Keeping my job

Well, another year has passed and I get to keep my job again. I finished up my annual recurrent training last night without much fanfare. It was, I believe, the easiest recurrent I’ve done so far. Even so, the job is on the line every time you go to the simulator, so there was the usual amount of ‘fear and trembling’…

This is my third recurrent in the MD-11, and I did several in the RJ and at least one (maybe two) in the Brasilia (maybe 6 or 7 all together?). The typical ‘profile’ for a recurrent is to have some ground school, a ‘training’ simulator session (here at World we call it an RT for Recurrent Training), an oral (‘test’) and a simulator checkride (PC for Proficiency Check). The RT at Comair was shorter (half as long). Here we get a whole 4-hour sim period to do two pilots (two hours each, in theory). Then the PC is a 4-hour period consisting of mostly the same things (rejected takeoffs, engine failures, various approaches, practice manuvers, other emergencies, etc.).

This year, we started a new program that replaces the PC every other year with an RLOFT (Recurrent Line Oriented Flight Training). A LOFT is common in initial training (I did one in the RJ and in the MD-11), but I hadn’t done one or even heard of one being done in recurrent before (especially not in place of a PC).

The concept of a LOFT is different from a PC or other training type of session. The typical training session consists of practicing certain types of things over and over (approaches, takeoffs, landings, emergencies, etc.). Normally, an airport is selected (by the instructor) and used for all of the approaches and other work for the entire session (makes it simpler).

With a LOFT, the idea is to actually simulate a line flight. Instead of practicing lots of ‘unusual’ stuff, you go in to the sim and just fly a ‘trip’ from point A to point B. The instructor plays Flight Attendant, Ops Rep, Maintenence, Dispatch, ATC, and so on.

Here at World, because of the type of flying we do, we don’t have the same number of Captains as First Officers. So they’ve come up with a unique way of handling the disparity. The F/O pairings are done with the senior F/O in the left seat for both legs of the LOFT. That was me yesterday. They figure that makes for good pre-upgrade training, and having done it now, I agree.

Though the second leg ended with an ‘abnormality’ (#3 engine fire… we wern’t going to burn up 8 hours of sim time flying from Frankfurt to Bangor), the rest of the trip went basically as ‘planned’. Having said that, the conditions (weather, maintenence status, airport selections, etc.) were set in such a way as to make it consideraby more challenging than the normal line flight (for training purposes, of course). There was plenty of thinking to do along the way.

For the first time (ever), I did all of the paperwork as though I was the Captain (signing the flight releases and so on) and the instructor didn’t really say anything until the whole session was done. He kept all of our paperwork and reviewed it at the end. Fortunately, I’ve been paying closer attention to that over the course of the last year 😉 I did the briefings, taxied the airplane (which I haven’t done in 4 years), and so on.

Overall, it was a very valuable experience. Since we did pretty much all of the PC items in the RT the previous day, we really didn’t miss out on any content, either. Next year (assuming I don’t upgrade before then), we’ll do a standard RT/PC combination and then an RT/RLOFT the following year (etc.). Oh, and I didn’t mind not having an oral, though the questions that came out of the RLOFT scenerio were pretty interesting anyway…

So now I’m heading home for the rest of the month, slightly relaxed and feeling better about the year ahead…

V-