Starting IOE

So, I started my IOE flying.

IOE or "Initial Operating Experience," for me is 25 hours (or more) of flying, acting as the Captain, including flying from the left seat, and wearing all 4 stripes, with a qualified line Check Airman. There is no way to shorten the 25 hours, you just have to go fly it.

For my first sequence, I was paired up with Conn McCarthy, a guy I have known for years. He's really good, laid back, great pilot. For me, a great pilot is someone who knows their stuff and has good judgement. That is by far the most important quality any Captain can have. Most of us can fly the airplane just fine; it takes a real pilot to make good judgement calls.

So we get everything ready, and the airplane is ready to fly. Day #1 will be this-- ORD RST ORD PIT ORD DBQ. Chicago - Rochester, MN, - Chicago - Pittsburgh - Chicago - Dubuque, Iowa. So we taxi out from our gate, and I'm driving.

For those of you non-aviation types, only the Captain 'drives' the aircraft on the ground. There is a 'tiller' on the Captain's side, and that controls the full range of nose-wheel steering you need to move the plane safely on the ground.

So here I am, driving. It drives quite a bit differently than the Sim. There is no doubt that you are moving a real airplane, though. At takeoff weights around 42,000 lbs, you can feel the weight in the tiller in your hand, even though it runs through hydraulic lines, etc.

We head out to the runway, line up, and I make my first take-off from the left seat.

It is funny, because I do have so much time in the right seat in the airplane; When I fly from the right seat, really, the airplane has just become an extension of my body, at least, that is how I view it. I know exactly what is going to happen physically with the airplane, and then it just happens. Kind of like breathing; you really just do it, except for those short spots where you have to stop something, like swimming underwater, etc. I've reached that point, so, when I start flying from the left seat, something kind of funny happens.

I remember what it feels like to fly.

You have to have a certain appreciation for the tactile sensations that go with flying. Yes, every take off roll goes (hopefully) the same way. Accelerate down the runway, reach certain pre-determined speeds, let the nose come up off the ground, and then let the plane fly herself away from the Earth.

I have been so connected to what I have been flying the past number of years, that I had forgotten then sensations of flying.

WOW... did it feel good!

Not to mention, I realized that I don't know what anything looks like out the left side of the airplane! New houses to look down on! New roads! New views! Not to mention, just looking left and not seeing another person! lol....

Simple flight to KRST. We're descending into the area, and ATC tells us to level off at 12,000', since he has traffic at 11,600. That is kind of an unusual altitude for traffic (we're usually at whole thousands, and Visual Rules traffic flies at thousands + 500.) So we get an alert from our Traffic Collision and Avoidance System "Monitor Vertical Speed," then-- "Climb.. .Climb"

Compliance is mandatory, unless it would put you in a more precarious situation. So, I climb till the box shuts up, or about 500 feet. Here is what is going through my mind- This is a mandatory report to the company and to ATC. ON MY FIRST FLIGHT IN THE LEFT SEAT!

Fer cryin' out loud.

But, we managed to survive, somehow. We had our flights, and everything worked out. We had a fairly short overnight in Dubuque, and we got there on time, and went to the hotel.

On Day #2, we were the first flight out of DBQ, an "Originating" flight, on the First flight of the day, there are a number of checks that have to be done; system status checks, etc, so the aircraft is ready to go for the day. I started setting up the cockpit, and Conn went to start the walkaround. The plane was pretty cold, so fired up the APU, and signalled the ramp agent to go ahead and disconnect the ground power unit.

I was looking down after that, and reading the Aircraft Maintenance Log, when I felt the nose of the airplane lurch to the right. It felt like we got hit in the tail from the right side, which would push the nose to the right. My first thought?

"Are you F-ing kidding me? We just got hit on my SECOND day of IOE?!?!?"

I looked out the window, and I could see the ramp agent with the GPU towed behind her tug. The GPU cable was stretched out to the airplane, so I realized that we had not been hit, but she had pulled away from the airplane with the cable still hooked up.

