/IR was a doddle, but the test was still a nerve wracking experience. Everything depended on it. I had no money left if I’d got a partial or fail, and I mean no money. When I sailed straight through the Chalo hold after 5 minutes airborne I thought I’d buggered it up, and to recover from that took some hard work. The main thing is I didn’t bugger up putting it right, and as I headed toward Daventry I was swearing at myself inside trying to ‘kick myself up the arse’ and put it out of my mind. It worked. I have not flown an ILS or NDB as well as I did that day since. As the examiner took it on the roll at Coventry we climbed away and I couldn’t believe it that he gave me a full pass. Yippee! They tell you that, then give you 1 hour worth of debrief where I think he just talked straight through me. I just couldn’t concentrate with excitement. I wanted to get that CV out and await the anxious calls of all those Chief Pilots calling me to interview!!!
We were all on a high and between the end of Jan 1999 and into Feb I completed LOFT and got my shiny blue licence issued.
I soon came back down to earth with a bump when all I got with my 50 odd cv’s were 3 applications and nothing else. Oh dear. Now what? Suzie and I set a cut-off of two months before I had to get more hours. Instructing was the only option. What about the money? Old credit card from the BG days came to the rescue.
Decided to go to Teesside as I could get free accommodation not too far away. Throughout the month of May 1999 I completed the course whilst looking after Harry, various relatives taking him throughout the days when I was training. Each night I would come back, feed him, clean him put him to bed and prepare my following days briefings/ lessons.
I was 2 hours from completing the rating using an AFI/QFI upgrader for practice lessons when the CFI asked him if he would be interested in flying a C310 doing the ‘Flying Eye’ for Glasgow with a company called Edinburgh Air Charter. The CFI knew the Chief Pilot very well and was often approached for potential pilots. I was dead envious that this 1000+hr instructor was being offered this on a plate and the job would lead onto full IFR charter work in time. I was amazed when he turned it down because it was in Scotland! The CFI then asked if I would be interested. Damn right I would be. When, Where, and Who do I speak to? Drove up for an interview a couple of days later and went for an impromptu check ride and nearly fell off the sofa when the CP offered me the job!
Started in June 1999, originally just to do the ‘Eye’ to free up the line pilots for the charter work, but as my training progressed the CP (and owner of the company) realised that my instrument flying wasn’t as bad as he would have expected for 280hrs (they’d never taken anyone with less than 700hrs before) and continued the training onto the C402 and C404. Three weeks later there was I going single crew into Heathrow with 9 pax in a 404. Wow! It was fabulous.
Two months later my world nearly fell apart when the CP and his co-pilot were tragically killed along with several Airtours crew in the Glasgow accident in the 404. I was shocked. Deeply shocked. We all were. I’d just had 2 days off and gone back down to London to see Suzie and Harry and walked back into the office to be met with the news that the 404 had gone down. I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d flown it only a few days before.
There was I, 300 odd hours, 2 months experience, one of only two people in the office facing a growing hoard of the nations media. It wasn’t pleasant.
The accident was devastating. Could I continue my short career being so close to this tragedy? Suzie couldn’t handle it. She was down in London trying to work, look after our child, sell a flat and deal with this, oh and of course she was now pregnant with our second. We didn’t operate for a couple of months and this gave us all time to deal with our thoughts. A lot of talking and reasoning went on and we all decided we wanted to continue our work and build the company back up.
I shall never forget those who died that day, one of whom gave me my first break in aviation. R.I.P.
The work started again and I went back onto just 310’s for a while and took things at a lot slower pace, building the confidence back up before going back onto the 400’s. The hours built steadily, we sold the flat and Suzie and Harry joined me in Scotland. We spent a very happy year in Dunblane, Edward arriving early in October 1999 whilst I was on an ‘islands’ trip. I rushed back, drove up the motorway to the hospital and missed the action by 15 minutes! Will I never be on time?. We got married in August 2000 and moved on to rent in Dunfermline.
