I’m headed back Eastbound toward North America after a stressful but necessary few days in Hong Kong. This past week was my biannual checkride, two simulator sessions to keep my flying licenses current and my emergency procedures up to standard. After a while, these six month checks become a little more routine, but as a fairly new hire, they are still very stressful and honestly, a little nerve-racking and scary.

Each six months, a pilot’s license currency expires and thus has to be renewed. Also, it is a chance to practice emergency procedures, like engine failures on takeoff, fires, electrical problems, technical problems like the landing gear not coming down, and so forth. These are drills that a pilot will almost never experience in a career, so they need to be practiced in a simulator so that if bad luck strikes, we will be ready to act.

People who say that planes basically fly themselves (who are usually not pilots or even frequent fliers) are wrong, as of 2009. There is so much that goes on in the planning stages, takeoff and landing phases, and during an emergency, that I don’t see pilotless planes in the near future. I guarantee that a computer could not have landed safely in the Hudson river! A pilot really earns his money when there is a problem. Some like to say that pilots are over-paid – until that pilot saves that person’s life when an engine quits over the North Pacific!

I spent the last few days in two simulator sessions, an RT (recurrent training) and a PC (proficiency check). The RT is graded, but it is more of a chance to warm up for the PC, that is graded on a lot more strict level. The RT is also a good chance to practice more non-standard problems, that the PC just wouldn’t have time for.

Every pilot learns to hate checkrides. They are stressful because if a pilot doesn’t perform well on the day (as he is just having a bad or off day) then there is chance he could lose his job. Real world emergencies are often non-events or at least only happen as a singular event. In the simulator, the checker running the profile is throwing problem after problem at us. Once we solve one problem, we have another one, and once that is solved, another problem pops up. Four hours later, you hope to still have your sanity.

The simulator is quite a cool machine in and of itself. It is a huge box up on hydraulic stilts that moves all around in space. It has a wrap around visual system on the front of it so that as we look out the front windshield, we see the “real world.” The large boxes on the top of the sim are the visual projectors. A ramp moves down into position so that we can walk into the sim and then it pulls away to allow the sim to move all around. For example, on takeoff, the sim tilts back, and gives us a sense of acceleration. The sims are real enough that pilots can be certified to fly the real airplane without having flown the real airplane, just the simulator. — and this is old technology. These 747-400 sims are 20 years old and don’t always cooperate. During our RT, the sim we were in quit working on us twice, and just like a poor windows user, the sim tech had to reset the computer. Luckily for the more stressful PC, nothing like that happened to us.

Needless to say, checkrides are not fun, but they are a necessary part of being a pilot. I will certainly take the stress of having a check every six months, over not remembering what to do when an engine quits for real. And as for the burning question, yes, I passed! I had a great captain to fly with and he was good and making sure I was doing everything correctly. The examiners were also very nice and laid back, which helps to set a good tone. So, I’m safe for another six months, until I get to do it all over again.

TobyLaura.com