Still, are you kidding me?!!??!

Then I realized that I could not see Conn outside, and the ramper was running back towards the airplane.

I jumped out of my seat and ran down, and saw Conn rolling around in pain on the ground. He had been standing over the cable, checking one of the panels, when the cable snapped taut. it lifted him up, kind of throwing him about 5 feet into the air, and then he came down, hard, on his back when the cable snapped out of the aircraft.

We got a nurse who happened to be in the terminal, and she checked out Conn while we waited for the ambulance to get to us. The EMTs checked out Conn, and then took him away to the hospital to get an MRI, and scanned to see if they had ruptured his spleen, or anything bad internally.

So now, I need a Check Airman to get me out of there, and we find out they are sending Logan, one of the guy I was a new hire with, who just upgraded 2 months before me. Great! I can't fly the left seat with him! So when he got there, I had to fly as an FO all over again; at least I was still current!

One adventure after another....

The Checkride

So, here we are, Checkride day.

It's funny; after flying around an 'airplane' (the Sim) for a week that has engines that keep bursting into flame, landing gear that collapses, instruments that fail, all kinds of what-not, the checkride ends up being a bit of a downer.

Which is good... exciting checkrides are not anything that you want. Excitement is for football games, not for airplanes.

So here is how my checkride went, as far as actually taking the ride. Also, this was my ATP checkride, and my Captain's Type Ride (what you need to be an airline captain; funny how that all goes together, isn't it?)

There are a number of things they need to see on the ride. For takeoffs, they need to see a 'normal' takeoff, crosswind takeoff, reduced visibility takeoff, night takeoff, etc. So what they do, is your first takeoff is at night, with a crosswind, in reduced visibility. :) After that, it's fill

in the blanks on what they need.

So you do an 'area' departure. For me, this was a departure out of KLGA (New York's LaGuardia Airport,) that involves a bit of a complicated turn pattern to depart correctly. However, if you have been there before, it's not that scary. You depart runway 13, turn right to head South, then when you are 2.5 miles or so (if I remember correctly,) from KLGA, you turn back to the left to fly a 040 heading (Northeast, basically.) Then you accelerate away. Simple as pie.

Once we are clear of the airport complex, we're level at 5,000 feet, and it is time for airwork. For the Captain's ride, this is steep turns (45 degrees of bank, holding altitude within 100',) and a stall series. (Remember-- wings stall... engines die. A Stall is when you do not have enough airflow over the wings to keep you flying. The engines pull/push you through the air so that you have the speed to have stable airflow over the wings.)

A small side note on how engines work; Simply put, Suck, Squeeze, Burn, Blow. The big fan on the front sucks in the air, the smaller fans behind it squeeze it to get the most energy out of it, the combustion chamber burns that squoze air, and then it gets blown out the back of the engine, turning the turbine blades, which turn the big fan at the front, sucking in more air to squeeze, burn, and blow. Power is actually limited but controlling fuel flow. If you kept adding fuel, it would keep sucking in more air, literally... then eventually it would reach really unstable temperatures, and everything would go up in a poof of parts, but all you do is limit the fuel, and it runs forever.

So, steep turns... I nailed this one. I rolled into a 45 degree bank to the left, and it was as if someone had driven a nail through the altimeter needle. Did not waver 10 feet, let alone 100. As I turned through 180 degrees of heading change, I pushed down on the nose, rolled the aircraft level, and then directly into a right 45 degree banked turn. I climbed about 20 feet here.. boooo me.

From this, I went right into the stall series-- first up, autopilot on, "clean" stall. Basically, you take the engines to idle, and then you watch your airspeed decay with the autopilot on, until finally you get the stall warnings, and the autopilot disconnects, and you try to recover with minimum altitude loss. The autopilot on deal is because of that Colgan crash in Buffalo in late 2009. We have the autopilot on, and THEY had their autopilot on, and they just let it slow down till they dropped out of the sky. So, we get to relearn what they did wrong.