The honeymoon week saw me post off a CV to JMC as I’d heard they were recruiting and asking a minimum of 700hrs. I now had nearly 900 of which 700 odd was multi/IFR. I called and mailed, called and mailed and called and mailed over 4 months trying to get an interview. I was on the verge of giving up as I’d heard that the recruitment was to end before Christmas when a last ditch attempt with a CV emailed to the ‘man who counts’ on a Friday night with a follow up call on the Monday lead to a call back and request for interview. I was over the moon. I’d completed MCC at Multiflight in November and went on a days interview coaching for pilots. It did the trick. Passed the interview and arranged for the sim assessment for the New Year. Spent nearly £900 on a couple of hours practice at Gecat and had a crack at the check-ride. It took 6 days to get the result. I honestly did not know what the result would be. You just can’t tell. A pass. Medical to go, no probs, job offer two days later. I’m there. I’ve done it. Type and line training to go and I’m there.....the rhs of a 757. Life felt so good on Friday 25th January 2001 when that phone rang, and it still does. If you see me in training you won’t be able to miss me, I’m the one with the beaming smile from ear to ear........................
The training started sedately enough with a number of days down at Gatwick doing SEP's, LVP's, Performance, CRM (more of it!) etc etc. Three weeks on the 75 tech course followed, I joined the CTC cadets at Dibden near Southampton for their PC based interactive course. It was more like water torture going through 70 odd sections each with 50-100 ‘slides’ with a droning yank giving the spiel. Not much fun at all.
One week at Cranebank in the fixed base sim then 3 weeks in Brunei on Royal Brunei Airlines 757 full motion sim was much more my cup of tea. As anyone will tell you who has completed base training on a large jet it is by no means ‘in the bag’ because you’ve got this far, it took four hours of hard work in the sim each day with at least six more in preparation by way of reading, learning and rehearsing drills and procedures. Sadly, two of the cadets did not make the grade, which was mainly down to the high standard that CTC demand and were sent home early without completing the course. Finishing the Line Skills Test felt like a huge weight being lifted from your shoulders.
Due to the large number of pilots in training at JMC and the overstretched Training Captains who were all teetering on the brink of 900hrs in 12 months it was several weeks before the circuit training could be completed. This was both frustrating but quite handy as it gave us more time for house searching in Cheshire. We had been driving up and down the M6 a couple of days at a time in the hope of finding somewhere to base ourselves within half an hour of Manchester Airport.
We’d put offers in on three houses over 5 months which had all been accepted and then we’d been gazumped. It really was depressing and a very sad reflection on the modern day British Citizen I felt.
I was cheered up somewhat though when I got the phone call to be in Manchester for the circuits. I drove all the way down from Scotland only to fly back to Prestwick for some ‘bumps’ then drive all the way back from Manchester the following day. Who cares though, I would have driven to Timbucktu for that treat!
I sat in the right seat for the first time on the ramp at Manchester. Not only did I sit there, but I took control once the Captain had taxied us onto RWY24L............
"You have control"
"I have control" of an 85 tonne 757.
"JMC757T, the surface wind is 230/5, you are clear take off RWY24L"
I call for 1.2EPR to be set, releasing the toe brakes. The captain calls "stabilised" and I reach to press the 'EPR button' on the Mode Control Panel. The auto throttle spools the engines up to the derated take off power and we start to roll. Off we go accelerating to V1, Vr and I pull back on the column at 2.5degees/sec, the nose wheel lifts, and then the mains.......I am flying a 757!!!!!!! Boy does it go with no passengers on board! We're climbing at 4000ft/min, on up to FL210 and off to Prestwick for some circuits! Wow, this is just the best.
No time to think about it at Prestwick as we go straight into the first circuit from a touch and go. Whoops, thousand feet, lower the nose, pull back the power, follow the noise abatement and start the crosswind leg. Start the level off in the turn with the flaps retracted to ‘flap 5’ and the speed at vref+40kts. Well that’s the theory. I was 200ft above circuit altitude and 20kts too quick and fighting against the old pitch/power couple! Just about got it sorted as we went abeam the downwind threshold and then it was time for gear and flap 20 and start the watch. Turn base to final at 45secs +/-wind correction, take flap 30 and get on down the hill at 700fpm. Roll out on finals and there you are, right of centreline and with 4 whites! Get it sorted and this one’s a full stop, landed off the centreline but didn’t crunch the mains on, relaxed the back pressure like in light a/c and thought the nose wheel was going to come through the floor and join us it hit so hard! Hmmmn, must remember that next time round. All in all did my six landings and improved with each of them to the point that I was more than chuffed with the days work. The training captain gave me some praise and the Chief Pilot (who was on the jumpseat ‘signing off’ the training captain, just to add a little more pressure!) penned his words of wisdom in my training file. He was very complimentary and I felt this just capped things off as far as I was concerned. I left the cockpit as the next lamb went to the alter and spent the rest of the flight familiarising myself with the forward galley!
