The Airbus

I apologise for the lack of updates in the last month. Scheduling is more like at an airline now with simulator sessions at any hour of the day, any day of the week. We are now about half way through what is called the "Basic Phase" consisting of twenty nine simulator sessions including some Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPART), some "conventional jet handling" in the Boeing 737 simulator and a lot of time in the Airbus A320 simulator.

One of easyJet's A320 family

The Airbus is a strange but loveable creature. Once you get used to the different way of flying (managing) this aircraft it's soon easy to fall in love with it. At first it all seems very complicated. The fly-by-wire system means that you don't control the flying surfaces but in fact control one of seven computers that interprets your input and translates that to an action applied to the control surfaces of the aircraft. Being a heavier and faster aircraft than we are used to, it takes some practice getting used to the massive amount of inertia that is now present. A certain amount of anticipation is required when doing anything with the airbus as it takes that much longer to do it. For example it takes about eight seconds to deliver full power once the thrust levers have been moved all of the way forward. However, once used to all of these differences, flying the Airbus becomes a delight and, in the words of our instructors, "makes you look like a flying god!"

The Airbus flight deck

As, on this MPL course, we do not do the traditional Instrument Rating (IR), we get to do the majority of our instrument training in the Airbus simulator. Consequently this means that we get a lot more time and hands on flying in the Airbus. Hopefully as with the intention of the MPL we will be completely used to the A320 and feel so much more prepared for life on line at easyJet. Five months cannot come soon enough so we can fly this sixty ton flying machine for real.