This is a picture of Cathay Pacific’s dispatch room in Hong Kong. This is where the pilots meet prior to a flight. This is a really nice setup, and most of Cathay’s ports don’t have this, but at headquarters, we get a nice facility.

At an hour and ten minutes prior to departure time, the pilots for the flight meet up at the table that has their flight number and flight paperwork. We shake hands and greet one another if we’ve never met in the past and get to know each other a little bit. There is a sign in sheet that we initial, and then we all have a look over the paperwork.

One thing that is a lot nicer than my last job, is all the prep work that the dispatchers do for us as far as paperwork. There is a sign with the flight number on it, so we know where our paperwork is. The dispatcher has laid out all the paperwork: the fuel slip, flight plan, dispatch message, notams, weather, and other various bits of information. All we have to do is show up and look at it all, and that makes it pretty nice. Also, all this information is posted on the internet a few hours prior to a flight, so we can save time in dispatch by making some decisions before we even show up at work.

After signing in, we each have a look at all the paperwork involved in flying from A to B. The dispatch message shows us our expected weight for takeoff and the maximum allowable weight for takeoff, tailored specifically for the aircraft we will be flying that day. A lot of the planes don’t weigh the exact same amount, and it would be crazy to try and memorize the weights of each plane, so it is written down for us.

The Notams, or notices to airmen, are notes about defects at airports that are on our specific route of flight. For example, the approach guidance may be inoperative at the last airport we fly over prior to going oceanic. That would be nice to know, because if we need to turn back or have trouble, we will know that if the weather is bad, we won’t be able to use that particular airport. The weather report shows us general weather and winds along the route, and then also at all the airports along the way. This is valuable information because if we have to divert with trouble, we need to know which airports we can expect to be able to use or overfly due to poor weather.

The flight plan is looked at, and it gives us tomes of information about what our flight will entail. How high will we be flying, where our step climbs will be, what the route is, and what our fuel load should be. Step climbs are important because on a long flight as we burn more fuel, the aircraft gets lighter. As it gets lighter, it can fly at a higher, more optimal altitude for fuel burn. A heavy plane can’t climb all the way to it’s top cruise altitude because it is too heavy. After five hours or so, it will have burned off tons of fuel, be lighter, and thus be able to climb to a higher altitude. Higher altitudes save fuel, so we want to climb when we can. On a 16 hour flight from JFK to Hong Kong, the Boeing 777-300ER might start at 29,000 feet, but 15 hours later, just prior to the descent into Hong Kong, it might be at 39,000 feet, climbing a few thousand feet, every few hours.

Finally, we all agree on a fuel load, based on things like weather, how heavy our cargo is, and so forth. Filling out the fuel slip is the last thing we do, and then we gather all that paperwork up and head out to the bus that takes us to the aircraft. At other ports, we just look at the paperwork online and then again in the cockpit, but in Hong Kong, the setup is really nice. Also nice in Hong Kong is that Cathay’s crew hotel is connected to dispatch, so we just walk out of the lobby, and we’re at work!

TobyLaura.com

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