Yet again we put in an offer to buy someone’s house and it was accepted. The house had just come on the market that day and was put on at £5k less than the agent had valued it at in order to get a quick sale as the owners had already found another house to buy. It was a four bed detached built from reclaimed Cheshire brick around ten years ago and really was very nice. We felt good about the vendors as well who appeared to be from the old school and the chap (ex-farmer) said his word was his honour.
The weeks started to tick by again and still no start date for the line training. Most frustrating. Then came the news that the CTC trainer who had skills tested us was not authorised to sign off JMC Operator Proficiency Checks and we would have to go back in the sim to be tested again by a JMC trainer. Arrrrgghhh! Six weeks out of the sim is not the best build up for an OPC and we were all a little worried about it. We needn’t have been as the trainer was very understanding and we’d done the book work refreshing all the requirements and he could see that and used the session as a check with an introduction to some more complex ‘failures’. That said we still had to make the grade.
A tick in all the right boxes kept me on track for the ‘elusive’ line training which didn’t start for another three weeks. The house purchase was going through with pressure being put on from further up the chain to exchange quickly or the deal would be off.
I have to thank my sister in Bradford who put up with me during my initial line sectors (it’s not as far to Manchester from Bradford as it is from Dunfermline!)
It’s generally acknowledged that continuity is the key to successful line training and the lack of this factor does make it somewhat trickier. I viewed it as unfortunate but just a business problem that affected me, that I had to overcome. Forty sectors minimum was the requirement and I was determined to be ‘signed off’ in that time to get another ‘completed in minimum time’ comment on the training file (good for the future!)
The sectors started to come closer together towards the end which was much needed and I was ready for the final line check with no real problems except the usual lack of consistently good landings. I’d even been lucky enough to have experienced some lightning strikes during my training in the hold at Lanark! Can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone though! We were struck on the ray dome which lit up the whole front end, and on the right engine nacelle. The controller was maxed out at the time with so many a/c all refusing headings due to the weather. Needless to say, we left the hold on a heading of our choice and informed him of it! Upon hearing our news he cleared us direct to Glasgow.
The house move went smoothly enough, I was lucky in that I was working for two days before and again just after so got away with not doing any packing!
Final line check on Thursday, so wish me luck and if you’re going into Gerona at around 17:50z I make no apologies for following the procedure and not going visual, I have too much riding on it!
I think the moral is, if you want it enough you can do it, but don’t think you’ve made it until you have.
Pilot Pete.
P.S. Was it worth it all? You bet it was.
Good Luck Wannabes.
[ 11 August 2001: Message edited by: Pilot Pete ]
---------------------------------------------
A ten year career as a computer operator with British Gas and the offer of voluntary redundancy due to privatisation cutbacks got me thinking about my future career. I’d had it good up ‘til then, nearly £40k for very little, a nice 1 bed flat on the outskirts of London and the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
The money was a factor. £20k to leave, but I knew that due to yearly increments in a nationalised industry my salary had escalated to twice the market rate for the job. Compulsory redundancy on much less favourable terms would follow, so I took the leap and thought I would survive and have £20k in the bank.
It was May 1996 and I had been using the professional resettlement services afforded to BG employees and came up with the great idea of I.T. recruitment. I could do that. Ok it was mainly commission but I knew about I.T. didn’t I?
What a change of scenery. Instead of the 3 x 12hr shifts per week I was expected to do five days.......urghhh! On top of that I had to commute on the train into London Bridge. My God. After several years with the TA where I had learnt to become an Arrest & Restraint Instructor, PTI and Recce Platoon Commander, my patience was severely tested by this bunch of animals from Middle England. I wanted to ‘lamp’ every one of the buggers within a couple of weeks!
During this change of scenery I had met Suzie, an Independent Financial Advisor who was going to show me how to ‘consolidate’ with my new found millions!
The recruitment agency was just a fine place to work...................if you had no ethics. I was expected to tell the biggest no-hoper and the highest-flyer (no pun intended) that I had the perfect job for him/her, and to tell the biggest employers that I had the perfect candidates! It just wasn’t me. Now the guy sitting opposite me on the desk was inspirational. Well sort of. Let me paint the picture.
Tim-Nice-But-Dim. That was him. Bloody hilarious without knowing it! Can you believe that he didn’t want to do this job for life either? No, he had much grander plans. He wanted to be a commercial pilot!!
