Stupid Sim Tricks

[con-pilot]

Once during recurrency on the 727 my partner and I had finished early on the final cession and had some time left. As it was too early to go to the bar we decided to have some fun.

So the instructor placed us at 10,000 feet over the outer marker (FAF) for 26L at LAX, clean and at 250 kts. Then he said land, no turns, just straight in and gave us a couple of minutes to talk about how to accomplish the impossible.

Well, we did the first time, it wasn't pretty but we landed about half way down the runway with a little excessive speed and did stop before the end.

(Gear down, spoilers out and left out, flaps/LEDs out at max limits. Oh yeah, all three engines in reverse.)

The sink rate was rather high , however, we planned for that, which was the reason we landed long.

Wouldn't want to try that in the real world.

 

[rfresh]

Just curious, aren't the pilots taught at your carrier to get oral confirmation from the other guy that "Yeah, that's the affected fire handle/fuel lever" before actuating it? I thought that was pretty much standard these days. Or was it just a nervous, shoot from the hip FO?

Yep...confirmation from the other pilot is what is susposed to happen. This FO was pretty far in over his head - he was low time, no jet time, trying to get trained in a jet as an F/O.

Airline pilot training assumes a lot of jet knowledge already. For example, we don't actually teach *how* to use the Flight Director system; you're expected to know this already. We don't actually teach you the basics of pressurization, or the basics of hydraulics - you're expected to already know this. I had one pilot who couldn't get a handle on abnormal engine starts at the gate. Turns out he didn't know the engine starter was pneumatic - he thought it was electric like on his car.

Back to this F/O, he wasn't getting a type rating so I did the best I could to get thim through the course - he was always miles behind the airplane - and behind the learning curve because he had not flown jets before. The course on the MD-90 (was McDonnell Douglas now Boeing in Long Beach, CA) is 5 weeks long and assumes prior jet experience.

The course is not written for a jet novice. Even with that, to get through it, I tell my students to plan on spending 12 hours a day learning this machine, 6 days a week, for 5 weeks - because that's what it's going to take to get through it. If you're coming to learn a plane like this, be it a MD-80, MD-90 or 737, if you have no prior jet systems experience, you can't imagine how difficult it is to get through the course. It can be done but what a steep learning curve.