My stalls were excellent, so my Examiner waived my 3rd stall, and we started setting up for arrival #1.

Now, he needs (or she needs,) to see a number of approaches, and at least a hold, and a bunch of missed approaches. On a checkride, you have to figure you are not going to land. It's 1 missed approach after another; they need to see precision and 'non-precision' approaches. The onyl difference from a practice standpoint is that precision has vertical as well as lateral guidance built in.

First approach into KJFK was hand flown, raw data... just to do it. Rocked the approach. On the missed approach, I brought the autopilot back into the game, and we set up to fly out to the hold. This gave us time to set up the instruments for the next approach, and the hold is out in an area that leads TO that approach.

Autopilot on for the next approach, a GPS approach, and then another one with the autopilot off. The approaches get pretty busy, but there is a golden rule when you are flying checkrides-- be merciless on your non-flying pilot (now called the 'pilot monitoring.') you have to be a slave-driver. Make them do EVERYTHING for you... that is what they are there for. Your job is to drive the airplane.

So I did that... but I had a little pity. The guy "slingin' gear" for me had just been on a checkride for a different pilot, so he was a bit strung out. I went easy on him, but my Examiner was pleased that I was in control at all times, there was never any doubt that I was the Captain, and I made the flight deck work for me.

So, after 3 approaches, I finally get to land. This means 1 of 2 things is about to occur; I will either get an aborted takeoff, or I am going to lose 1 of the engines on takeoff. So, we get the abort, and I stop the aircraft on the runway, and we prepare to 'evacuate.' Then I taxi the aircraft down to the end of the runway, turn us around, and here we go with an engine failure at the most critical phase of flight- right as we rotate, basically.

So the engine pops off at V1 (take-off decision speed. Go or no-go.) Gotta get this baby airborne. The EMB has a beautiful thing happening when you lose an engine-- just keep the nose on the runways a second or two longer... no longer than 1.5 seconds, maybe. The rudder pressure you need to keep the nose centered on the runway is exactly the pressure you need to keep flying in a straight line once you pull the nose up for rotation to start flying.

Flies like a dream, and I am flying like I built the airplane.

We climb out, and there are certain things that need to be done at certain times in an emergency like that. You need to get altitude (it is your FRIEND,) then you need to build airspeed, then you need to turn THAT airspeed into more altitude. I flew it like a rock star. Really. I rocked the crap out of that flight, start to finish.

So we came back around to do yet another approach, this one 'single engine,' and I brought us in for a smooooth landing.

As we were getting ready to leave the sim for our debrief, the Examiner said 'Scott, that was impressive. There was never any doubt that you were the Captain." Then, when we got to the debriefing room, he told me that "That was probably one of the best Rides I have ever seen."

Talk about making you feel good about how you did! But really, when you get out from the ride, you know exactly how you did. Nothing could wipe the stupid grin off my face, I know it.

And that, my friends, was one hell of a Checkride.

Cheers!

Scott

an apology

Hi Gang!!

Well, I have been bad, and shamefully neglected my blog here.

I took my checkride, and then got really ill that night. I've been recovering, and doing a little flying, but I have not had the time or wherewithall to update here.

So I have a few posts that are coming, I just wanted to let you know...

Cheers!!

Scott

How does one get to become an airline pilot?

So how do I get to be a pilot, anyways?

There are really 2 routes to becoming a commercial airline pilot. The first, and what most people think is the traditional, is the military route. Finish college, enter the Air Force, or Navy, etc, get your wings from them, then retire at the end of your duty period and go to work for the airlines. This works nicely; somebody else pays for your flight training, which is expensive, but has a major drawback that you could end up getting shot at. Most pilots would rise to this challenge, but really, you are getting shot at.

The second route, is to go through civilian training. This is the route that I took. There are University programs that cover everything from soup to nuts and give you a degree in Aviation Management (what the heck does that mean, really) along with all your flying time, or you can do it the really hard way, and fly in your spare time.