He pulled from the drawer a glossy brochure from a training school at Cranfield............”let’s have a look”, I asked.
That was it. I hadn’t had the boyhood dream or anything like that, but as I read further into the leaflet it was like a shining light leading the way.....no crap, that’s the best way I can describe it. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. This is what I wanted to do, this is what I was cut out to do, and this is what I could do for the remaining 30yrs of my working life and enjoy it.
The enquiries started and within the month I had left, after discussing it in depth with Suzie; I needed her support for the ‘year or so’ of training that my £20k would fund. Well only £5k short according to the brochure!
Trial lesson at Biggin Hill in August 1996 with said company. All they appeared interested in was my cash, and £6k of it at that for a PPL! They even sold me a bloody logbook on the day to ‘log’ my first flight! Took a look at Redhill where I found the most helpful of instructors hanging around who gave me 2 hrs of his time to take me through all the options and routes to a CPL/IR, first stage being a PPL for £2300 including NVQ! I did my PPL at Redhill.
First flight October 1996 after all the background information had been checked etc. Then came the bad weather.
Suzie had moved into my 1 bedroom flat and let her 2 bed out to bolster her wage from the House of Fraser. Then came the news that almost changed everything. We were expecting a baby. I’d have to go back into I.T. and earn a wage, it was over before it had even started.
After many heated discussions we decided that our relationship would be all the better if I stuck at what I really wanted to do. February 1997 and 5 hours in the logbook................it was like starting again, and I’d been at the airfield 5 days a week 9-5 and weekends if I could get an instructor. March saw the weather change and I polished off the rest of the hours by the end of April. What a feeling. I was a pilot.
May and June saw the IMC course through. All was in place for the birth of Harry on 23rd July. My hour building was booked for 30th in Florida for 1 month at Naples Air Center................what could I do? Put it off? Suzie went to her parents just before I went to the US and she had maternity leave for several weeks. Now really was the ‘least worse’ time to go.
100hrs of flying to every airfield in Florida saw the hour building completed along with the 300nm x-country qualifier by the end of August and back I came to nappies and bottles and groundschool at London Guildhall.
Suzie had to go back to work when the maternity leave was up so we needed a childminder. “HOW MUCH?” “£100 per week and that’s cheap?” my god! And then you have to find one who is suitable. We saw dozens and settled on a grandmother who was in it for the love of it and not for the money. She was just perfect.
The routine started. 14 weeks at Guildhall, oh no, not back on the London Bridge route again! September to Christmas saw us swapping the chore of driving Harry to the childminder, leaving the car and walking back to the station to go up town. Study in the evenings and weekends, play at families and remain happy in our one bedroom flat.
Christmas was spent at Suzie’s parents with me staying on the extra week to study in peace before the Nav sittings in January. I put so much work in, 14 hours a day head in books. And Suzie, back at home playing the working single mother. God bless her. And Harry? throwing up a lot at the worst possible times – in the car en route the childminder.
Tech course was booked at Guildhall for March, so when my results came through for the Navs I was more than happy with 8/9 first time. I gambled on not doing any climatology for met theory and got 69%. ****. I elected to resit the met after the Techs.
April saw me do the Night Rating at Leeds/ Bradford which was fairly straight forward.
Being quite technical I enjoyed the tech course, only six subjects helped somewhat too! Life was continuing but becoming more and more abnormal. Harry was throwing up more often and we just couldn’t get a nights sleep to save our lives. He’d have his milk and an hour or so later bring the whole lot back up and get so distressed. Suzie caught me one night holding him up and asking him after hours of no sleep “what the f*cks the matter with you?” I felt terrible. We’d taken him to see the doctor several times and spent fortunes on different types of milk on their advice due to a perceived allergy.
The tech course finished and I had a week to prepare for the exams. Back up to Staffordshire for some quiet study to cement that knowledge. This was broken 2 days before the exam by a frantic phone call telling me to come home now as Harry had been admitted into hospital. Suzie had been on her way to the childminder, rushing as usual in the morning and Harry had just started vomiting and didn’t stop until he was almost unconscious. The GP’s was just round the corner and that’s where she headed. He was sent straight to hospital.
