Lord Howe Island

436nm offshore is a Dash-8 is a long way to travel, especially in bad weather. Well, bad weather on the arrival, which is pretty normal for Lord Howe Island. We needed a mainland alternate for this particular flight. That's a fair bit of fuel tankering, plus working out a point of safe diversion that will cater for us to reach the island and then be able to fly back at 10,000ft depressurized, as that is the worst case scenario.

Anyway, all the flight planning hassles aside, and the distance, and the numerous different things that can go wrong, i did my first flight out to the 'rock.' The captain always flies out and lands and they need to be specially qualified and do simulator training for the privilege. Lord Howe has a small runway, only 1006 meters in length. It's one of the few places where the 3 different wind socks will show 3 different directions of wind of 3 different strengths. It was quite bizarre to witness. I was there on a very low cloud ceiling day, but we were able to get visual below a large gap as we approached. I'm told that the flight out is usually 2 hours of boredom with 30 seconds of sheer terror on the approach. Well it was pretty amazing for the first time. It's such a small runway and there is no margin for error.

Overall a good experience, which i had tried to not do for a while, but i'm happy i did it. It was good to do something different for a change! 

Hello, hi, welcome, ahoy - i am still alive. I do apologise for a severe lack of posting of recent times, but it was due a few reasons, one massive problem, which i would rather not delve into on the online community, but overall, its been a fairly stressful few months, and finally, after almost 5 months since my induction, ground school, simulator training, i am finally - CHECKED TO LINE! (watch out unsuspecting captains)

So yeh, i haven't actually flown the line yet, had my first day of reserve and didn't get called in, which was a little weird as i was fully expecting it. It's been really nice weather in Sydney at the moment, CAVOK days, so i guess people aren't really dreading flying in challenging conditions and therefore don't mind working. It seems that everyone gets called off reserve when there are challenging conditions and delays at Sydney airport.

Although that brings me to an interesting point which airline flying has kinda challenged me in. And that is, the visual circuit into an uncontrolled aerodrome. It is probably the most dangerous thing we do, and that is decending through 10,000ft and entering the realm of VFR piston drivers, lots who don't tune up CTAF frequencies or have transponders. I actually had a TCAS RA on a line training flight. It's hard to know who was at fault, or whether our TCAS was faulty, or the pilot didn't turn is transponder on till the last minute, but all of a sudden we had traffic 1000ft below us, on our track, climbing through our level. Naturally, we turned out of the way and followed the TCAS instructions, and thankfully nothing came of it. But talk to nearly any captain on the line and they have all nearly had some incident involving traffic.

However apart from all the traffic we encounter, which just adds to the workload and maintain a vigilant visual look out for traffic, when its instrument procedures, it is often easier to plan a flight and manage the workload. What i mean by this, is when you have an ILS or an RNAV approach in marginal conditions, you have a defined set of rules and flight profile to follow.

For example, when we do an RNAV approach, there are defined altitudes to be at the final approach fix, the intermediate approach fix and the initial approach fix. At the initial approach fix, there is a set of speeds we also need to adhere to. So from top of decent we can plan in the FMS to be at a height and a speed at a certain space in time, and then commence the approach. By the final approach fix (usually a five mile final to the runway), we need to be configured for landing and speeds below 130kts. From there is it usually a decent to the minimum altitude and we decide whether we will land or do a missed approach for whatever reason.

I bring this up because when you brief plan for instrument procedures it somehow ended up being easier, having a set of rules and decent steps, with known speeds and 'gates' (aim points) to configure and carry out the approach. Most of my training had been in instrument procedures, partly due to training and partly due to the actual weather at the destinations, so all of a sudden we have really good weather and we were doing visual circuits and visual approaches, i was actually a little lost in what to do. Remember apart from circuit training, you actually practise very little visual procedures in the sim.

So anyway, training is complete, and i'm looking forward to flying the line. It's been a massive learning curve. I can't stress the difference in flying between my general aviation days and flying in a multi crew airliner environment.

Anyway i'll try to get posts a big more regular now with more photos. I have my first sim check as well in the next week, just in case i wasn't done with everything!

Cheers. 

Ahh well.. it's about time for a post

Hi all, thanks for continually checking up on my lack of posts! It's been pretty crazy with all the training, reading, training, re-reading, training etc. Airline flying is probably harder than i expected and more intensive than i ever realised. I'm sure once im settled in to everyday life and flying the line with a variet of different people and not so focused on flying the plane and company procedures, than it will be a different kettle of fish again, but at the moment i feel as though i haven't had to work this hard ever!

I finish reading the FCOM, the engineering manual, and other associated texts, only to basically start reading them again. I have spent a lot of hours just reading and re-reading manuals, learning specific limitations of the airplane from memory, recalls from the QRH word perfect (company requirment), on top of learning the syllabus in the training file.

So yeh, good times!
Line flying is a lot different to anything that goes on in the sim. Just some things you cannot replicate, and in marginal weather, you just need to be on top of everything the whole time. The biggest challenge in flying a bigger aircraft in a multi crew environment is the constant management that flying it requires.
Anyway one particular thing of interest in the Dash-8 is the ice protection systems and the penalties when it comes to landing and taking off. As you can imagine there is a lot of emphasis on speed management and situational awareness in the Dash. This is partly due the Colgan crash a few years back, and also because we don't have any autotrottle system, so its very easy to reduce power, get distracted doing something else and all of sudden be at minimum speed in no time flat. That why we have very defined pilot flying, and pilot monitoring roles.
Also with ice protection on in the dash, it increases your Vref (min speed landing in that configuration) over the fence for landing. This actually an automatic speed bias in the stall warning computers, which is triggered by the propeller heaters and also the increase ref speed switch. At a high weight its about an extra 15 knots. In windy conditions, by the time you apply a Vapp speed (basically a target speed to provide some protection over Vref - We use 1/3 the windspeed or all of the gust to a maximum of 15 knots) So by the time you add the ice protection speed coupled with a high Vapp, flaps 15 instead of 35, into a short runway, which is high elevation in miserable weather, it makes for some challenging approaches and high workload situations. With the ice protection on, then its a significant weight penalty for take off as well.. this is due to the speed bias in the stall warning computers which i mentioned earlier. Since you need a high speed, you therefore need more runway, which therefore limits your maximum take off weight.

I hope that made some sense to those reading at home. Anyway line training is 2/3's of the way through now and almost finished. I have a progress check in the next few days and then a check to line early september at this stage.

So thanks for continuing to check it and read my blog, i will get back to being more regular with my postings when im all checked to line.