Being slightly of a strange bent, I took that last of those. It didn’t start that way; I entered college on schedule, but I dropped out after my first year. I even had won a most highly coveted pilot’s slot upon graduation from Air Force ROTC, but the reality was, I was in no way mentally disciplined at that point in my life for either college or for military life. Sure, I could do it now, but who the hell wants a 42 year old military fighter pilot. Besides that, I’m old… and a chicken. “There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.”

Early on, I heard this about pilots—The more you fly, and as you gain more experience, after a short while, you should start to develop a yellow streak down the center of your back, that gets wider and wider as you get older and older. This will be set off early on, by you scaring the beJesus out of yourself, hopefully living to tell the tale, and really deciding not to do that again. That wide yellow streak is what keeps you alive.

Really, that is pretty funny. Pilots tend to be fairly aggressive, Type-A personalities. We want to lead, we want to be at the business end of the stick, we tend to be proud of our accomplishments. This is one of the reasons why as we go through the winnowing process moving forward in flying careers, there are far more men, far more men, flying for a living. It has very little to do with the “Old Boys” club concept. It’s just that there are simply not enough women who want to go through all the crap it takes before you can even get hired, let alone have the mental attitude it takes to fly. There is a certain mindset that you need. You need to be able to look at a number of possibilities, throw out the crap, make dangerous decisions now and then, and do it all rapidly and decisively. You have to be able to act. Pilots are “Doers.”

I am sure there is some “Old Boys” club mentality out there, but at this point in my career, I have flown with enough women that I can tell anyone flat out, There are girls flying who can fly circles around me; they are better pilots, and I’m never going to hold a candle to them. I’ve also flown with men of whom I think the same. On the flipside, I’ve flown with both men and women that make me wonder “How the H*ll did you ever get through flight school?” It’s all out there.

So I went the hard way, so to speak. I took my first flying lesson at Midway Airport in Chicago, at the tender age of 19, from a bodybuilder named Dave who also flight instructed to make a little extra $$. We had a trade; I would wash airplanes with him, and he would give me instruction, hour for hour. This was good, since instruction was about $24/hour, I was making good ca$h to wash airplanes.

So what you do is, you buy your time. There is aircraft rental fees, landing fees, the fees for the instructor, and other ways to send your hard earned money out the exhaust.

Once you start flying, you take your Student Pilot Medical Certificate. This is a medical exam, that also acts as your Student Pilot Certificate. It has pretty low standards, as far as medical exams go (pulse, see that wall, hear my voice,) but once you have it, you can do the little bit of magic that is in every pilot’s logbook. Fly your first Solo Flight.

So when you start, you learn some about the airplane, usually a trainer (Cessna 152 or 150 in my case, maybe a 172. Piper had the Warrior and Scout. They have all gotten really fancy since I flew.) So you learn a little aircraft basics, some basic aerodynamics, some basic airspace, and then you go practice landings. Lots of landings. If you take off, you gotta land... you’re pretty much committed at that point. You start practicing at a safe altitude, say 3,000’. You practice your descent to the airport, then ‘land’ at a safe altitude. After a few of those, you get to try out a real landing, at a real airport. Then you do more. Many many more… and they have a phrase for how you practice; “Touch and Goes.” You touch down on the runway for landing, clean the airplane up, and then take off again, all in the same roll. Then you do it again… and again.

Eventually your instructor thinks you are safe enough to be turned loose, and you have that magical moment when he or she says “Turn off on the taxiway after the next landing. I’m going to get a cup of coffee, and you do the next few yourself.”

Then you start to taxi back to the runway, and you realize “I’m all alone in here. There is nobody to help me. Sure, I can call on the radios, but really, fate is at my command.”

Every pilot flies solo occasionally (sometimes even in an airline flight deck.) However, you only Solo once. It is magical. It is high inducing. Nobody will ever really understand, except your fellow pilots. You are entering a very special brotherhood. You are doing something amazing… that runway is the only thing that connects the sky and the ground, and you are going to make that connection all by your lonesome.

