Its been ages since the last blog post and honestly I must say, though I have been intensely busy and not having time by myside for a lot of things, I also will say this. I have been bloody lazy to blog!
Its like this thought that comes by each and every time a cool thing happens –‘’I’m going to blog today man!’’, it never really does happen because of the laziness that kicks in each and everytime I type and see words in front of my eyes. I’m not getting to the point now am I? Well, lets start.
Life as a whole has changed a lot and its getting to a point that I feel I’m personally changing. The way your thoughts are, the way you think, the choices and decisions you make, you have different priorities now that youre with a job and with a dream that’s being lived each and everyday. Sacrifices need to be made and so does planning.
Firstly you have absolutely NO TIME to yourself. I cant believe the amount of stress I’m under and the amount of work and effort that’s needed to be put it is immense and sometimes everything piles up to the point you ask yourself ‘’Whats happening, its all happening so fast and its so steep a mountain to climb’’. Line training as all the seniors say is THE MOST STRESSFUL THING YOU WILL EVER ENCOUNTER IN YOUR LIFE.. Line training isn’t stressful, but everything around it IS. For a flight that takes off at say 8am..I’m required to sign on 45MINUTES before flight time, that’s 7.15am. Seeing that I’m training. I need to be there 2 hours early to prepare and its not all there is to it, there is more, preparation starts the before the flight. Here we go.
Flight is scheduled for a Scheduled time of Departure(STD) on Wednesday at 7.45am. We usually do 4 sectors so typically it would be somethings like KUL-BKK-KUL-LGK-KUL….Its the day before, heres how it goes..
8PM(the night before): print out route manual, look at destination airport layouts and taxiways and radio frequencies and try calling a few seniors to find out more about the route and about special procedures about the route. For example, tips on the route. Every route is different and unique and has a different bit of challenges ranging from surroundings to things like weather patterns and Air traffic procedures. Boring you already?Well that’s pretty much what you prepare and print and read.
9.30PM- Fill up what you can for the following days paperwork example filling up dates, destination name, max take off weight(fixed), and writing your name on the loadsheet form and writing flight numbers.(basically things that are fixed already). I need to prepare 4 sets of these half filled documents and I put them into folders 1 to 4. Each for a sector.
10PM- Print out the VR(Voyage report)..a document containing the name of the captain ill be flying with and the flight attendance ill be working with for the flight. I fill up the date and the reporting times. Basically fill up whatever I can so to reduce columns to fill in the next day to avoid wasting time
11PM- before heading off to bed I look at a picture of the map of Asia, to know exactly where I’ll be taking the plane to. (Imagine not knowing the location of where ur flying to!)
---Reporting time for the 7.45am flight is 45mins before, so I need to sign on by 7am or else ill be considered late of AWOL. Anyways, for the line training phase you normally would go there 2 hours before reporting time. So I need to be there by 5am. I’ll write shortly about what we do there so early. So I need to plan what time to wake up and have breakfast and take into account the time taken to drive to the airport and to walk from the car park to the flight operations office.
I need to be there by 5 am, so this means leaving home by 4.15 at least to cater for 45mins time taken to drive from home to work. In order to do that I need to wake up by 3am. To shower, get dressed, have breakfast and to leave on time.
3AM(day of the flight)- Wake up, shower, get dressed, blablabla…
4.45am- I’m walking from the carpark to the office
4.55am- sign on at the computer and get straight to work
5am- Heres what I do:
1- Check the parking bay in which the aircraft is parked
2- Am I carrying Cargo besides baggage?, and if so, how much? Because the amount of fuel I’m allowed to carry will be based on how much Payload( People, baggage, and cargo) I;m carrying. Carry too much passengers and cargo and you will have only very little to play with in terms of fuel, meaning I mite not be able to carry enough of fuel to make 2 trips back without refueling. Remember, the price of fuel varies from state to state or even country. So if we can carry fuel for the return, then we do. Otherwise we refuel at the destination. Extra fuel is WEIGHT. So the formula is used Max takr off weight 73500-(predicted passenger loadf an baggage)=amount of fuel. 73500-aircraft empty weight-(weight of 135pax and 3 tonnes of cargo_=10200..this 10200KG is the weifht of fuel I can carry.
3- Collect the flight plan
4- Check the route weather
5- Check the notams(memos about airways we fly and airports we fly to, must check if the airports have problems or say if a runway is closed or if military activity is taking place at our time of arrival or departure)Basically news about the airports and airspace wer flying to for the day
6- Prepare the fuel chit based on the amount of fuel needed shown on the flight plan
7- Check if the flight plan entries are correct.
8- Compile the 4 flight plans and put them together with the prepared loadsheets and documents into each respective folders from the night before
9- Collect charts and go thru them and make sure the correct charts are taken for the airport wer gonna fly to.
10- Wait for Captain to come.
11- Brief Captain about all of the above. Captain chooses final fuel figure and then the friendly stewardess comes and we all shake hands n introduce ourselves for the day.
12- Walk to the aircraft
13- Order fuel/check aircraft
14- Start checking the systems onboard, setup the whole thing for the flight and route, get passenger breakup and wait for them to board
15- Briefing/instrument checks/and startup checks
16- Reqyest clearance,taxi,take off,cruise,descend,approach
That’s basically how its like. Will write more about what happends next. I’m already tired. But there you go. An Inside to what the blokes infront do.
And now for the PROs:
-You get to fly a multi-million dollar powerful Airbus A320!
-You get the feeling of speed and all that adrenalin rush
-You get thrown around by turbulence and weather
-You use every sense you possibly can for the flight and apply every bit of it, eyes, ears, hands, legs, mouth, nose, head, brain(EVERYTHING!)
-Meeting new people each day and flying to new places and seeing the smiles on peoples faces when they get on to the arms of relatives they fly safely into upon reaching theyre destination safely
-Seeing the sky and the earth and all its beauty
-You get to talk on the radio!
-I get paid to live my dream and do my hobby!how cool is that
Nothing beats this feeling above all, having the lives of 180 people solely rely on your skill, intelligence and capabilities. Knowing that you actually can fly a plane, get thrown around by weather, stress, pressure, people, time..Only to come back the next day and DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN with different situations coupled in
From dealing with passengers, to delays to bad weather to even the trickiest part of flying. I'd say ive got the best job in the world and though things your personal life away from it isnt tht perfect, given time i am very confident that i will learn from experience and that it will all fall into place. I'm just lucky to have the very few people around me that i hold so dearly to at the moment. Though some of those relationships may be strained like at home, I know I am determined to fix them someday. My family, friends...I'm always blessed. But I'm especially blessed with my girlfriend(princesssss) whose been the closest one and has been just so supportive, understanding, encouraging and selfless throughout these trying times.
I'm determined to find balance and to make it through.
This is the longest ive blogged!
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