I got to fly the 747-400 today for the first time and it was amazing! All the training up to this point has been to prepare me for today, the meat and potatoes of a pilot’s job: Flying the plane. It was stressful, and as I started to fly, the cockpit seemed to get pretty warm, but I was also able to relax and have fun with it too. We’ve often been told that this is the most fun we’ll have during training, so I tried to enjoy it as much as I could.

The -400 is the fourth generation of 747 and currently is the newest iteration until the -8 arrives. It will eclipse the -400 as the newest and best, but at 20 years old, the -400, as good as it is, can certainly be updated in both electronics and fuel consumption. I believe that Cathay will be one of the first operators of the new -8 (Cargolux is the first).

Captain Paul Barton helped to guide me through the skies today. We took off out of Hong Kong and headed to Zhuhai, China, about 50 miles away. It is ideal for practicing touch and go’s because of it’s long runway and its light volume of traffic. We only had to avoid two other planes the whole time we were there.

Also aboard was Obet Mazinyi, a captain transitioning from the older -200 version of the 747, and Claudius Van Heyningen. Obet started us off by flying over to Zhuhai and I brought us back to Hong Kong. Obet only needed three landings because he was already qualified in the 747. I needed six landing as a new pilot on the 747. Finally, Claudius was there as a safety pilot, to help Paul run the checklists and and keep an eye on things. We flew B-HUI, a passenger aircraft for Cathay Pacific.

Our plane was a few minutes late from coming in from LAX, so we all four chatted as we waited for it to arrive. Once it was in the gate, it took a long time for everyone to get off (and there were 10 wheelchair assists!) Once in the cockpit, one of the members of the last crew had typed “Good Luck” into one of the navigational computers so that we’d see it. Obet got the cockpit setup while Paul showed me around the preflight of the instruments and cockpit. Claudius did the walk around and started the coffee for us — how cool!

Everything was uneventful and after Obet’s three landings, it was my turn. We stopped on the taxiway and I climbed up into the seat. Wow! I was sitting thirty feet off the ground and at the controls of a beast. In the 747, unlike a lot of planes, there are steering tillers on both sides of the cockpit. So, if it is the copilot’s turn to fly, he taxis as well. There is a groundspeed readout on one of our instruments, and we have to use that to tell how fast we are actually going because we sit so high up. Without looking at the speed, one might be going 60 before they realized they were taxiing too fast. It’s all about perspective.

I taxied down to the end of the runway, and Paul did the first takeoff and landing so I could see things from up front, and then it was my turn. All four Rolls Royce engines rumbled to life and we sped down the runway. “Rotate” was Paul’s call, and I pitched the nose up to 12.5 degrees, and we were off! All in all, I feel like I did pretty well. The training in the sim is helpful, but nothing can prepare you for landing the real airplane. Small corrections, easy on the controls, and then listen for the callouts. The computer will call “50, 40, 30, 20, 10” As in feet off the ground as you come into land. As a matter of fact, when sitting on the ground, the radio altimeter (which shows us how high we are off the ground below us) shows -8 feet. That’s because it’s set to read zero when the wheels first touch down. The whole landing gear are so massive and huge, that they and the struts compress a full 8 feet from touchdown to full weight on wheels. Amazing.

At “30” we are easing the yoke back to flair above the runway. At “20” we ease the power back to idle by “10” and then wait for the wheels to start rolling. It was beautiful and I wish all my readers could have been there with me. I gave my camera to Obet and he took a few photos. I’m sweating in most, and looking cheesy in others, but I’m glad to have a record of today because it was a monumental day. After returning to Hong Kong, I taxied us into a stand and we had some free meals on the plane: heated meat pies (chicken pot pies) cheese, coffee, milk, water, fruit, whatever we wanted. I ate a lot to save on lunch money later! Then, the van came by to pick us up to take us back to the terminal.

I can still remember my first landing, all by myself, in Marion, Indiana. Steve Manganello was my instructor, and with a hand-held radio by the side of the runway, he watched as I did my first solo flight in a Cessna 172. Now, some 14 years later, almost to the day, I’m reliving my dream of being an airline pilot. All those years of wanting to fly a 747, all that time growing up in Indonesia and riding on 747’s and wanting to be up front, all the heartache to get here to Cathay now all seems worth it and I can finally stop dreaming and start flying.

The training ahead will be very tough as there will be much expected of me, but for now, I can revel in the glory of having said that I’ve flown a 747. And what a moment it was, indeed.

