Yes spyce you do have a spare bit of paper to jot stuff down on and the questions are on paper as well, very time limited though!

Good luck!!

Mate of mine involved with sim assesment with large British airline. He is amazed at the number of ex Airbus candidates from other UK airlines, who have lost the skills of trimming, and controlling speed maunually with the thrust levers, big part of the assesment.
It's not just AF and some Asian carriers, but it appears the basic flying skills deficiency is now becoming a UK problem too.

He is amazed that people who don't use a skill forget how to use it? You don't trim an airbus and a lot of carriers forbid use of manual thrust. Five years of doing that and you soon get used to that and that alone unless you can afford to keep a single engine rating up. It's not amazing, it's expected. However, a couple of hours in a fixed based 737 sim and most people would regain the skill fairly quickly, in preparation for the big even,t £300 for a future career is not a lot.

You'll find the tests are looking at capacity. Can you fly ok and have the ability to do other things at the same time? If you're using 100% of your capacity to just handle the aircraft you're not what they're looking for. NOTECHs are your ability to be able to recognise the big picture, including yourself, and be effective. Get the hang of that and you've cracked it for the Sim.

HPbleed.
It's scary that in the recent AF 330 and Indonesia 320 accidents, the pilots were unable to hand fly aircraft with basic controls, had a full set of instruments, fully serviceable engines, but no auto throttle, and presumably ground speed from the GPS.
Looks like we're going the same way.

fly4more:

I know it was only a throwaway comment, ;) but BA do NOT want you to try and 'grease it on' as they see runway excursion as a major threat. They want you to do a standard landing in the touchdown zone when it matters!

... yep they can plonk it down in the touch down zone, but dont look out of the window while taxying....

"They" referring to whom? A lot of BA pilots post useful info on here, it would be a shame if they went away because of cheap shot postings like that one :confused:

Anyone got direct entry 787 recently?

A mate starts as DEP on the 787 in Apr. Previous experience RAF and large biz jets.

ok great. Any idea how many seats are available?

Any DEP 744 going atm?

Mate going to the 787 was offered 787, 747 or 777 so all three available at the moment. He chose 787 because it was the first course to come up.

I had my sim on a Thursday afternoon and received a phone call with the good news the following Monday. My sim partner heard 3 days later so 7 days from the sim (he also passed.)

It can be nearly 2 weeks - keep the faith!

How long did he have to wait in the pool of you don't mind me asking?

When was the last time you hand flew a commercial jet transport (Airbus or Boeing) at cruise altitude? It's not like throwing it around at 3000 feet on the ILS.

Are you saying that after Autopilot/Autothrottle failure at altitude you accept pilots are unable to control the aircraft.
Pilots should be able to hand fly his aircraft at any altitude in emergencies such as mentioned. On the Boeings I flew we had a set of memory power and attitudes which we would fly in the event of asi indication failure for example.
In the examples mentioned crews lacked the handling skills to manually fly the aircraft to lower levels where the emergency could be dealt with.
I repeat in the Air Asia example, the crew had a perfectly flyable aircraft in Alternate Law i.e. handling like a non fly by wire aircraft. The only things missing, an autopilot and auto throttle?

Guys I've noticed there is a large thread on automation dependency running on the Tech Log forum. Don't want to try to police anything but does this (admittedly noteworthy) conversation have the least bit to do with Terms and Endearment?

787 Course April. Currently 737 rated, 4000 TTL, background regional TP and SH flying. Very Excited to get started!

My main advice for getting through the process is be prepared for every stage and put the work in. It's worth it in the end. Good luck to all!

How long from confirmation of hold pool to hearing - currently waiting at the moment!

I think that varies a bit depending on the positions they are filling at the time, and your experience.

From what others have told me, A couple of months generally for an offer for 787/777/320 at the moment. Guess that could change either way though.

For me it was only 48hrs. They needed to fill a slot quickly, and I matched the requirements.