I once met a girl who always wanted to be a pilot. She got to the point she made her first Solo flight, and then she stopped flying. She just wanted to solo, to say she had done it. Good for her... she’s done something rare….

After this, it is a race to the Private Pilot’s License. This license allows you to fly anywhere in the air traffic control system. A Private Pilot has all the rights in our airspace as any other pilot, including airline types. ATC does not have a tag on the airplane that says --*PPL,* or anything like that. When you want to, you can fly whatever you want, however you want. If you have the money, you can be a private pilot and fly your own personal Boeing 747. There would be quite a lot involved, but realistically, that is true.

So there is a written exam for the Private Pilot License. It covers airspace limitations, basic flight rules, just what you would expect. There is even some weather questions on there. The PPL is a ‘fair weather’ license, until you add something called an Instrument Rating. This is more testing, and more instruction, and learning how to fly by reference to the instruments in the aircraft alone. A little more of this training is what John Kennedy could have used and it would have saved his life, most likely. It is basic, but when you know how to fly by referencing the outside world, and someone takes that world away (Fog.. night.. whatever) you better know how to fly by the instruments.

Generally, you get the Instrument Rating as soon after your PPL as you can. Then you can fly anywhere in the air traffic system in most any weather, too. Now you can do some real flying.

But you can’t fly for pay. Not yet. The general rule was that as long as you contributed to the cost of the flight, it was considered fair game for a Private Pilot. So, we would rent a Cessna 172, fly up to Lake Geneva for Sunday Brunch, fly back, and the rental, etc, would be about $250. As long as I contributed $0.01, I was legal for the flight. Today, however, they have changed the wording to “pro-rated” costs. Equal amounts, so that Private Pilots are not getting away with that. Too bad… that was fun.

When you are ready to step up, and you have a minimum of 250 flight hours, you can take your Commercial Pilot’s License exam. There is another written (of course!) and another checkride… you will be held to higher tolerances, now. People will be paying you to fly them, they have a right to be protected from someone with a lack of knowledge and experience.

A quick (ha ha) word on flying time, We log our own flying time. This goes on the honor system. Serious! Anybody can call to check up on you if you are a job applicant, and many places do. But you could put whatever flying time in your logbook you wanted, and for the most part, it would be considered yours. This is terribly unethical, and pilots who are caught “pencil whipping” their flying time should be drummed out of aviation.

There are minimum flying times for licenses. I don’t remember all the numbers anymore, but it was 40 hour for Private, 150 or so for taking the Instrument rating, 250 for Commercial. There are also requirements inside there, such as a certain amount of that flying must be Cross Country (to or over an airport 50 Nautical Miles from your starting airport.) For the Commercial, you have to have flown a flight of at least 500 miles, with stops if need be, and a landing airport at least 250 miles from where you started.

Once you pass your Commercial Pilot, now you can fly for pay. But almost nobody will hire you, because you don’t have any experience; you cannot be insured with such low flying time. Flying time is your experience level… low time = no insurance. So you have to keep flying, but some of the ways you can build your time are: ferry airplanes you are already checked out on for a manufacturer, or aircraft sales broker (I did a bunch of this.) Find someone generous who owns a decent airplane that will fly with you until he/she can insure you. That is a nice route. Or, you can flight instruct. This is an add-on to the Commercial Pilot’s License. There are a few tests, knowledge tests, etc, and a flight check, but then you can hang your shingle out and teach budding new aviation hopefulls how to fly.

Now it is just a time building exercise. At every step along the way, people drop off the map. There are a lot of student pilot. There are fewer Private Pilots. Then there are the PPLs with an instrument rating.. Then There is a multi-engine rating for that… then Commercial License. Every step of the way, fewer people continue on. It is expensive if you are not going to make a career out of it, and even then, you may never get your $$ back. It is a “rare bird” who only has a single uniform in his or her closet. Many pilots have been furloughed, bought out, rehired, the works.

