The A320 Type Rating Paper was on Thursday in the afternoon. It has been 1.5years since I last stepped into SAA. Fingers crossed, this will be my last written paper, well unless I have a change of fleet and need to take another aircraft's type paper. The paper itself consists of 80 questions with two hours given to complete them all. Passing mark is 75% with no negative marking, meaning to say I can have a maximum of 20 incorrect answers.
You will think it's easy, but due to me still being in the infant stage of flying the A320, lots of my knowledge will be based on what I've studied in the CBT instead of real life experience in the simulator. This made studying for the paper a tad bit harder. Life of an airline pilot sure involves plenty of reading; the FCOM and SOP combined is already thousands of pages.
Managed to complete and re-check my answers within one hour and left the examination room. Results were released in the evening via CAAS web portal, and I'm glad that I passed. No raw marks were given, it's either PASS or FAIL. Just in case you are wondering, the paper cost S$55 to retake. Another hurdle passed, and I can continue my focus on the sim training.
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| Back at SAA |
Session #1
The final lesson on circling to approach at Bali Airport's RWY27. There wasn't much left to teach and I have to depend on myself to fly accurately and land in a stabilised manner by 500ft AGL. Disappointingly I'm still unable to fly as well as my sim partners by the end of the session, which gave me a bitter aftertaste and asking myself why am I learning not as quickly expected. Nevertheless, this won't be the last session on circling to land, and till the next one, I will hone my visual flying further to meet the required standard.
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| Red button on the control stick is the secret eject button haha |
Session #2 & #3
I'll combined these two sessions together as they were flown on two consecutive days with the same lesson plan and the same instructor. The mother of all malfunctions was given; one engine in-operational. We were given two scenarios, engine stall and engine surge. For the first time we were exposed to ECAM. However, ECAM actions were not required in the lesson plan, so we only focused on controlling the aircraft and threat management.
First, we had engine failure after lift off and after thrust reduction altitude. The very first thing that hit you is the yaw, along with its secondary effect which is roll. Being too used to not using the rudder on the A320 unlike the C172, I tend to correct the roll only, missing out the yaw correction via the rudder.
As a result, my catching of the corrections were not very good and not fast enough. As I was still climbing, I had to push to TOGA thrust which makes the yaw even worse, resulting in my very poor corrections of my flight control surfaces. Upon seeing my difficulty, my instructor asked me to focus on my flying, using manual rudder and get everything in control for a while first, before I put my hand on the rudder trim to sort the rudder out. It wasn't easy as with any power setting correction, the yaw moment will change, which will require new trimming again. I was flying with manual rudder for quite a while, almost cramping up my thigh haha.
After getting the aircraft under control, a MayDay call was made for radar vectors back to land. Initially, I wasn't too sure about the bank angle that is allowed during single engine operation. My instructor immediately cleared my doubt about it by telling me bank angle limitation is based on Speed rather than engine. At Flaps 1, as long as I'm above S-speed, I'll have full banking authority. Anything below it, I'll only be limited to 15 degrees of bank angle. That's a good pointer given.
Next engine failure was given exactly at V1, commonly known as "V1 cut" in the aviation world. This was even harder to control as I had to lift off and slam TOGA immediately from a preset Flex Temperature. The amount of yaw is at maximum, I know that because my rudder trim had to be set to maximum left or right. Catching the yaw via the rudder was pretty intense, with one of your foot at full rudder, got to make sure my seat was position properly before flight. The crucial part is always about catching the yaw. Not catching it will cause the roll to go haywire and that is very dangerous at low altitude seconds after lift off. Imagine rolling towards the control tower and crashing into it.
Final part on the sessions was the approach. It was an ILS approach with one-engine out. According to company procedure, it should be an early stabilised approach, meaning to get the aircraft fully configured for landing before the final descend point, with Flaps Full and Gears down. I had to plan the configuring way early and get used to the power setting requirement on approach. Minimal thrust correction is advised as and huge fluctuations in power will cause the yaw to come in and disrupt the approach.
To avoid going below target speed, I usually maintain about 5kts above target speed. The PM can be instructed to help in resetting the rudder trim during the approach. There is no height recommendations, only to the PF's comfort level. We chose to do it at the 50ft call out. The roll out after landing will have to be careful too especially if full reversed is being used, taking into consideration the effect of yaw. Not getting ready for the yaw will cause the whole plane to steer out of the runway and end up on the grass. You don't want to see that happen, even in the simulator. To be safe, the better way is to use Medium Autobrakes and idle reverse. With a more than sufficient distanced runway, it should not be a problem at all.
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| A closer look at the thrust levers, the left engine is dead, and landing |
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