Tony Newton/LONDON
THE SCENE, IS THE flight deck of a scheduled flight into Jersey, in the UK's Channel Islands. The main wheels touch down, but the nose-wheel stays high and finally hits the tarmac with the sort of thud, which passengers feel and engineers worry about. As the aircraft vacates the runway, the first officer turns to his training captain. "Sorry about that," he says, "I'm used to having an arrester wire to help me."
To qualify for civilian employment with an airline, service pilots need to be able to produce a commercial pilot's licence (CPL), or, preferably, an airline-transport pilot's licence (ATPL), instrument rating (IR), a type rating and Class 1 medical. The UK Civil Aviation Authority is to make an ATPL mandatory for commercial airline pilots this year, preparing earlier than most of the 24 European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) nations for the 1998 implementation of the new Joint Aviation Regulation on flight crew licensing (JAR FCL) .
Pilots who have recently flown single- or multi-engine centre-line-thrust aircraft in the services will need to take a twin rating, while those with recent multi-engine experience need only obtain a type rating. Many choose also to obtain their civilian instructor's rating, or to convert their military equivalent at the same time, as a belt-and-braces measure against the vagaries of the aircrew market.
The most onerous and expensive part of the process is the IR. Training in a twin-engine aircraft is expensive and many service pilots find that it is worth attending a reputable training school to hone their skills and learn how to pass the test. As many pilots undertake this re-training while on paid leave, financing it with part of their severance packages, an added benefit of the national aviation authority (NAA)/JAA "approved" school route is being able to complete the required ratings in minimum time. The term "approved" is official. Many schools can teach flying, but not all are officially approved by the NAA/JAA for teaching to ATPL level.
It may seem illogical, but most military pilots have to be examined in the rules of the air and navigation theory as if they had not been using them during their careers. There are exemptions for some, but the ATPL written examinations still call for a great deal of preparation. Schools such as the Professional Pilot Study Centre (PPSC) at Bournemouth Hurn Airport, UK, can provide advice on what individuals need to do according to experience, and then provide correspondence courses followed by consolidation sessions leading to the examinations. Some military pilots undertook their PPSC correspondence courses while they were operating in the Gulf War. The PPSC is one of the establishments well set up to offer a complete package as it is run by former military aircrew, and linked with the JAA-approved European College of Aviation at Hurn.
WORD-OF-MOUTH CHOICE
The choice of training establishment is very much a word-of-mouth affair. Schools develop, maintain or lose popularity based on their track records and teaching quality, and news of bad experiences tends to circulate more quickly than news of good ones. One training school recently lost a large amount of referral work because of an instructor who was perceived to be using his students' money to rack up his own hours.
Royal Air Force Sqn Ldr Railton Brockley flew two tours of duty on the Panavia Tornado before returning to RAF Valley as an instructor and Hawk squadron commander for six years. He obtained his civilian CPL five years ago, and had a frozen ATPL when he went looking for IR instruction. "Initially, I wrote to as many schools as I could find. Having got a prospectus from each, there were one or two I didn't even like the sound of. I was left with a realistic choice of about five that, in the end, came down to geography and the way in which they handled the NVQ [National Vocational Qualification, which in the UK, enables those undertaking professional air-transport pilot training to claim tax relief on eligible training costs]. Different companies had very different ideas about how the NVQ should work, and at least one seemed to me to be pulling a fast one on costs," Brockley says.
Peter Godwin, ex-Cabair and now chief instructor at Cranfield-based Bonus Aviation, has been instructing for more than 25 years and provides a checklist of factors which prospective candidates should consider when selecting a training school. There should be: an "approved" test centre on site, non-directional beacon (NDB) and instrument-landing system (ILS) approaches at the home base, with ready access to controlled air-space; dedicated, licensed, IR instructors; at least two nearly-identical horizontal-situation/ radio-magnetic indicator-equipped aircraft with good on-site maintenance (reducing the likelihood of delayed training or tests); a structured training programme with evidence of a good pass rate without overtraining; NVQ tax-relief availability; an efficient operations department to co-ordinate tests and type-rating approvals; and residential accommodation conducive to study and relaxation.
Godwin suggests that pilots agree a two-to-three-week time frame with their selected school and highlights the mutual assistance which can accrue from two candidates taking the course together.
