Flying to Copenhagen and Kuusamo

The past two weekendends I've been away a bit more than usually. Two weeks ago I got a chance to fly to Copenhagen in order to travel to southern Sweden from there and then drive my sisters car all the way back to Finland. It was a nice trip and I finally got a chance to listen to lots of music by myself while driving. There's nothing better than a long drive and a handful of Anjunabeats- and Future Sound of Egypt -trance music collections!

The weekend after that I flew to Kuusamo with my father for some skiing. It was very nice, although the temperature was about -30 degrees! Here's some flying-related pictures I took:

Our ride home from Kuusamo was the A319. This time I didn't even try to gain a jumpseat position, since I wanted to accompany my father for the duration of the flight. Takeoff sure was quick and with lots of flex power, since it was so cold.

A little anti-icing before takeoff. If I recall correctly, this was my first time I was a passenger on a flight, which needed to go through the remote before takeoff.

My first time in the business class. Food seems to reflect modern times. A few slices of roast beef and cold spaghetti...

...but at least the champagne was free of charge! :>

The final year begins!

Here we are again! Today was our first day of school this year and it started with five hours of Air Law studying. This year is going to be the final one and my estimated graduation, if all goes well, will be sometime in the autumn, whichafter I will probably very soon find myself from a flight instructor course.

Lately we've been studying some extremely complex mathematical formulas, that only an airline pilot can master. This includes triangles, squares, rectangles, arrows and circles :)

So, for now the ATPL theories continue and we are yet quite far from the finish line. There's still weeks until the first eight exams and after that we still have six more subjects to go through. Then it's time to start the required 35-hour simulator training for the instrument rating, after which we'll get to fly the Piper again. I'm looking forward to that!

Something about the current situation:

Just before Christmas, Flybe Finland announced that from now on new pilots will have to pay for their type rating on the ATR-42/72 in order to land the job. I've heard rumours that other things will also have to be paid by the employee in the future. This came as a complete surprise to many people and what makes it even more strange is that we just had the employment seminar a while ago and of course this was not mentioned at all. So, things are not looking so good at the moment! We'll have to see how all this turns out. My guess is that this will lead to a pilot shortage in the future, but it's too far away to affect my generation of pilots-in-training.

Christmas holiday begins!

Now it's time to take a little break from studying and travel to Joensuu for some Christmas and New Year holidays. Merry Christmas to all fellow pilots and readers and see you next year! :)

ATPL studies continue..

A little update on the current situation:

We've now studied ATPL theories for a couple of weeks and a few subjects are only few hours short of completion already. Now it's only one week left until our Christmas break, whichafter studying will continue on the 8th of January. I thought it would take a long time for me to get accustomed on theoretical studying again but actually it was quite easy, even after the long period of just flying. So far studying has been quite fun and I enjoy my time in the class. I'm relieved that I didn't get the same "will this never end" - kind of desperation I experienced at the start of CPL theories!

The everyday view from the classroom. But wait, who's there at the apron? :)

What's also happened in the past few days is that we went to an employment-related seminar organized by FPA (Finnish Pilot's Association). It was specifically aimed at pilots who are currently unemployed or in training. There were representees of four Finnish airlines and each told basic information on the airline and its employment prospectives in the near future. In my opinion, the seminar was a nice opportunity to scan the participants a bit and meet people, but its content was quite useless. There really was not much new information and somehow I feel that some airline representees had lost the point completely. Their presentation was merely and advertisement for the airline. Who needs to know how nice and comfortable material are some planes seats made of in the current employment and market situation?


Here's a short overview of the presentations from the unemployed pilots perspective:

- One of the companies will recruit in the year 2016 at the earliest, but maybe not even then, and applying will be possible for anyone who is trained as a pilot provided that he/she has passed the psychological tests approved by the company. Currently this means that only students of a certain flight school can apply. Even if their evaluation was ten years old. Nice!

- Another company needs a few new pilots every now and then, and everyone is free to apply, but their demand for pilots will not be growing anytime soon and there will not be an open recruitment anytime soon.

- The third company's need for new pilots will be based solely on the current regional jet pilots returning back to the company from which they were borrowed a few years ago. All pilots can apply, and about 30-40% will be suitable, but there isn't going to be too much of vacancies in the near future.

- The fourth one doesn't recruit openly, but pilots can apply via email and rumour has it that one pilot has once gotten a job!

So, things aren't looking that good at the moment, but really I didn't learn many new things from the seminar and such there's no need to get all depressed over this. Everything just is like I knew it is. Hopefully it will get better one day.

My first post-CPL flight!

I've now completed my first flight as a licenced commercial pilot! I took the C152 and flew about an hour first in the traffic circuit and then at the training area.

