MCC preparation
Join Date: Oct 2003
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Truthfully, I would not bother reading up before the course. You will be taught everything you need in the classroom and in the sim sessions. The MCC is the first time to have some fun in the sim without the pressure of a looming test, so enjoy it!
Join Date: Sep 2006
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The FTO you are doing the MCC with will provide you with literature, you will probably just end up confusing yourself and learning slowly if you do too much work before hand. You will do groundschool for the first week, well if it's anything like Oxford. You could brush up on air crash investigations you might have missed on TV? Those come up a little bit.
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MCC is not about the sim you are in. It's about crew interaction and you can't really learn that from a book. As said above, the course is all you need.
I did my MCC on the L1011 and it was always an autoland and engines were always running when we got in. You just don't need to know abouth these things (it would be interesting though!)
I did my MCC on the L1011 and it was always an autoland and engines were always running when we got in. You just don't need to know abouth these things (it would be interesting though!)
Join Date: Dec 2006
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I did my mcc in a 737-200 and found it a massive jump going from a DA42 into a jet....
I was told on my course it would have been a good idea to read 'Handling the big jets'. I have since read it and I think it would have helped so if your doing your mcc in a jet you can only gain by having a read.
Again I'm sure all the courses differ slightly but we had a fair bit of performance stuff in the ground school. Wouldn't hurt to brush up on performance especially performance cat A.
Enjoy the course its a good insight into would could have been if it wasn't for this bloody recession!!!!
I was told on my course it would have been a good idea to read 'Handling the big jets'. I have since read it and I think it would have helped so if your doing your mcc in a jet you can only gain by having a read.
Again I'm sure all the courses differ slightly but we had a fair bit of performance stuff in the ground school. Wouldn't hurt to brush up on performance especially performance cat A.
Enjoy the course its a good insight into would could have been if it wasn't for this bloody recession!!!!
I disagree with the comments about it being a laugh. We didn't find it that much fun.
In my experience, the MCC is a course of, literally, two parts. The first part is the theory about CRM, the analysis of accidents where CRM broke down and interesting class debates, and a brief overview of how clever people have redesigned aircraft and procedures to prevent similar accidents from occurring. You can do some reading on this in advance. In fact, most MCC course providers will send you papers to read in advance. I found this really interesting but you need not read in advance.
The second part of the MCC course is the sim sessions. Everyone I spoke with on my course at a certain Scandinavian training provider felt that there was far too much emphasis on flying the aircraft correctly, learning the SOPs and flying perfectly on instruments, rather than putting CRM into practise. The fact is that CRM is very hard if you don't know how to fly the aircraft! We were expected to know all the speeds, and standard and emergency SOPs by heart, know how to operate the Autopilot etc before starting. We were spending the whole time concentrating on the wrong issue! But that's the way the instructors wanted it - and they marked you accordingly*. If you're with an MCC provider like mine, you really ought to learn everything technical beforehand.
I don't think this is right. It's just my experience of my MCC on the Fokker 28 - a swept wing jet with an dodgy autopilot.
*only relevant if you wanted to be referred to a certain airline for a job interview...
In my experience, the MCC is a course of, literally, two parts. The first part is the theory about CRM, the analysis of accidents where CRM broke down and interesting class debates, and a brief overview of how clever people have redesigned aircraft and procedures to prevent similar accidents from occurring. You can do some reading on this in advance. In fact, most MCC course providers will send you papers to read in advance. I found this really interesting but you need not read in advance.
The second part of the MCC course is the sim sessions. Everyone I spoke with on my course at a certain Scandinavian training provider felt that there was far too much emphasis on flying the aircraft correctly, learning the SOPs and flying perfectly on instruments, rather than putting CRM into practise. The fact is that CRM is very hard if you don't know how to fly the aircraft! We were expected to know all the speeds, and standard and emergency SOPs by heart, know how to operate the Autopilot etc before starting. We were spending the whole time concentrating on the wrong issue! But that's the way the instructors wanted it - and they marked you accordingly*. If you're with an MCC provider like mine, you really ought to learn everything technical beforehand.
I don't think this is right. It's just my experience of my MCC on the Fokker 28 - a swept wing jet with an dodgy autopilot.
*only relevant if you wanted to be referred to a certain airline for a job interview...
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Apologies for the thread drift but I completely agree with MikeHotel152.
I did my MCC at a training provider in the UK and found too much emphasis was placed on 'learning' the aircraft systems and SOPs at the expense of learning about how to operate effectively multi-crew.
In my opinion, the idea of putting someone who has only ever flown single-crew in a multi-crew environment to prepare him for airline flying is a good one, but the reality can often be that the learning experiences to be had from operating as part of a crew with another pilot are lost or taken over by the need to learn profiles and SOPs for an aircraft which is much bigger and more complex than either of you have ever flown before.
I left my course feeling that I had benefited from a very good first week of theory but that the second week of 'flying' in the sim was less valuable. Having said that I don't really know how the situation can be rectified since you obviously need to operate the aircraft in order to practice flying multi-crew in a realistic environment. I must add that my MCC was not a full motion sim but a FNPT-II style sim and it was therefore of limited value in preparing for airline assessments.
One idea I had relates to your question about reading up on stuff before the course begins. The school I did my MCC with sent out a pre-course study pack which contained case studies of accidents where CRM was a significant factor. They did not send out any technical information about the aircraft which the sim replicated. I would rather have spent a week at home before the course learning about the aircraft, profiles and SOPs so that when I got to the school we could have concentrated on the multi-crew aspects more having already pre-studied the operational aspects of the aircraft. I have no idea whether any other schools pre-course materials have a more technical slant but it strikes me as a reasonable idea.
I did my MCC at a training provider in the UK and found too much emphasis was placed on 'learning' the aircraft systems and SOPs at the expense of learning about how to operate effectively multi-crew.
In my opinion, the idea of putting someone who has only ever flown single-crew in a multi-crew environment to prepare him for airline flying is a good one, but the reality can often be that the learning experiences to be had from operating as part of a crew with another pilot are lost or taken over by the need to learn profiles and SOPs for an aircraft which is much bigger and more complex than either of you have ever flown before.
I left my course feeling that I had benefited from a very good first week of theory but that the second week of 'flying' in the sim was less valuable. Having said that I don't really know how the situation can be rectified since you obviously need to operate the aircraft in order to practice flying multi-crew in a realistic environment. I must add that my MCC was not a full motion sim but a FNPT-II style sim and it was therefore of limited value in preparing for airline assessments.
One idea I had relates to your question about reading up on stuff before the course begins. The school I did my MCC with sent out a pre-course study pack which contained case studies of accidents where CRM was a significant factor. They did not send out any technical information about the aircraft which the sim replicated. I would rather have spent a week at home before the course learning about the aircraft, profiles and SOPs so that when I got to the school we could have concentrated on the multi-crew aspects more having already pre-studied the operational aspects of the aircraft. I have no idea whether any other schools pre-course materials have a more technical slant but it strikes me as a reasonable idea.
You could try this, I used it a few years ago, I thought it helped me get more out of the course than if I'd not had it:
Keynotes Muti Crew @ Flightstore Pilot Supplies
Keynotes Muti Crew @ Flightstore Pilot Supplies
Join Date: Dec 2000
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See if you can get all the episodes of this on DVD and watch them.
Air Crash Investigation | Programmes | National Geographic Channel
Air Crash Investigation | Programmes | National Geographic Channel
