Preparation is everything

In aviation preparation is nearly everything. Life is made significantly easier if you prepare well for a flight, and as such makes the task of transporting passengers safer. The last couple of weeks we have been studying Mass and Balance and Flight Planning. These two modules really carry on the theme of being able to see the practical use outside the classroom. Admittedly as airline pilots, a lot of this will be done for us, but it is necessary to understand what is done in order to get a flight ready for departure. We will have to do this out in New Zealand anyway, and if we ever do any general aviation flying.

Mass and Balance is another small topic but is a very important one. It is because of this subject that airlines have strict rules on your luggage. Adding weight to the aircraft causes an increase in fuel usage as well as changing the CofG (centre of gravity) of the aircraft. According to the design specifications and safety regulations the CofG must be kept within certain location limits on the aircraft to keep it flyable. There are also more of those horrible looking graphs to learn how to use, but once you understand what's going on it's all fairly straightforward.

Flight planning, funnily enough, involves planning a flight, from routing and navigation to calculating the amount of fuel to uplift.There is a lot of reference material for this one with even more charts and graphs. There is not a huge amount of facts to learn in this subject, as most of it is contained in the Jeppesen manual or the CAP documents, so it's a case of knowing where to find the information. For example we have been learning how to read Instrument approach plates (seen below).

Approach plate for Southampton ILS/DME RWY20

Approach plates show the procedure to follow while making an approach for landing into an airport while flying under IFR (instrument flight rules) normally done in poor visibility, or by Airlines. Above you can see an example of an approach plate, this one being for Runway 20 at Southampton.

For those of you embarking on assessment days in the future, being prepared will help you enormously. My advice on this matter would be to make a list of scenarios and skills they could ask you about and write down everything about yourself, with examples, that could answer their questions. Being prepared definitely helped me with my easyJet assessment days, and I learned my lesson by not being so during my previous attempt at getting into a pilot training program.

There is no rest for the wicked here as there are still three subjects to go, so for now its back to the graphs.