Good man - congratulations, applied through the DEP longhaul, did the sim on the 5th of Jan and got the confirmation last week but no other information apart from that! When's your start date?

2 weeks for me from hold pool to offer. But yes this varies on your experience and notice period available.

Very good point re notice period being a factor. Mine was 3 months, but people with less might be able to take places at short notice I guess.

I completely skipped the pool. Sim till startdate 93 days. Notice period was 90 days..

When did you do your sim?! This is insane - what do they want you on?

Cheers. I passed mid December. Start end of March. 380.

Entered the pool in Oct, offered 777 last week starting April. Looks like things are starting to move quickly for everyone waiting. Good luck everyone.

Sim in June somewhere, started in September on the 787

Excuse my ignorance and possibly misdirected hope in this matter, but it seems BA are still very much desperate for pilots, although now it's mostly for long haul. What's to stop them from taking the boys and girls with less than the 1000 hours of jet (possibly 0 hours jet :rolleyes:) that are already in the hold pool for LH rather than SH? I don't see anything legality wise, so is there a lot of extra training involved to comply with regulations or is this just BA's own made up limit that they technically could change if they so wished?

Thanks for any help clearing this up :ok:

Otto

You make an interesting point. And not having anything to do for 15 minutes here's my thoughts - it comes with a major BS warning !!

I initially thought it was an insurance thing .... ie the insurance company gives BA a preferred rate based on prescribed experience levels. But I've flown with many skippers who went direct onto 'the classic' strait out of the RAF (fast jet) and also some from ATRs at CityFlyer.

Now of course the tornado is a jet but given the total lack of handling similarities with it and a heavy pax jet it's hard to see how these guys were deemed any more proficient than say a current Dash8 pilot (for example) - yet sure enough there are dozens or Harrier and Tornado guys who back in the mid 90s lef the service and went straight onto the 747-2. The Cityflyer turboprop guys and gals are a rarer breed but it did happen and hence it proves its sure as hell not insurmountable. In fact IMHO having flown private, regional, short, medium and LH - the turboprop regional was by far the most challenging aircraft to fly and I venture to say I would have taken to longhaul (380) like a duck to water.

Now in both cases above (RAF & Cityflyer et al) circuit training in some very heavy tin was done and thats currently not part of the BA training dept zeitgeist.

Any thoughts (very succinctly) on what Virgin will do with their cadet cruise-pilots. X years down the line they're gonna be ready for the 'upgrade' and either have to do circuits or be farmed out for a year or two a bit like Thomas Cook did to Flybe.

Blue skies to all

CB

I would suggest that with sub-2000hrs, going into an environment where you'll land infrequently, sometimes to the point of being near to going out of recency, would do you no favours at all. Just an opinion, and not linked to anyone's policy.

I have to agree. Family friend on LH did only 11 landings in a 6 month period last year. 2 were CAT II/III autoland, so only 9 manual landings.


Compare that to shorthaul where you might get 5-10 a week rather than 2 a month

Thanks for the replies, and I would very much agree with you guys on recency and so forth. That would explain the 2000 hour demand with which I agree, it's more the jet part of it that I would dare to suggest isn't absolutely necessary. Funnily enough I would actually prefer SH to start with and then see what happens, but I'd rather get in at all and straight in on LH than to be timed out in the pool just for being a TP:er... :}

The other thing to remember is that on LH you'll be acting PIC when the skipper's in the bunk so there are also experience requirements related to that.

what about when skipper goes for a piss on SH

Anyone prepared to share any recent sim feedback as they've now changed from the 747 to the 757?

Nothing seems to have changed apart from the sim itself. The best tip I can give is to buy 757 Professional for X-Plane. It was identical to the real thing except for the speed tape was missing. Even the power settings worked. Helped me feel much more relaxed knowing where everything was. Got into the hold pool just before Christmas.

Yep.

:E Well...unless he/she's got a rather large bladder or serious GI problems they aren't likely to be off the flight deck for several hours.......