“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’”
Muhammad Ali
The Duke is still in the shop, and my non-current status has not sat well with me. About three years ago, a local family-owned Part 135 outfit that leases me a hangar suggested I talk with them about their charter operation – “Come see us after you retire,” they said. This past summer, one of my 737 FOs told me he had worked for the same company and said they were good people. And David Miller’s tales of his Citation(s) in T &T and my friend Dr. Karl’s accounts of bizjet flying all helped me to act on their offer. Flying a Citation might be fun. And since I’d be doing it just for fun, getting the type rating would be little or no stress. Wouldn’t that be nice after 31 years of you-bet-your-job Part 121 training?
Business Decision Conundrum
FlightSafety’s CE-650 ground school in San Antonio seemed fine, or so I thought. After all, 100 percent on the written is good. The six of us later discovered as we transitioned to the simulator portion of the course, however, that a couple of syllabus items required for a smooth(er) transition from academia to the simulator were glossed over (or completely deleted) – until we complained that is.
One deleted ground school event, typically conducted in the stationary simulator, is called “systems integration.” It basically means using the knowledge gained from ground school and accomplishing the entire normal procedures checklist in a functional cockpit in order to become proficient at (or at least familiar with) finding switches and completing checklists – including the “expanded” items and loading/programming the FMS. This allows students to see, hear and feel the response of the switches and controls. Another topic deleted, then re-added near the end of the program, was a two-hour systems review using several dozen interior and exterior walk-around pictures.
FlightSafety is known as the premier training center, right? Lest you think this is not the case, let me make this excuse for them: Combine the worldwide employee shortage of 2021 with high demand for training (bizjet sales are up 15.9 percent, turboprops 40.6 percent, and piston/turbine helicopters combined up 48.3 percent), some simulator downtime for malfunctions, the overscheduling of the simulator, and you have a “business decision conundrum.” There was simply no simulator time (except 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.) available for systems integration, and some instructors were already at their duty-day limits anyway.
Quitter
I called my chief pilot on day eight of the course, which was day two of the sims. I told him that even though my flying ability and crosscheck were fine, I felt completely buried by my lack of proficiency with switchology and the checklist – and that I would be on the 0840 flight home the next morning. Remember, four months ago, I was at a 4,000-hour comfort level in the 737. A recently retired 747 captain and a transitioning King Air pilot in my class had similar discomfort levels. My chief pilot didn’t much like the idea of losing his $19k investment for the airline tickets, 15 hotel nights and the type-rating course – and oh yeah, my salary. Speaking of which, Captain, your resume certainly doesn’t reflect a history of quitting. He didn’t really say that, but I imagine he was thinking it.
But like a good chief pilot/coach, he discussed the training issues and had one of our line pilots call me. “Trust me; you’ll love the jet,” they both espoused. That evening I reminisced about my New Mexico hunting trip and wondered why I was getting a type rating instead of deer hunting in Michigan. But they had persuaded me to try sim number 3 the next afternoon. So, I spent most of the night and half of the next day in preparation, learning switchology and the normal procedures checklist. And then I flew the sim. Those familiar with fatigue terminology recognize this as the beginning of a sleep debt that cannot be repaid while in the simulator portion of initial training. Suffice it to say that my training schedule changed five times – all but one of them was not my fault and involuntary. We’ll get into what happened next shortly, but in the meantime, long time T &T readers may remember these excerpts from “Flying The Box” (October 2010) and “Scent of a Simulator” (November 2015) in which I recount some of the rigors of simulator training.
You Can’t Win, Only Break Even
Pilots going to training are everywhere in this hotel. They scurry around the lobby for the free hot breakfast before their scheduled pickup time to the flight academy. Even in civilian clothing you can tell that they’re pilots and not normal guests. We all look alike, even the ladies and even without a kit-bag. It was that way in the military, too. Unless you’ve worked for a Part 121 operation in which there are thousands of pilots in line for your job, and you’ve been through the career-threatening ritual of training over and over and over, it may be difficult to relate to the stress and moderately unpredictable nature of the arduous ordeal. It’s like a flight physical: You can’t win, only break even.