Flt Lt James Archer has three years on Tornados and two and a half years as a qualified flying instructor (QFI) on British Aerospace Jet Provosts. He recently undertook his civilian conversion training with Bonus Aviation. In just over seven days he completed his twin, instrument and type rating and converted his military "QFI" to a civilian instructor rating.
Mythology says that service pilots ought to find the training easy, but, according to John Nicholson, deputy chief flying instructor at Bonus, this is by no means always the case.
What distinguishes service pilots from the rest, says Nicholson, is their approach. "These are people who have learned the value of preparation. They turn up, and they read the pilots operating handbook, the UK air pilot and the flying orders. They know how important it is to learn the speeds to fly, power settings and approach plates up front. That saves time, money and energy on the ground and in the air."
Most service pilots already hold one of the keys to successful flying - a good instrument scan. Each procedural task of the IR (pre-flight, departure, airways, hold, ILS, engine failure, asymmetric NDB) is broken down into component parts, and progress tends to be rapid when using simulator and aircraft.
Differences between civilian and service flying soon make themselves felt. Fast-jet pilots make a lot of use of tactical air-navigation beacons, which give range and radial, and of the ILS, but working with NDBs takes a bit of getting used to, especially if, as Brockley comments, the fast-jet pilot has "...never done an [NDB] hold in his life".
Archer says: "Flying the ILS in a light twin is quite straightforward, given that things happen rather slower than in a fast jet, but the downside is that we get used to treating the effects of wind and drift as almost non-existent, so we have to re-learn accurate NDB tracking."
One of the biggest hurdles mentioned by converting pilots is actually one of the simplest, but is exacerbated by the sheer speed with which these pilots get through the course content: that is, getting familiar with a new aircraft and, without the other pressures, which occur in flight having enough time to get used to the navigation/communications set up.
Nicholson relates how a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar pilot he was training got into a Piper Seminole for the first time, and flew it around beautifully with a first-class scan, but with sweat pouring off his head.
GETTING IT TOGETHER
Having "flown a desk" for three years, the main difficulty which Brockley faced was that of putting it all together again. "All the flying skills were there," he says, "so I had the spare capacity to learn quite quickly. Also, the simulator worked well as a minimum-cost systems trainer, so there were no great difficulties when we jumped into the aircraft"
Once the basics have been cleaned up to test standard in the simulator and local-area flying, it is a question of flying routes. Instructors agree that this, which requires a single pilot to carry out the tasks normally performed by a crew of two, is possibly the worst part for anybody. Service pilots are no exception, but they do not suffer as badly as others. When they do, they can get quite depressed because they have high self-esteem and just do not expect to fail. "They make mistakes and are very hard on themselves, but get back in the game quickly by working three times harder than before, if that is possible," says Nicholson.
Time and money, being of the essence, students take the pretest approval check-ride as soon as their instructor thinks that they can get a first-time pass. The pass rate is high, compared with non-service candidates, but ex-military students are still subject to silly mistakes under pressure. One recent student who was reported to be one of the best performers in terms of ability and learning curve during training had a brainstorm during his asymmetric NDB approach and flew through the beacon towards the runway on the wrong radial, ruining an otherwise perfect day.
What is it like for a professional military pilot to get back in a cockpit (albeit a complex one) to receive instruction from someone who may have fewer hours? Archer uses his QFI experience on jet Provosts to answer that. "You come up against this all the time, even within squadrons. I have had to examine my Station Commander, who has twice as many hours as I do: you have to remember that the instructor or examiner is there to get you through a particular test in a particular aircraft. Service pilots who are determined to demonstrate that they are superior are only going to miss out on the benefit of the instructor's experience."
Archer summarises what service pilots demand from their civilian training. "What we are looking for is a training environment that recognises that we don't want to fly a light twin around in cloud as an end in itself: it is simply a necessary stepping stone to continued flight training with the airlines on bigger aeroplanes."
Is it difficult? "It's hard work, no doubt about it," says Brockley. "The civilian instrument rating is as hard as anything I've had to do. With the CPL and ATPL written exams, it's the volume of information you have to retain rather than its level, but, as in the military environment, you just get your aims straight in your head and buckle down to it."
Source: Flight International
