Sunday - Airline Training Orientation Program

[cjsmith]

Propping our eyelids open with toothpicks, Rob and I arrived in the hotel lobby at 8am to meet the rest of the crowd. There were eight students enrolled for the two-day course. A round of introductions revealed quite a few ex-military folk, some of whom were multiengine / commercial / instrument / instructor types, one chief pilot of a Part 141 operation, one astronaut wannabe, one student pilot who had just soloed, one flight school owner, and a couple of just plain folks like me. (Well, ok, pilot-licensed just plain folks.) The instructor was not only type rated in the Boeing 737, but was also a free balloon pilot, AND an FAA Pilot Examiner. There was a pause after he said this, and then he said "You know, nobody ever says 'Hey Wayne, that's so cool!'" We all laughed.

The airport shuttle took us over to the Continental "sim building", where we got down to classwork in earnest. We touched on every major system in the Boeing 737-300 and learned the location and function of every knob, switch, dial, and light in the cockpit. The major exception was the computer -- the flight management system. With proper data in that thing, the airplane will fly your entire route and do the approach. We weren't interested in programming the computer; we were there to fly! So we ignored the FMS. But we learned hydraulics, engines, electrical systems, fuel management, pneumatics and air conditioning (pressurization was assigned as homework, in the computer lab), what to do in case of fire, in case of overheats or low pressures or malfunctions in various places, etc. Lots of etcetera. By 4pm or so, we had been introduced to the entire control panel, from the ceiling to the front to the one sitting at lap level between the two pilots. Our brains were leaking out our ears.

At that time, four of us watched some informational videos on high-altitude physiology while four of us went to the "cockpit procedures trainer" (aka "CPT"). This is a mockup of the B737-300 cockpit, with all the lights and switches functional and appropriate sounds and klaxons, but no simulated view through the windows and no motion. We were sternly instructed never to touch one of these without the instructor present. (We could look all we wanted.) The first team of two sat down as pilot and first officer and Rob and I watched. The instructor walked the two of them through the startup sequence, from a completely "cold" airplane with the battery cut out all the way to sitting on the taxiway, after push-back, with both engines turning and no warning lights of any kind on the panel ... ready to fly, except for the detail of not being on an active runway yet. Oh, and the detail of not being an actual airplane. We had already started to forget that. These trainers are NOT CHEAP and we knew that messing one of them up was a grave offense. We might have been more nervous in an airplane sitting at a gate, but at that moment in time it was hard to imagine.

Once it was all set, the instructor had those two get up, he cleared everything back to its initial state, and Rob and I sat down. He said "OK, folks, we're parked at gate B29 of Houston Intercontinental Airport and I have an urgent need for a Diet Coke. So I'll be heading into the terminal building for a few minutes. When I come back, I want to see you pushed back from the gate, both engines turning, all systems nominal, and no amber lights on the panel. Fortunately you have an experienced 737 crew" (here he pointed to the other two students) "ready to assist you. See you in five minutes."

The first thing you do is swat the battery switch cover closed, which knocks the switch ON and connects DC power to a lot of stuff, which in turn immediately lights up warnings everywhere. Then you go through a fairly well-designed flow - center all the way up to the top, then top to bottom, left to right - through all the control panels, setting things properly. If you do things in the proper order, warnings extinguish as systems come on line, and you don't do anything dumb like taxi away while you're still plugged into the ground power cable from the gate or suck any maintenance personnel into the engines. Well, I as captain messed up the APU start, which slowed us down a little but not a lot -- that is one of the more easily recoverable goofs. We had just finished when the instructor came back. My first feeling: Hey, cool, there ARE no warning lights on here! Just a few blue ones and the glow of the instruments! We didn't screw up! We accomplished our assignment! Short on the heels of that came a realization: Holy mackerel, I could steal a Boeing 737-300 if they let me at it. I could just start it up and drive it away. And I have no idea even of how to shut it down! Yikes.

Handshakes all 'round and then we went upstairs to watch the high altitude physiology video while the other four got to start the airplane. The video was highly uninformative, at least for anyone who studied for the private pilot written exam. I heard later that the other set didn't do quite as well with their "I need a Coke" assignment. At some point they cut over to an AC power source that wasn't on yet, which trips a whole bunch of switches that had already been set, and unless you really look around, it's hard to clean that up. So they got most everything going but still had a few warning lights on. I was starting to realize just how much information and how much detail was soaking into our brains.

In the evening we were free to go, which meant that some people went for dinner and us geeks (about half the class) snarfed some PowerBars and made a beeline for the Computer Based Training lab (aka "CBT"). Here a bunch of Windows workstations run a teaching-and-quiz program that's a lot like watching an especially fancy PowerPoint presentation. I took copious notes. All that stuff is available on a CD... IF you pay your ten or fifteen grand for a type rating. As it was, this was our major chance to get any minutiae about anything on the aircraft. Rob and I were the last ones out of the building. :-)

Comments

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

I've gotten to play with sims from time to time (the A-10 sim was awesome). The amount you can learn from a simulator, doing things that would ordinarily leave a mark someplace, is truely amazing. It sounds like you had a ball! Are you going to get type rated?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Sims are an awesome training device. The sweat-drenched and exhausted guys crawling out of the 757 sim Monday morning had been practicing, among several other hair-raising things, "controlled flight into terrain". Ow. Definitely a thing for a sim.

Are you going to get type rated?

I am soooooooooooooooooo tempted. Probably should get the instrument ticket first... and it's expensive. Soooooooo tempting though.

Re:

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

Did they do rudder lock-overs? I understand 737s have that problem (or is it the rudders falling off?)

Go for your instrument ticket!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

We didn't do anything weird except the emergency descent. I have no idea if that problem has been fixed or what. A couple planes went down five years ago; no one could reliably reproduce rudder control problems except in extreme conditions (unlikely to have occurred on the accident flights); we haven't heard a thing about it since. Odd. I'd think that since there WAS a problem (albeit in unlikely conditions) we'd hear about it getting fixed. I'd also think that more information about the actual crashes would eventually have been unearthed. But I don't remember any of that.

Too bad you can't just pop hydraulic power and fly it by testosterone. The ailerons and elevator will do that; the rudder will not. No way to get past the rudder PCU.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(admiring look, tinged with envy)

Did they also show you any of the next-gen 737 cockpit sims? Was this the sim facility facing JFK Blvd, south of the terminal, with the big windows (so one can see the sim cabins from the road)?

Was there a sense of 1950s military avionics carryover, given the lineal trace (KC-135 to 707 to 737...)?

And congratulations on your "diet Coke" results...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they had next-gen sims but we didn't go in them. We glanced briefly at an MD-80 sim and a 777 sim.

Definitely 1950s avionics. Almost 1950s computers, too, running the things... well, ok, 1980, but it FELT like 1950 when I looked at them.

Thanks! :-)