I just got back from two days of flying that ended up not being too bad at all. Day one I did a quick trip to Manila and back and then yesterday I did a trip to Taipei and back. The Taipei trip was a split-duty, where we fly up there in the morning and then come back 7 hours later. In that case, the company gets us a hotel room for the day and some per diem. This view is out my window from the the hotel, which is quite far from downtown, and not in the best of neighborhoods.
I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but these trips are hard and stressful for me. I know that two trips in two days doesn’t sound bad, especially when each leg is only about 90 minutes each. In the real world, where I was finished with training, these flights would be no big deal, and fun to do because they are so quick and easy. Unfortunately, I’m not in the real world yet, and still in training. That means that even though things sound quick and easy, they really are hard. It takes me several hours to prepare for the day’s flying, and the entire trip is filled with learning (stressors).
One of these days, I’ll be able to jump into the cockpit and say, “Lets go!” but for now, everything is slow and methodical and at a pace that screams “I’m new at this.” It will take some time to get used to the Cathay system, and how everything runs. It’s going to take time to gain the necessary experience to fly this 747 like they want it flown, and it will take even more time to get comfortable in the first officer’s seat. But, that all comes with time and I look forward to those days.
It’s tricky for me now, because there are so many more things to think about than when I flew the 50 seat regional jet at my last job. Also, Cathay is big on procedures I’ve never done before. For example, flying in the USA, air traffic controllers (ATC) issue descent clearances and then expect you to get down to that assigned altitude quickly. But over in Asia, there is a lot more leeway and if we don’t want to descend too quickly, we don’t have to. So, that being said, Cathay likes for our approaches to contain no level segments, from initial descent to touchdown. Anytime the airplane levels, it burns more fuel, is not as efficient, and is less comfortable for the passengers. If we fly on a constant descent path, then everything is smoother for our passengers and we burn less gas by not powering up the engines to initiate a level off.
Well, as one can imagine, no level segments means lots of planning ahead, lots of mental math, lots of small updated changes to the profile, and lots of stress for us new joiners! In my past life, if ATC said for us to descend from 5,000 feet to 3,000 feet, then no big deal, we dial in a 1,500 foot per minute descent rate, and forget about it. If we level at 3, then fine, if ATC gives us lower before we get to 3, then we continue to go lower. No biggie. But now, at Cathay, we don’t want to level at 3,000, especially if we are expecting a further descent clearance in the next few seconds. So, if we are getting close to level off, we need to select something like a 300 foot per minute descent rate, to help prevent a level off. This sounds somewhat easy in these simplified terms, but add in vectors for an approach, transitioning from VNAV to V/S or FLCH, track shortening, headings, and then joining the glideslope on profile, and things get a wee bit more difficult. As I learn to fly this big beast, I’d say this is one of the most difficult things about flying at Cathay. It will certainly take some getting used to.
I continue to have pretty smooth landings, sometimes by luck and sometimes by getting the hang of things. However, my most recent landing, back here into Hong Kong, was, shall we say, firm. Firm was the word used in my training captain’s report on my flying that day. You can’t win them all, right? The 747 flies like a dream and is truly a pilot’s airplane. I don’t have many hours on it yet and I can already tell that is true.
Landing is much different than what I was used to as well. At 50 feet up, the airplane starts making callouts: “50, 40, 30, 20, 10.” Those are the feet above the runway that the main gear are as we come in to land. At 50, I do nothing. At 40, I start to have a think about my flare: the act of pitching up slightly to start arresting our descent rate. At 30, I start to pull back on the yoke to make a small pitch change of only 2 degrees or so. At 20, I start to pull the power off to idle, so as to be at idle by 10. And then, it’s just hold everything steady until the main gear touches down. Easy, right? Yeah . . .
After a stressful flight with lots of questions from the training captain, lots of descent profile calculations, fighting wind gusts and bringing that big, lumbering baby down to the runway, it sure feels good to get a greaser landing. It’s a reward for all the hard work put in for the last few hours. To describe it another way, we arm the speedbrakes to auto deploy on touchdown (speedbrakes being the panels that rise up on the top of the wing to spoil lift upon main gear touchdown). When they are armed and the main gear touch down, the speedbrake lever/handle swings back about 8 inches to physically raise the speedbrake panels. It makes a geared sound like an ungreased door hinge opening — reeeh. That sound means you are on the ground. As I fight to make it a smooth touchdown, and I hear the “reeeh” sound, but don’t feel any bang or bump, that means success: a perfect transition from flying to rolling down the runway. It’s not always like that, but that is the goal. I want my passengers to ask, “Are we on the ground yet?”
“50 . . . 40 . . . 30 . . . 20 . . . 10 . . . reeeeh” Perfect.