I sat outside as the sun came up, after my free hot breakfast (for which I did not scurry), writing this article and enjoying a coffee. I watched as the pilots in training reluctantly, solemnly and silently boarded the shuttle to the flight academy to be tortured, I mean trained. The day begins with the sound of the cargo and passenger doors slamming closed and the rough driving technique of the hotel’s non-CDL drivers. The ride is eerily quiet, as if the pilots are a group of puppies, whimpering softly with darting eyes as they are driven to the vet, trying to not wet the seat. It’s that bad. You don’t see many of them with tongues hanging out, nervously panting or wetting – but it would not be out of character.
Dial-A-Disaster
The Part 121 simulator schedule begins extremely early. The sun is already rising, and the first six-hour block that began several hours earlier is half-finished. Those pilots left the hotel long ago, well before the hot breakfast or even coffee was available. The crews now boarding the van are the lucky ones with the primo simulator times. Likely with more seniority or based in a western time zone. Like the early shift, they’ll be getting two hours of oral review followed by four hours of “Dial-A-Disaster,” an accurate designation used to describe the way in which the simulator instructor/evaluator can select some of the most hair-raising scenarios and weather known to mortals. It’s always nighttime in the sim, you are always in the weather, always in icing conditions, the RVR’s are always 600/400/300, crosswinds are within a few knots of the limit, and something is always on fire, leaking, losing pressure or about to fail – like a motor, flight controls, hydraulics, pressurization or fuel system. A trip to the vet would be better – even with wet pants.
Sims by the Letter
Not many Level A simulators still exist. They have unsophisticated visual systems and very little data for simulating terrain and airports. One aircraft still using Level A simulators is the Lockheed JetStar, one of the first business jets. Level B sims barely exist. Level B can give you 80 percent of initial training for a type rating and 100 percent of recurrent training if the sim has circle-to-land privileges added to its certification. Level C steps a notch higher. There are tighter tolerances on data, and the scenery is more accurate. All instrument currency and type rating requirements, landings and circle-to-land approaches can be met in this simulator. Last is Level D, and you can do everything in it. Daylight scenery is a requirement, and they have better data and tighter performance tolerances. The most obvious benefit of the simulator is the Dial-A-Disaster function. We may hate it, but we can safely experience and practice all instrument procedures and some really bad things that would be difficult or foolish to recreate in the air. Psychologists would tell us that our heightened sense of sight, sound and smell during an event such as simulator training is due to apprehension, anxiety, adrenaline and our over-achiever desire to succeed. Apparently, this is true even if the training is “just for fun.”
The Yerkes-DodsonPsychological Concept
Simulator training is a necessary part of every professional pilot’s career. But anxiety can hurt our performance if we get past the apogee on the Yerkes-Dodson bell curve. You know, performance up the left axis, anxiety along the bottom. This applies to the real airplane and non-flying events as well. We train in simulators and practice hair-raising scenarios in order to learn and to prepare. And the preparation includes desensitizing ourselves to the initial shock when a malfunction is actually happening. I’ve had it happen to me and heard it from countless others: “When it happened, I couldn’t believe it. For three or four seconds, I was in disbelief.” Other than improving our scan, crosscheck and hand/eye coordination, simulators help to make the amount of time in disbelief shorter. Because once we believe it’s really happening, we can work the problem.
The Next Adventure
I’ve spent over 600 hours in the box and four times that amount in un-logged hours instructing and evaluating in it. I used to be the one behind the curtain of Oz creating disasters for F-16 students and pilots, so I get it. But when in the sim myself, the checkride portion of training can still push me too far on the bell curve – but not this time. Despite the scheduling and
training shortfalls, sleep debt and anxiety, day four of the Citation 650 simulator training went great, as did five through seven and the oral and checkride on day eight – the type rating is now on my temporary airman certificate. Looking back, I’m embarrassed that I almost quit. Let the next adventure begin. Happy New Year, my friends.