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com

These last few weeks I’ve been feeling down. Three weeks ago, things were looking up: I had just finished two very hard simulator checkrides, and all I had left to do was a base training exercise and I would then have the following two weeks off. Those two weeks would be spent at home, relaxing and recouping from all the stress from training.

Base training is really a non-event. After all the simulations I had been through, it certainly wasn’t as stressful as the checkrides I had done well in. Base training is where we take the airplane up and do touch and go’s — take off, come back around and land, and then instead of stopping after the landing, we push the power back up and take off again, hence the term touch and go. We do that in the real plane, but to get ready for that experience, we practice it in the simulator first.

I may have overlooked this sim session because I ended up not doing well in it. Flying big airplanes like the 747 are flown much differently than the smaller planes that I was used to, like the EMB-145. The 747 is so big and massive, that any deviations from the flight path have to be noticed and corrected almost immediately, because of this annoying thing called inertia. Once the airplane is significantly headed off course, it takes a lot of work to get it back to where it should be. Those corrections have to take place much more quickly than in smaller planes, where a little “slop” can be gotten away with.

The base training is also flown without any flight guidance, or “raw data” where there are no pointers on the instruments to show us where to go or if we are getting off course. All the course corrections must be seen by ourselves, and we can’t run home to mama with the flight directors giving us flight guidance. At my last job, I prided myself in not using the flight directors, so that I could fly by my instruments without any guidance help. But, transferring that skill to the 747 has proven to be quite tricky, indeed.

In the simulator, I got stressed as things didn’t fly the way I wanted them to, and then I started flying poorly, which led to more nervousness, which led to worse flying, and so forth. Needless to say, I didn’t pass that portion of the base training. Bummer! I was then scheduled to go on leave (vacation to all you Americans reading this) and I didn’t have this sim session out of the way. They gave me another chance in the sim, but it would be after I returned from Ohio. 

I was upset because I wanted this session out of the way and behind me. I didn’t want that poor performance hanging over my head. I wanted to relax while on leave, but instead, all I could think about was trying to be better the next time. Flying is tricky because like in my case, I could mentally know everything, and how to fly the 747 correctly, but getting it to pass through to my hands and feet was a different story. Flying isn’t like a test, where you can cram knowledge in and pass, it is performanced-based, and you can either have a good day or a bad day in the sim.

As I headed back to Hong Kong after my leave, with this sim evaluation looming over my head, my dad gave me some great words of wisdom. He quoted Matthew 28:20, “And surely I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.” Jesus is talking to His disciples and this is the last thing He says to them before he ascends back into heaven. Those disciples were later beaten, decapitated, and even hung on a cross upside down. They all died for their belief in Jesus. (As an aside note, that is a great reason to believe that the Bible is true — because what they wrote about in the new testament is what got them killed, and people don’t die for a lie, they die for the truth!) So even as those men suffered great trials, God was with them. And even little old me, who travelled to Hong Kong on the other side of the earth, God was still going to be with me!

I also read II Corinthians 1:3-11 as I headed back to this side of the world, with potential trouble looming:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles . . .
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”

That short section was quite an inspiration to me, especially as the parts that I put in bold seemed to jump out at me. Isn’t it just like God, that when your heart is troubled, you can turn to His unfailing word and find peace and encouragement? That is why I feel His word is eternal. It isn’t just a book of old stories that no longer have meaning, but they are words that are full of power!

Needless to say, with the prayer support of many, and my confidence fully resting on God, I was able to stay calm and do exceptionally well on my checkride. Now I will get to fly the real plane and do the touch and go’s that sound so exciting.

I used to tell people that God would not put them in a situation beyond what they could bear. But that is a complete falsehood. That is no where in the Bible! In reality, God puts us in situations like that a lot, where all we can do is trust in Him and lean on Him, and look to Him for direction and guidance. He does that to stretch us and help us grow. Whether it be promising Abraham a son when that was no longer physically possible, or putting a Red Sea in front of Moses and an Egyptian army behind him, or sending Gideon out to conquer an army with only 300 men (the real “300” movie) or using the impossible strength of Samson to kill God’s enemy, or raising men from the dead, God uses the impossible and makes it possible. When we humble ourselves, and become poor in spirit, He loves nothing more than to rush in and save us, sometimes in the most impossible ways.

God sure helped me turn things around because He is always faithful to those who love Him. Even if I had bombed this training and been fired and sent home, He would be guiding and leading and I would have to call it a privilege to follow him, “to the very end of the world.”

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com