Cooperate and Graduate,
Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2019 2:47 am
OK, it's a bit quiet around here so I will inflict another story on you, pardon its length but hopefully this is not just a story about one sim. session but a general overview about how periodic checking is managed in the airline industry. This is a little bit of a counter to Slasher's posts about being a sim. instructor, this is the viewpoint of the victim. Of course, everyone has different experience levels and different approaches so do not take the events of my story as typical of everyone but the actual process doesn't change much.
At the time of this story I had already been on the 727 as Flight Engineer (FE) and First Officer (FO) and it wasn't my first Periodic Check (PC) as Captain so PC's were not really something I got too nervous about.
At my company the system was that pilots did two sim. sessions a year. The first, called Periodic Training (PT) was merely an opportunity to keep your hand in on the emergencies that, hopefully, you did not experience on the line. Unless you were a real clutz there wasn't anything that you could do wrong on this session as it was considered training not checking. The second sim. session about six months later was the PC. This was checked by an FAA designated Standards Captain (SC) and if you screwed up on this questions would be asked and if your recheck was not perfect things could get uncomfortable. The PC actually consisted of two flights, the first was called the warm-up and the second was the actual check. The warm-up was managed by a sim. instructor and the actual PC was run by a Standards Captain.
Since we had several bases in the US for the 727 it was quite likely that when you were rostered for a PC you had never previously met the other crew members. The normal system was that you would all check in to a hotel the evening before the PC, get in contact with each other and meet for a beer. This we did. It became immediately apparent that the FO could just about have flown the check on his own, great experience, steady as a rock - this was going to be a push-over. Unfortunately we had a problem with the FE. The FE, let's call him Fred, was coming up to his one year point, let me explain.
When a pilot was hired on by the company they could be fired without explanation at any time in their first year. The point used to define the end of the first year was successful completion of their first PC. I imagine you see the problem, the FO and myself were not concerned about our own check but we had to make darn sure that the FE, who was a nice young fellow, got through also and he was, perhaps understandably, a bit nervous. The FO and myself did our best to calm him down but he insisted in leaving the bar after just one beer to study, a bad sign, because at least on the 27 fleet, the Captain traditionally bought all the pre-ride beer.
Next day the warm-up went fine but Fred was still nervous and again departed the bar after one beer. This was really serious. The FO and myself ordered another beer
to help us decide on the tactics. First item, whenever an emergency occurred I would work with and monitor Fred, this was actually company SOP. The reason for this was that the FE sat immediately behind the FO so the FO could not see the FE's panel but, because he was looking across the cockpit, the Captain could monitor what was going on. Second item, the FO could expect to be doing a lot of the flying basically solo so that I could keep a really close eye on the FE's actions. Third item, I would slow the whole operation as much as I could without making this too obvious since excessive slowdowns was a foul on a PC.
We arrived at the training center for the main event. The SC arrived accompanied by another individual who, it was explained, was being checked out as an SC and this fellow would actually be controlling the session. This upset the plan because things could go either of two ways. First, the real SC and the trainee SC could spend so much time working with each other that they would really not pay much attention to what was going on - good for us. The other option was that the trainee SC would be so keen to show he was doing a good job that he would be really nit-picky and give us a bad time - very bad for us. There was nothing we could do but continue with Plan A.
Now, in our company, the rules for a PT were different to the rules for a PC. In a PT you got a series of failures but each one was removed before you experienced the next failure. In a PC any failure introduced continued through the whole ride, the failures were cumulative and had to be treated as you would treat them in a real flight. What this meant was that on a PC the major failures, especially those that called for an immediate landing, were saved for a time towards the planned end of the session otherwise the session would not last very long.
So, after the formal briefing from the Trainee SC we mounted our steed it being pretty obvious that Fred was going to be the object of most of the attention. Take off, blast around, experience multiple annoying failures easily dealt with but aware we are waiting for the big one. It will come after a period of calm, it always does. The Trainee SC says we are being re-positioned for the next sequence, OK, here it comes.
In a high pitched voice Fred announces an A system hydraulic failure . I think, darn this one will take forever because we will need to manually lower the landing gear and we will be landing with partial hydraulics. I turn to the FO and give him an explicit, "Trainee SC for the consumption of", briefing. "I would like you to fly the aircraft and coordinate with ATC while I work with Fred. Get a vector to a safe area where we can work through the problem. Please keep me informed if ATC makes any requests that are difficult to comply with and do not accept any vectors for an approach until we have the situation completely under control. Please monitor the fuel state and inform me if you think it requires action". OK, ass covered, return to the problem. "OK Fred, this can be a very complicated checklist ( I knew, I had screwed it up before). "Be very careful that we are dealing with the correct procedure. I confirm that we have total loss of A system hydraulic quantity. A system.". That was as much of a hint as I could give him, he was the one being checked at this point, not me.
Explanation. The hydraulic system failure checklist was the most badly written procedure in the 27 manual. The 27 had two main hydraulic systems, A and B. A system did most of the heavy work such as raising and lowering the landing gear and it also ran about half of the flying controls, B system also ran half of the flying controls and other stuff I can't remember. If a hydraulic system failed it did so with extreme rapidity since you had 3000 psi pumps pushing a meager 3 gallons of fluid through a hole, the result was that when you carried out immediate actions they usually did not help much. After the immediate actions there was a fork in the road in the checklist for secondary actions, the leg of the fork you followed depending on which system had failed. The problem was that the explanation of the fork to be taken was concealed in some sort of triple negative condition that must have been written by a Chinese electronic device manual writer. Sure enough Fred started down the wrong fork.