By the time I arrived he had already been moved on to St George’s in Tooting SW London. Here I was with no car, on public transport trying to get there as quick as I could. 8 hours from Brum to Tooting. Suzie was in a state when I got there. They didn’t know what was up with him but the ultrasound had showed up an abnormality. 2 weeks later his childminder ended up in the same hospital diagnosed with cancer. She never came out. God bless her.
5 weeks later I was still sleeping on the hospital floor due to no facilities being available for parents, but now we were in King’s College, Camberwell. The poor lad had had every test known to man and was been fed through his jugular vein. He had lost so much weight. My techs? Who cares at that point. I phoned the CAA and cancelled ufn.
It turned out Harry had a pancreatic cyst which had never been operated on in the UK before. We had him Christened the day before his pioneering op and shed many tears over the next couple of days in intensive care. As babies do, he recovered very quickly from the operation and has gone on to make a wonderful recovery. My techs? I cancelled the May sitting and sat them in June along with the resit. Getting them all in one go felt like a triumph over adversity.
At this point money was getting pretty low and it was decision time again. BCPL and instruct or BCPL/Upgrade. The sales literature got the better of me and we decided it would be best to get the licence as quick as possible. If we could have afforded a PC I might have found pprune earlier and got some opinions!
OATS was chosen after looking at all the 509 schools for both BCPL and then the Upgrade. Redundancy had gone, shares were all sold, 16v Calibra went for an old Passat Estate and the BCPL/upgrade and LOFT would need £15k remortgage and £8k career development loan.
I rented a room for £50 a week in Kidlington and travelled up and down each weekend on the ‘Tube’, cycling to the airfield each day to save money on the bus fare! I ate pasta and rice and became a hermit. BCPL took from mid August to early October 1998. The GFT was in my opinion the hardest flight test of all. I was so pleased to pass it.
The Upgrade course was immensely enjoyable, 80hrs to do a twin/IR was a doddle, but the test was still a nerve wracking experience. Everything depended on it. I had no money left if I’d got a partial or fail, and I mean no money. When I sailed straight through the Chalo hold after 5 minutes airborne I thought I’d buggered it up, and to recover from that took some hard work. The main thing is I didn’t bugger up putting it right, and as I headed toward Daventry I was swearing at myself inside trying to ‘kick myself up the arse’ and put it out of my mind. It worked. I have not flown an ILS or NDB as well as I did that day since. As the examiner took it on the roll at Coventry we climbed away and I couldn’t believe it that he gave me a full pass. Yippee! They tell you that, then give you 1 hour worth of debrief where I think he just talked straight through me. I just couldn’t concentrate with excitement. I wanted to get that CV out and await the anxious calls of all those Chief Pilots calling me to interview!!!
We were all on a high and between the end of Jan 1999 and into Feb I completed LOFT and got my shiny blue licence issued.
I soon came back down to earth with a bump when all I got with my 50 odd cv’s were 3 applications and nothing else. Oh dear. Now what? Suzie and I set a cut-off of two months before I had to get more hours. Instructing was the only option. What about the money? Old credit card from the BG days came to the rescue.
Decided to go to Teesside as I could get free accommodation not too far away. Throughout the month of May 1999 I completed the course whilst looking after Harry, various relatives taking him throughout the days when I was training. Each night I would come back, feed him, clean him put him to bed and prepare my following days briefings/ lessons.
I was 2 hours from completing the rating using an AFI/QFI upgrader for practice lessons when the CFI asked him if he would be interested in flying a C310 doing the ‘Flying Eye’ for Glasgow with a company called Edinburgh Air Charter. The CFI knew the Chief Pilot very well and was often approached for potential pilots. I was dead envious that this 1000+hr instructor was being offered this on a plate and the job would lead onto full IFR charter work in time. I was amazed when he turned it down because it was in Scotland! The CFI then asked if I would be interested. Damn right I would be. When, Where, and Who do I speak to? Drove up for an interview a couple of days later and went for an impromptu check ride and nearly fell off the sofa when the CP offered me the job!
Started in June 1999, originally just to do the ‘Eye’ to free up the line pilots for the charter work, but as my training progressed the CP (and owner of the company) realised that my instrument flying wasn’t as bad as he would have expected for 280hrs (they’d never taken anyone with less than 700hrs before) and continued the training onto the C402 and C404. Three weeks later there was I going single crew into Heathrow with 9 pax in a 404. Wow! It was fabulous.
