What i can do to ensure captaincy?
 

Had a real talk with one of the most senior line captains in my last flight, he's known as one of the most harshest/direct captains in our airline and gave me a man to man conversation which opened my perspective in that sector. The conversation basically encapsulated whether i took this profession seriously, if i wanted to earn the elusive 4 bars in the future. Asked me if i knew why we had plenty of SFOs with 10-15+ years experience in our airline but still never became captains and where i wanted to be in the future. He asked me where personally i saw myself in the future with the airline given the experience and knowledge demonstrated etc. etc.

To the captains and senior members in this network, i ask, what can i do now, being a junior FO, to make the best opportunity in my career now to ensure my possibility of command upgrade. What can i do each sector, each flight, each sim session to increase my chances and odds of becoming a captain in the future. What should i focus on now or which materials should i really study in depth to give me the best possible preparation, come my time for command assessment.

Edit: i ask because since flying airliners, i've always had a chip on my shoulder that i will never be satisfied in this industry until i make it to captaincy. I thought once i flew jets that i made it, but after a couple of years in this job, i had developed this target that i need to become a captain as my personal mission, for my own reassurance and objective

Your advice, experience, stories, insights is truly appreciated.

Experience takes time.
Experience requires variation.
Flying the same flight a hundred times over is not the same as a hundred different flights.
You need to rise above the level of regurgitation of book knowledge and gain wisdom.
You cannot gain wisdom by repetition.

You spend your time in the RHS learning what type of skipper you want to be. I’d be mortified if someone described me as harsh, mostly because all it takes is to be harsh/aggressive (which is entirely different to being assertive as appropriate) to someone and you’ve lost your PM having the interest or confidence to point out when you’ve made an error - and people have died for less. Indeed FOs have sat and let captains make very egregious errors purely out of fear of their reputation alone.

As a senior FO I enjoyed a reputation as someone who was a good handling pilot, who knew the RIM well and who was very well suited to easing new skippers into the LHS when they joined from other fleets (and I had hair :(). Being a good FO is something you need to master before you move to the LHS in part because then you know what you want out of your colleague. They are very different jobs - I’d argue the LHS has a great deal more about soft skills in it than the RHS, which is where you learn your manuals inside and out.

Enjoy the journey, if you get 4 stripes early on then I suspect you’ll be constantly searching for a fifth one…

If your company does LOFT sessions in the sim recurrent, ask to be the "lead" in those. Practice your company's preferred method of dealing with non-normals and emergencies. (Emergencies are relatively easy, follow checklist, land somewhere suitable). Practice decision making. Easier said than done. Eg, we use RSIC-t-DORDAR. Whatever system is used, get familiar and comfortable with it. If a captain makes a decision and you can't follow how s/he got there, ask when you can.

Being a good first officer is harder than being a captain..I did 20 years RHS.
Enjoy every day, know all of your manuals and do your best - if you aren't able to do that forget about being a captain and get another job.

Be mentally present, be a co-thinker not just a co-follower.
What I mean by that is anticipate decisions.
How much fuel would you take today and why.
CB’s on your route, deviate left or right and why?
Choice of runways at your destination, which one would you request and why?
As a CA I ask those questions to my crew members. If they give me an empty stare I know they haven’t even considered the choice.
You can question my decisions every day all day, just be a little diplomatic about it.
Starting every question with WHY?! is annoying.
Over time you’ll experience that your ‘mental’ decision matches your CA’s actual decision.
If not, ask.
Why are we taking the short runway when it’s raining?

Here’s one: if we have an engine failure or a fire now, what are the options? If you don’t know what you’d set in the FCU/MCP, and where to turn, what is in front and behind then start to - and it soon becomes almost instinctive.

It’s also cultivating a mental state of leadership.
How would you handle a situation with the refueler, a maintenance engineer, a cabin crew member or a gate agent that made a mistake or just did an exceptional job?

Sounds like you flew with a tosser. Move on.

I agree with all B2's comments, not just the one quoted above.

It's not so much what you need to do, as much as what you need to BE. BE dependable, stable, switched on, present, anticipating what the Captain is thinking, and being a great asset, rather than a liability. However, some captains may find exemplary first officers more a threat than an asset, so it's horses for courses.

Captaincy is an internal thing. Wearing 4 gold bars does not a captain make.

How you view yourself influences how other people see you. For example, an Australian actor was once used to impersonate Field Marshal Montgomery. In his autobiography (I Was Monty’s Double by Clifton James), he (loosely) said that “I was an actor in the Pay Corps, have never commanded men and intimidated by senior officers, yet they wanted me to be a General!” Talk about being out of depth.

In the end, although he looked like Monty and was indistinguishable from him at a distance, it wasn’t until he came out of Monty’s office snapping his fingers and thinking and behaving like a general that the whole thing began to work. That is, until Clifton James thought he was a general, nobody else did. The process was an internal one. Until you think (and behave) as if you are a Captain, nobody else will!