Week 73: A320 Type Rating Week 12

After the completion of Phase 2A, I had a 2.5wks break before my next sim session. In the midst of this break, we had a brief for Phase 2B training. It's been revealed that more sophisticated flying will be introduced to us and that consist of CANPA, Go-Around, Circle-to-land as well as SID/STAR/Holdings with VOR/NDB approaches. Everything will still be flown manually which makes the workload pretty high.

The only sim session I had this week was at Saigon airport, the very first time I'm not taking-off and landing in Singapore's Changi Airport. New stuff had to be input into the FMGS' flight plan now that an SID will be flown. The Standard Instrument Departure(SID) isn't an easy one to fly as it involves turning tracks rather than straight forward tracks to the next waypoint.

Upon the last waypoint of the SID, we were given radar vectors to "disorientate" us so that we do not know where we were physically and had to rely on the VOR indication on the ND to guide us back to which circling point we want. It wasn't easy to get the technique though, as we need to do some sort of geometry measurement on the ND to fly the plane back before the PM keys in the point in the FMGC to be displayed on the ND.

Upon reaching the holding point, we had to figure out which sector entry and enter the hold correctly, this being done at green dot speed of close to 200kts. Flying accuracy definitely wasn't as good as what we want. We had to do approach brief and chart brief before we get into the hold, lots of stuff to do with too little time.

When do we want to extent flaps, when will gears be lowered, all these while monitoring the rate of descend so as to check whether the plane is in the correct 3-degrees profile for landing. A lot of adjustments had to be made on the ND in terms of view range and view modes. Flying a VOR CANPA approach manually takes lots of skills. Matching distance with height as well as keeping aligned with the station, massive scanning frequency is needed, which can get very exhausting.

The issue with CANPA, in full terms Constant Angle Non-Precision Approach, is the need to make height calculations at different distances to the threshold. Following the aerodrome chart will no longer be considered a CANPA. As our first lesson, we made the mistake of using the miss-approach point as threshold and the approach profile was incorrect according to our calculation as we found out when we flew it. Every approach ended up too high and last minute quick descends had to be flown to make the landing.

I found it confusing but it was too late to make any calculation changes anyway. When I got home, while referring to the airline SOPs, I made the corrections and is determined to get it right in the next CANPA training. Next week will be pretty eventful as I'm scheduled for two sim sessions as well as an observation flight to Chiangmai in the real aircraft. Can't wait!!

New model in the school, can you guess the aircraft?

New stuff

VVTS RWY25L VOR approach, it's been very long since I last studied an aerodrome chart