Two months later my world nearly fell apart when the CP and his co-pilot were tragically killed along with several Airtours crew in the Glasgow accident in the 404. I was shocked. Deeply shocked. We all were. I’d just had 2 days off and gone back down to London to see Suzie and Harry and walked back into the office to be met with the news that the 404 had gone down. I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d flown it only a few days before.
There was I, 300 odd hours, 2 months experience, one of only two people in the office facing a growing hoard of the nations media. It wasn’t pleasant.
The accident was devastating. Could I continue my short career being so close to this tragedy? Suzie couldn’t handle it. She was down in London trying to work, look after our child, sell a flat and deal with this, oh and of course she was now pregnant with our second. We didn’t operate for a couple of months and this gave us all time to deal with our thoughts. A lot of talking and reasoning went on and we all decided we wanted to continue our work and build the company back up.
I shall never forget those who died that day, one of whom gave me my first break in aviation. R.I.P.
The work started again and I went back onto just 310’s for a while and took things at a lot slower pace, building the confidence back up before going back onto the 400’s. The hours built steadily, we sold the flat and Suzie and Harry joined me in Scotland. We spent a very happy year in Dunblane, Edward arriving early in October 1999 whilst I was on an ‘islands’ trip. I rushed back, drove up the motorway to the hospital and missed the action by 15 minutes! Will I never be on time?. We got married in August 2000 and moved on to rent in Dunfermline.
The honeymoon week saw me post off a CV to JMC as I’d heard they were recruiting and asking a minimum of 700hrs. I now had nearly 900 of which 700 odd was multi/IFR. I called and mailed, called and mailed and called and mailed over 4 months trying to get an interview. I was on the verge of giving up as I’d heard that the recruitment was to end before Christmas when a last ditch attempt with a CV emailed to the ‘man who counts’ on a Friday night with a follow up call on the Monday lead to a call back and request for interview. I was over the moon. I’d completed MCC at Multiflight in November and went on a days interview coaching for pilots. It did the trick. Passed the interview and arranged for the sim assessment for the New Year. Spent nearly £900 on a couple of hours practice at Gecat and had a crack at the check-ride. It took 6 days to get the result. I honestly did not know what the result would be. You just can’t tell. A pass. Medical to go, no probs, job offer two days later. I’m there. I’ve done it. Type and line training to go and I’m there.....the rhs of a 757. Life felt so good on Friday 25th January 2001 when that phone rang, and it still does. If you see me in training you won’t be able to miss me, I’m the one with the beaming smile from ear to ear........................
The training started sedately enough with a number of days down at Gatwick doing SEP's, LVP's, Performance, CRM (more of it!) etc etc. Three weeks on the 75 tech course followed, I joined the CTC cadets at Dibden near Southampton for their PC based interactive course. It was more like water torture going through 70 odd sections each with 50-100 ‘slides’ with a droning yank giving the spiel. Not much fun at all.
One week at Cranebank in the fixed base sim then 3 weeks in Brunei on Royal Brunei Airlines 757 full motion sim was much more my cup of tea. As anyone will tell you who has completed base training on a large jet it is by no means ‘in the bag’ because you’ve got this far, it took four hours of hard work in the sim each day with at least six more in preparation by way of reading, learning and rehearsing drills and procedures. Sadly, two of the cadets did not make the grade, which was mainly down to the high standard that CTC demand and were sent home early without completing the course. Finishing the Line Skills Test felt like a huge weight being lifted from your shoulders.
Due to the large number of pilots in training at JMC and the overstretched Training Captains who were all teetering on the brink of 900hrs in 12 months it was several weeks before the circuit training could be completed. This was both frustrating but quite handy as it gave us more time for house searching in Cheshire. We had been driving up and down the M6 a couple of days at a time in the hope of finding somewhere to base ourselves within half an hour of Manchester Airport.
We’d put offers in on three houses over 5 months which had all been accepted and then we’d been gazumped. It really was depressing and a very sad reflection on the modern day British Citizen I felt.
I was cheered up somewhat though when I got the phone call to be in Manchester for the circuits. I drove all the way down from Scotland only to fly back to Prestwick for some ‘bumps’ then drive all the way back from Manchester the following day. Who cares though, I would have driven to Timbucktu for that treat!
I sat in the right seat for the first time on the ramp at Manchester. Not only did I sit there, but I took control once the Captain had taxied us onto RWY24L............
"You have control"
"I have control" of an 85 tonne 757.