Eventually, you find an airline that has hiring minimums that you meet, and then you interview, get a background check, drug tested. Some interviews include flying a simulator to see how you handle an aircraft. My interview with Eagle included 20 minutes or so in a Boeing 707 Sim… that was a rush.

But that is the gist of it.

Day 4 of Sim.

So, here is what a day in the Simulator is like.

They changed the way that we do sim training. We used to, on day#1, spend the entire 4 hours running origination checklists, getting the flows down right, and you would do maybe 15 takeoffs, getting all the procedures down, etc.. etc...

Now we have what is called "Flight Based" training. Every sim session is run as a real flight, with 'passengers,' cargo, weight and balance issues, fuel planning issues, and system problems (that starts on day #2... so we get 1 day of an airplane that works normally.)

There are 10 sim sessions in all, in the course that I am taking, but sim#9 is a "Phase Check," basically a dress rehearsal for a checkride, and then #10 is the Type Ride itself. For me, I will also be getting in "initial ATP," for the Airline Transport Pilot License. This is the license that all airline Captains are required to have. This is the most difficult license to fly for, it has the highest grading standards, and since it is an "Initial Type" for me too, there is no retraining. Basically they need to see perfection.

So, here is the 'lowdown' on Sim Session #4.

The flight plan is a departure out of Palm Springs (KPSP,) to Los Angeles (KLAX.) Depart from the longer of the 2 runways in moderately bad weather, fly the "Cathedral 1 Departure," (a predesigned departure from an area, to keep us clear of the mountains, inbound traffic, etc.) get to a practice area, do some airwork (steep turns, and stalls for us,) Join up with the "Seavu 2 Arrival" into KLAX, which sits midway between Twentynine Palms and LAX, fly down the arrival, and down a particular approach into KLAX (ILS 25R.)

So here is how it actually goes:

Depart KPSP, and the departure goes this-a-way--

Upon departure, turn left 30 degrees (runway is on a 130 heading, so turn to a 100 heading.) crossing a radial from the PSP VORTAC (old school navaid type-- predates GPS by about 50 years,) turn further left to a 040 heading all the while climbing hard (must maintain at least 1400 feet/minute in the climb to clear the mountains.) Now that you have flown 1/4 of the way around PSP VORTAC, turn right to intercept a course outbound from the VORTAC. At 10 miles from PSP, you make a right turn, all the way back around to fly over PSP VORTAC. By this time, you are climbing through 8000', and can clear everything except the San Bernadino Mountains, which, of course, are right in front of you. So, you keep climbing, and then when you are over 12,000', you are clear of all mountainous terrain. This is where they clear you for the airwork.

Airwork consists of only a few maneouvers, but it is designed to show that you have mastered the capabilities of the aircraft in various flight regimes. Captains (but not FOs,) have to do a "Steep Turn," Which consists of a 45 degree banked turnaround 180 degrees, and then bank 45 degrees in the opposite direction, returning to your original heading. Simplissimo, no?

You have to hold your altitude within 100', your airspeed to within 10 kts, and return to your heading within 10 degrees. The most you bank on a regular flight is around 28 degrees. Most turns come in around 20 degrees or so. Every addition degree over 30 degrees requires quite a bit of "nose up" to make up for the loss of lift from turning (the wings are no longer directly flat to the earth, so their 'lift vector' is reduced. You need to fly a little nose high to make up for it. The steeper the bank, the higher you need to have the nose of the airplane to make up for it. On my aircraft, it is about 6 degrees nose up in a 45 degree banked turn. Then, when you are turning the aircraft to fly in the other direction, you roll the wings through 90 degrees of bank (45 left to 45 right,) and as you do that, the lift vector returns to your wings, and the plane wants to climb; so you have to modulate a nose down push as you roll through wings level, and then bring the nose smoothly and gradually back to 6 degrees up when you reach full bank in the other direction.

I rocked this.. ;). The altitude and airspeed indicators looked like someone had driven a nail through my 200 kt target speed, and my 12,000 altitude. Sweet.