AWB and a crisp winter afternoon

 I thought at first that it would be strange flying the Cessna 152 after a relatively long pause but I was surprised how well everything went. Maybe it's like riding a bicycle..

Almost all boats have been pulled up from the water. "Winter is coming!"

I originally thought that as soon as I get my license, I'll start asking for friends and relatives to come on board but since I got my license so late in the autumn, the weather's getting worse, days are getting shorter and most of my time is dedicated to theoretical studies, I guess I'll postpone those flights to next year. However, I'm happy that I got airborne at least once more this year :)

Heading back to Nokka.

I now have two flight time -related things to accomplish myself during other training. Firstly, I need to have 50 hours of Pilot in Command cross-country time before the IR checkride. The CPL flight training syllabus doesn't give that much hours for some reason. So I have about 3,5 hours left. Secondly, I have to have 200 hours of total time before I can start flying the King Air C90. If I consider the minimum of 15 hours I get from the IR course, I still have about 4 hours of flying left. These hours are supposed to be flown with own discretion and with the school's airplanes, and are included in the course and its price.

ATPL Theory Course begins!

450 hours left.

It is now time for us to sit through the ATPL theories, which started today and will last until April. So the whole winter will now pass in the classroom studying some in-depth aviation theory. Our theory course covers both the ATPL and IR theory requirements, and the total amount of classroom hours will be 450. There are 14 different subjects in this theory course, which are essentially the same that we studied during the CPL course. They are:

010 AL = Air Law

020 AGK = Aircraft General Knowledge

• 021 AGK Systems (Airframes, engines & electronics)
• 022 AGK Instruments (Flight instruments and -computers)

030 FPP = Flight Planning & Performance

• 031 Mass & Balance
• 032 Performance
• 033 Flight Planning & Monitoring

040 HPL = Human Performance & Limitations

050 MET = Meteorology

060 NAV = Navigation

• 061 General Navigation
• 062 Radio Navigation

070 OPS = Operational Procedures

080 POF = Principles of Flight or "Aeromystique" ;)

090 COM = Communications

• 091 VFR COM = VFR Communications
• 092 IFR COM = IFR Communications

Only one of these subjects is totally new and it's called IFR Communications. Of course many of the old subjects have now some new additional things to learn (like high-speed aerodynamics in POF and polar stereographic charts in NAV), but most of the items are familiar from the CPL course.


This time we are doing things a little differently compared to the CPL course. We will go through half of the subjects, do the school exams and then the Trafi (Finnish CAA) exams out of the way before going through the other half. In my opinion, this is a huge improvement since now you can concentrate on 6-7 subjects, pass the exams and then "forget" about them and start worrying about the other half, instead of keeping current and remembering everything from all of the 14 subjects at once.

So, here we go again!


PS: I will be posting at a slightly lousier pace from now on, since well.. theory is theory and there's really not much to say about my daily school-life. Wake up in the morning, go to school, sit there for seven hours, go back home exhausted, open the computer, start going through question banks, go to sleep.. and so on :)

CPL Skill Test

I did it, and now it's over!

Today I flew the CPL skill test. I managed to pass it successfully and I'm now off for a three-week vacation until the ATPL theory course begins.

Not a mere student pilot anymore :)

The Day began with normal preparations for a route around the Helsinki-Vantaa CTR area. We were told beforehand to expect diversions and such during the flight. After checking the plane and doing all the paperwork, we had a short theoretical interview with the flight examiner. Subjects consisted of general technical issues, radio failures, weather minimums and other basic stuff. I prepared for the interview by reading about working hour limits, CPL requirements and privileges, and everything from OPS M1-1.

After the interview it was time for the flight. It consisted of basically everything we have been taught. In addition to all the obvious flight tasks like take-off, radio communication and basic maneuvers there was some chart navigation, diversions, engine failures, spot landings, flapless landings and instrument flying. Everything went quite well, expect that I had some trouble finding a certain small village, but finally managed to locate it. When it was time to do steep turns the artificial horizon went inoperative, and it wasn't easy to look at the instructors instruments and I had to focus a lot not to let the plane gain or lose any altitude while turning.

When we had done most of the exercises, it was time to head back to Malmi. The examiner said that if I now just remember to take the landing gear down before landing, I'll pass the skill test! And so I passed it :)

Here is a little summary of my current flight hours:

Total time: 171h 17min
PIC: 79h 10min
Dual: 94h 57min

C152: 128h 11min
C172: 21h 33min
P28T: 21h 33min

Take-offs by day: 418
Take-offs by night: 17
Landings by day: 418
Landings by night: 17