my first jet plane...

Few years ago I was rostered to fly an Airbus A321 as Pilot Monitoring sector out and Pilot Flying sector in with the Company Chief Pilot as the Instructor Captain for the flight. This would be the first time for me to fly a jet plane, my first training flight following a three-week simulator training which had followed a month of ground schooling the aircraft and various other subjects including the CRM.

A tad queasy that day from a day earlier when I had witnessed this Instructor Pilot guy, who also happened to be the company Chief Pilot, dress down an experienced Boeing dude, on his first training flight. The Boeing jock was over 7000 hours on his log and was tasked a repeat after the instructor felt he had fallen short even though his sectors seemed pretty doable. Soft natured myself, this was a big deal to me. This instructor’s extra topped ‘affection’ wasn’t exactly the soup for my taste.

So, naturally had to put in more heart into possible misses others had blundered into, went over the syllabus multiple times, talked to my friends already flying as to typical training preferences or what ticked an average instructor off, everything that could be thoughts of. Heck, I was even thinking of putting some pheromone for the day :D

Turning in at 2330 hours the night before was a good idea for me, but two and half hours later my sleepiness left me. Despite reassuring readiness, the feeling of something being left out was pokey. Went over main study points, visualized the whole flight one more time, took a deep breath and closed my books...at 0500 hours.

The flight was at 0730 the next morning. My pick up arrived at 0545 hours; I was going on barely three-hour sleep. Having offered fajr prayers begging for my sins to be forgiven just so I didn’t get punished in way of the Chiefie biting me in the neck (I had watched a vampire movie a week before) I boarded the aircraft that had just pulled into the gate. The rated first officer had arrived too, he would dead-head for this flight, kind of. ‘’O here comes the Grim Reaper’’, I muttered as the chief pilot walked in 5 minutes later smiling. ‘’He seems harmless, but so was Dracula until he ate his first kill’’, my mind raced to a life of its own. Anyways, I ran check on logs, programmed the FMS, completed the walk around, looked at the manifest, load sheet etc and arranged the charts. The dude was Pilot Flying on sector out. we took off fine. i retracted the landing gear, big deal.

A cold morning later, an eventless landing at first sector destination marked the end of half the reckoning and as the passengers deboarded I prepared for the second half. The sector home was mine.

With perf data calced and fed to the FMS for return flight, aircraft duly fuelled and passengers boarded we ran the pre and post start checklist, copied clearance, taxied and lined up to the runway. ‘’Your airplane’’ commanded the Chief. For a while I thought if saying, ‘’No Chief, you can keep it, you look good with it, I’ll just pull up the landing gear or serve you tea, or wear a dress for u above 10000 feet’’ would help. But the inner voice that needed the paycheck overrode the inner voice before it. ‘’My plane’’, I replied, and with that, 200 precious lives were placed into my hands.

Moving the throttle forward was the best thing I had ever done in my whole life. The sweetest sound of the CFMs was music as they powered the jet down the runway pushing us into our seats. The little moment should have been the goose-bumpest few seconds of the year, but I didn’t feel a thing, nothing at all. I was just a program, running as fed. ‘Thrust set, 100 Knots, V1….Rotate’’. My eyes peeled from the windscreen to the PFD as I pulled the sidestick aft aiming for 15-degree climb. The takeoff was sweet-smooth and so was the flight, about an hour and 40 minutes. At all times I stayed a 100 nm ahead of the aircraft, kept good situational awareness, kept the RVSM traffic in sight at all times, knew what to expect, politely declined food at the flight attendants call and didn’t use the restroom, investing the extra time into toggling around with the MCDU (it helped). A 100-mile short (I think it was a 100) we completed approach and landing brief having obtained weather data at the destination and commenced descent sometime later. The cross-gusting wind was a bit disconcerting to me. The Chief Pilot asked me to be ready for hand over if he called. I acknowledged.

The wind pummelled the plane as we got closer to the airport. My palms went sweaty to think of the 200 people getting fixed for remembering the moment whereas I could be in for ruining the day because of either hard landing, side-loading of wheels or going around for being off centerline. I almost asked the Pilot Monitoring to take over but then I locked myself into focus. ‘’I have trained for this. During the sim I landed this airplane with one engine in reverse thrust and other in forward, I could do this’’, I reassured myself. And more so, the instructor hadn’t asked me to hand over. Either, this really was not as challenging as I felt it was, or the old man wanted to see if I would panic’. Whatever, I was on my own.

At 400 feet the AP came off, to hand fly the remaining way in. Toggling back and forth between the windscreen and the PFD, the Flight Director had to be followed until about 100 feet from where I aimed at the runway centerline. No word from the Chief. I must be doing it right.

And I did. It was one of the softest landings and most stable approaches I had ever pulled. ‘’Spoilers, Reverse Green, Decel’’, as we slowed down to 70 knots the Chief Pilot, still without emotions, took over. We finally pulled into our gate. And now I could see that the burly old man had turned fatherly. He asked me few performance questions which got answered correctly and then advised me to study harder, clearing me on this lesson. I left the plane exceptionally relaxed as though a ton of weight had vanished off of my bones. I just wanted to go home.

?

Nothing distasteful was said to me the entire flight.

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