Next is the stalls. Some of you might remember that tragedy in Bufalo NY last year. A crew didn't add power with the autopilot on, leveled off on an approach, and stalled the airplane (wings stall.. engines die. 'Stall' refers to the lift on the wings. Fly too slow, and you don't get enough lift to support the aircraft. If your wing ain't flying', you ain't flying'.) First up-- clean stall.

Simply put, this is flying along level, then going to idle on the engines, watching the airspeed decay until the wing stops flying, then recovering with minimum loss of altitude. Clean stalls are the simplest.

Departure stalls are done simulating a takeoff (at altitude, obviously... the ground is quite unforgiving.) you do this one with takeoff flaps set, and then a turn as you get slow (remember, turning reduces the lift vector on the wing from the paragraph above? That is what you are doing here.) Again, roll out, wings level, minimize altitude loss.

Then landing stalls. For this recovery, you are in full landing configuration, and this is what those guys in Buffalo had when they went in. You are very 'draggy' (full flaps, landing gear down, etc...) and it takes a bit more to recover. Not to mention (but I will,) you have to get the recovery calls out right while the airplane is bucking you trying to stop flying. Always exciting, even in the Sim.

So, satisfactory on all of those. Now we join the arrival into KLAX. This particular one is complicated, since there are numerous altitude crossings involved, and then the approach into LA has about a dozen crossing, too. They are taking you down over the mountains, and you have to remain safe. Simple enough... and then....

As you are about to land, you are told to "go around." You start climbing, clean the airplane up, and head out to the missed approach holding point. When you are settled in to figure out the hold, something happens... it is time for things to start breaking. I had a flap failure on climbout, so we diagnosed that, and then continued flying.

We were told by "ATC" (the instructor,) that LAX was closed because of a security breach, so we would be sent to Orange County. (KSNA.) This is a tight little runway packed into very $$$ homes who all call the police if you make too much noise flying over. There are all manner of special procedures in and out of here. So, we get out our info on KSNA, and head that-a-way.

We are cleared for a complicated approach that involves coming not quite straight into the runway, and as we get there, an airplane pulls out in front of us, and we are told to go around, AGAIN. As we clean the airplane up, we get a landing gear caution. So, I have my FO diagnose that, run the checklists, while I take stock of what we are going to do.

Somehow, the problem magically fixes itself, but not till we have run through 20 items on the checklist, and manually extended the gear using a fall back procedure to a back up procedure. Now we gots wheels again, so it's safe to land.

This time, we are given a different approach, one that is also not a 'normal' approach. The first was called an "LDA Approach," and that is a Landing Directional Aid. It is like a normal Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach that is standard at airline airports, except that it is offset from the center of the runway, so you come at it from about a 20 degree angle. The second approach we get is a Localizer Back Course Approach. This is where you take the lateral guidance from a runway, and use it to land in the opposite direction on that runway (hence, back course.)

This approach, of course, is not to be, and we go missed from that one, too. Finally, they bring us back for a repeat of the LOC BC, and we land from there.

Then, they zip me magically through the air, and set me up for an approach at Memphis. This is a circling approach, the type of which we would NEVER get in the real world... but it is a requirement, so we do it. Then, again through the magic of technology, they take my to JFK in New York, and I do another circling approach there.

Here is a circling approach. You fly the standard approach for a runway, down to a certain level off point. Then, you 'break off' the approach about 2 miles out, and circle around the airport in a predetermined direction and altitude, to land on a more favorable runway (due to winds, or something unspecified.)

You get to actually land those approaches, although just for kicks, my instructor gave me a missed from one of the, to see if I knew how to fly it properly, which of course I did.

All the while, you are running checklists, and flying the airplane. PRetty busy day.

And that is only the first 2 hours.

Thankfully, your training partner just has to re-do what you just did. Since my parner, Kevin, does not have that much experience (he is a new hire, first airline job,) it is good that he can watch them done right from someone who has seen it done many many times.

So that is how my day went.

Cheers!