CATHAY PACIFIC Airways has been operating mixed-fleet flying with its new Airbus Industrie A330/A340s since August 1995. This is a pioneering departure, in that it requires crews to be simultaneously qualified, on aircraft with two and four engines, a combination, which has never before been an industry-accepted practice for line pilots, even if the regulations of authorities such as the US Federal Aviation Administration have permitted it in theory.
"There are two issues," explains Airbus fleet manager Capt Rick Fry: "CCQ [cross-crew qualification] is just a pilot-training course, while mixed-fleet flying [MFF] is the actual operation of both types simultaneously [with the same crews]. We started the MFF process in September 1995. The first line crews were CCQ'd at that time, although the airline had the first 330 in service about March 1995. To date, we have about 110 pilots [55 crews] flying both types. Some are in the check and training field, but the majority are line crews, which was always our policy.
"We split the introduction of MFF into 2 phases," continues Fry. "We're just coming to the end of Phase 1, which we wanted to run for one year as a proving process to our Authority [Hong Kong Civil Aviation Authority, which is autonomous but whose structure and regulations are based on those of the UK CAA]." Cathay says it intends to prove that these two types can be common-type-rated.
So far, the airline has not seen the MFF benefits, but it is about to, Fry explains: "In Phase two, which will probably start in September, we can begin to benefit from the outstanding credits. Officially, they're two types of aircraft, unlike a common type-rating such as the A320/A321 or the Boeing 757/767. Legally, you have to do a rating on each type, and that issue is one we hope to remove, so that we'll do alternate ratings every six months. We're already getting major benefits through the commonality."
Being the pioneer, Cathay finds itself with the responsibility for establishing a CAA-approved code of training practice and operation within the basic regulatory framework. Fry explains: "We have a MFF policy manual, which we use to establish the rules we've [agreed] with our authority so our pilots understand the process, the experience levels required, and the various issues that are common in terms of licensing requirements, and so on.
"Already, we've had agreements on aspects such as landing recency. Its basis was a testing process in which the Authority witnessed a large number of pilots doing their CCQ base training, along with the manufacturer-supplied technical commonality data such as eye heights, feel and so on. We had all the Airbus background information, but our Authority had to be part of the process and we involved them from day-one, to the extent that we virtually wrote the policy manual jointly . Over a period of several months they evaluated all aspects and gave us an exemption so that landing recency could be in either type. The three-a-month landing recency is the critical one and we can do that in either type, provided we do at least one of the three take-offs and landings is in an A340 and one in an A330. It gives us a lot of flexibility," claims Fry.
Many of the benefits involve fine operational detail and may become apparent only in practice. For example, Fry says: "There are also a lot of training credits such as low-weather-minima training and autolands. We get credits [for both] on either type. We're Cat IIIA [bad-visibility approach and autoland] on both types now, we hope to get Cat IIIB in a few months' time. Every time we do autolands we dump technical data which the Authority views. We have to get something like 100 autolands in."
Overall, Fry remarks: "We're very pleased with the MFF process. It brings out lots of training issues that are common, such as LOFT [line-oriented flight training]. Our rules, developed in-house with our Civil Aviation Department, requires a pilot to have four months of experience, 200h, and a prescribed number of sectors, before he can go from one type to the other. Then, following his CCQ, he has a consolidation period on the new type of 28 days before he starts to fly both aircraft.
"We haven't had to develop any new SOPs [standard operating procedures]. The SOPs are common to both types. We've decided, from a resources point of view, to give the pilot both sets of books [operations manuals], but many pages are common and the SOP and checklist sections are identical. The aircraft actually have more commonality than some common-type-rating aircraft, because the total management of the aeroplane is exactly the same. The only difference we train each year in the simulator is the two-engine-out case for the 340.
Fry lists the benefits:
Skills issue: pilots who work long-haul only get very few sectors. Fry comments: "Some of our first officers only do relief flying and they have difficulty getting their minimum landing-recency, so it's a tremendous benefit when a pilot can come in from a long-haul flight and do some regional flying on the A330".
Savings: the "daily hours density" of the airline's roster pattern becomes more efficient and controllable because of the ability to mix long- and short-haul flying. Fry comments that Cathay's internal crewing-costs are normally calculated by route, but now for the mixed-fleet they can be calculated by the hour. He says: "While I can't give you any figures.we started the operation as two separate fleets [and now] gradually the trend is in the right direction, with crewing-costs-per-hour definitely coming down. When we were doing the A340 research we calculated the savings, and that, among other things, helped in the [acquisition] decision process.
"We have been monitoring our average hourly crew-costs since we merged the fleets. Quite a few pilots are now, getting towards our industrially agreed annual limit, and having extra time off because of that. There are also savings in the number of reserve pilots because they can be in reserve for either type," explains Fry.
Crew satisfaction: "The pilots definitely enjoy the challenge of the different types of operation," says Fry, "along with flying the twinjet which has the benefits of higher performance compared with the four-engined aeroplane."
Safety: "I look at the operation as actually having a positive, rather than a negative safety aspect," claims Fry, explaining: "When pilots have a little bit of challenge they become a little more aware in response to the challenge."
Source: Flight International