"JMC757T, the surface wind is 230/5, you are clear take off RWY24L"
I call for 1.2EPR to be set, releasing the toe brakes. The captain calls "stabilised" and I reach to press the 'EPR button' on the Mode Control Panel. The auto throttle spools the engines up to the derated take off power and we start to roll. Off we go accelerating to V1, Vr and I pull back on the column at 2.5degees/sec, the nose wheel lifts, and then the mains.......I am flying a 757!!!!!!! Boy does it go with no passengers on board! We're climbing at 4000ft/min, on up to FL210 and off to Prestwick for some circuits! Wow, this is just the best.
No time to think about it at Prestwick as we go straight into the first circuit from a touch and go. Whoops, thousand feet, lower the nose, pull back the power, follow the noise abatement and start the crosswind leg. Start the level off in the turn with the flaps retracted to ‘flap 5’ and the speed at vref+40kts. Well that’s the theory. I was 200ft above circuit altitude and 20kts too quick and fighting against the old pitch/power couple! Just about got it sorted as we went abeam the downwind threshold and then it was time for gear and flap 20 and start the watch. Turn base to final at 45secs +/-wind correction, take flap 30 and get on down the hill at 700fpm. Roll out on finals and there you are, right of centreline and with 4 whites! Get it sorted and this one’s a full stop, landed off the centreline but didn’t crunch the mains on, relaxed the back pressure like in light a/c and thought the nose wheel was going to come through the floor and join us it hit so hard! Hmmmn, must remember that next time round. All in all did my six landings and improved with each of them to the point that I was more than chuffed with the days work. The training captain gave me some praise and the Chief Pilot (who was on the jumpseat ‘signing off’ the training captain, just to add a little more pressure!) penned his words of wisdom in my training file. He was very complimentary and I felt this just capped things off as far as I was concerned. I left the cockpit as the next lamb went to the alter and spent the rest of the flight familiarising myself with the forward galley!
Yet again we put in an offer to buy someone’s house and it was accepted. The house had just come on the market that day and was put on at £5k less than the agent had valued it at in order to get a quick sale as the owners had already found another house to buy. It was a four bed detached built from reclaimed Cheshire brick around ten years ago and really was very nice. We felt good about the vendors as well who appeared to be from the old school and the chap (ex-farmer) said his word was his honour.
The weeks started to tick by again and still no start date for the line training. Most frustrating. Then came the news that the CTC trainer who had skills tested us was not authorised to sign off JMC Operator Proficiency Checks and we would have to go back in the sim to be tested again by a JMC trainer. Arrrrgghhh! Six weeks out of the sim is not the best build up for an OPC and we were all a little worried about it. We needn’t have been as the trainer was very understanding and we’d done the book work refreshing all the requirements and he could see that and used the session as a check with an introduction to some more complex ‘failures’. That said we still had to make the grade.
A tick in all the right boxes kept me on track for the ‘elusive’ line training which didn’t start for another three weeks. The house purchase was going through with pressure being put on from further up the chain to exchange quickly or the deal would be off.
I have to thank my sister in Bradford who put up with me during my initial line sectors (it’s not as far to Manchester from Bradford as it is from Dunfermline!)
It’s generally acknowledged that continuity is the key to successful line training and the lack of this factor does make it somewhat trickier. I viewed it as unfortunate but just a business problem that affected me, that I had to overcome. Forty sectors minimum was the requirement and I was determined to be ‘signed off’ in that time to get another ‘completed in minimum time’ comment on the training file (good for the future!)
The sectors started to come closer together towards the end which was much needed and I was ready for the final line check with no real problems except the usual lack of consistently good landings. I’d even been lucky enough to have experienced some lightning strikes during my training in the hold at Lanark! Can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone though! We were struck on the ray dome which lit up the whole front end, and on the right engine nacelle. The controller was maxed out at the time with so many a/c all refusing headings due to the weather. Needless to say, we left the hold on a heading of our choice and informed him of it! Upon hearing our news he cleared us direct to Glasgow.
The house move went smoothly enough, I was lucky in that I was working for two days before and again just after so got away with not doing any packing!
Final line check on Thursday, so wish me luck and if you’re going into Gerona at around 17:50z I make no apologies for following the procedure and not going visual, I have too much riding on it!
I think the moral is, if you want it enough you can do it, but don’t think you’ve made it until you have.
Pilot Pete.
P.S. Was it worth it all? You bet it was.
Good Luck Wannabes.
[ 11 August 2001: Message edited by: Pilot Pete ]