Further explanation. When I was an FE on the 27 we were made very aware of this potential confusion with the hydraulic failure checklist so we followed the sensible practice of high-lighting the problem area, making margin notes or sticking a sticky-note over the relevant text. However, in their infinite stupidity, the FAA subsequently decided that these notes constituted an illegal revision to an approved manual and insisted that all such notes must be removed thus committing generations of new FEs to repeating the same error over and over. It was apparently too complicated to simply amend the confusing text because it had to be approved by --- the FAA.
Back to the check ride. Fred is now proceeding down the wrong checklist path, this is a major problem on a check, especially your first year check. I see the problem but I can't really say "Hey, Doofus, you are screwed up" cos' that may be his job gone. I didn't think either of the SCs had seen what had happened yet, they are discussing something to do with the sim. I needed to sacrifice myself (very mildly, of course). "Sorry Fred, I've always hated this checklist and I'm lost, you left me behind. Could we start again with the secondary actions so I can catch up?". The two SCs looked forward and start to take an interest. Fred began again and this time he segued beautifully into the correct fork. The rest was gravy. Manual gear extension worked fine. Preps. for a system failure landing worked fine. The FO was still flying and, as required by the rules, he offered me the aircraft for the landing because we had only partial flying controls, I told him he'd done a great job and he might as well do the landing so he can brag about it even though it is only in the sim., just remember there is no ground steering so stop it on the runway and don't try to turn off. Piece of cake.
As we are preparing to leave the sim. I hear the SC say to the Trainee SC, "That's the most laid back PC I have ever seen". Pilots 3 SCs 0. Ever heard the expression cooperate and graduate?
.
At the time of this story I had already been on the 727 as Flight Engineer (FE) and First Officer (FO) and it wasn't my first Periodic Check (PC) as Captain so PC's were not really something I got too nervous about.
At my company the system was that pilots did two sim. sessions a year. The first, called Periodic Training (PT) was merely an opportunity to keep your hand in on the emergencies that, hopefully, you did not experience on the line. Unless you were a real clutz there wasn't anything that you could do wrong on this session as it was considered training not checking. The second sim. session about six months later was the PC. This was checked by an FAA designated Standards Captain (SC) and if you screwed up on this questions would be asked and if your recheck was not perfect things could get uncomfortable. The PC actually consisted of two flights, the first was called the warm-up and the second was the actual check. The warm-up was managed by a sim. instructor and the actual PC was run by a Standards Captain.
Since we had several bases in the US for the 727 it was quite likely that when you were rostered for a PC you had never previously met the other crew members. The normal system was that you would all check in to a hotel the evening before the PC, get in contact with each other and meet for a beer. This we did. It became immediately apparent that the FO could just about have flown the check on his own, great experience, steady as a rock - this was going to be a push-over. Unfortunately we had a problem with the FE. The FE, let's call him Fred, was coming up to his one year point, let me explain.
When a pilot was hired on by the company they could be fired without explanation at any time in their first year. The point used to define the end of the first year was successful completion of their first PC. I imagine you see the problem, the FO and myself were not concerned about our own check but we had to make darn sure that the FE, who was a nice young fellow, got through also and he was, perhaps understandably, a bit nervous. The FO and myself did our best to calm him down but he insisted in leaving the bar after just one beer to study, a bad sign, because at least on the 27 fleet, the Captain traditionally bought all the pre-ride beer.
Next day the warm-up went fine but Fred was still nervous and again departed the bar after one beer. This was really serious. The FO and myself ordered another beer
to help us decide on the tactics. First item, whenever an emergency occurred I would work with and monitor Fred, this was actually company SOP. The reason for this was that the FE sat immediately behind the FO so the FO could not see the FE's panel but, because he was looking across the cockpit, the Captain could monitor what was going on. Second item, the FO could expect to be doing a lot of the flying basically solo so that I could keep a really close eye on the FE's actions. Third item, I would slow the whole operation as much as I could without making this too obvious since excessive slowdowns was a foul on a PC.
We arrived at the training center for the main event. The SC arrived accompanied by another individual who, it was explained, was being checked out as an SC and this fellow would actually be controlling the session. This upset the plan because things could go either of two ways. First, the real SC and the trainee SC could spend so much time working with each other that they would really not pay much attention to what was going on - good for us. The other option was that the trainee SC would be so keen to show he was doing a good job that he would be really nit-picky and give us a bad time - very bad for us. There was nothing we could do but continue with Plan A.
Now, in our company, the rules for a PT were different to the rules for a PC. In a PT you got a series of failures but each one was removed before you experienced the next failure. In a PC any failure introduced continued through the whole ride, the failures were cumulative and had to be treated as you would treat them in a real flight. What this meant was that on a PC the major failures, especially those that called for an immediate landing, were saved for a time towards the planned end of the session otherwise the session would not last very long.
So, after the formal briefing from the Trainee SC we mounted our steed it being pretty obvious that Fred was going to be the object of most of the attention. Take off, blast around, experience multiple annoying failures easily dealt with but aware we are waiting for the big one. It will come after a period of calm, it always does. The Trainee SC says we are being re-positioned for the next sequence, OK, here it comes.
In a high pitched voice Fred announces an A system hydraulic failure . I think, darn this one will take forever because we will need to manually lower the landing gear and we will be landing with partial hydraulics. I turn to the FO and give him an explicit, "Trainee SC for the consumption of", briefing. "I would like you to fly the aircraft and coordinate with ATC while I work with Fred. Get a vector to a safe area where we can work through the problem. Please keep me informed if ATC makes any requests that are difficult to comply with and do not accept any vectors for an approach until we have the situation completely under control. Please monitor the fuel state and inform me if you think it requires action". OK, ass covered, return to the problem. "OK Fred, this can be a very complicated checklist ( I knew, I had screwed it up before). "Be very careful that we are dealing with the correct procedure. I confirm that we have total loss of A system hydraulic quantity. A system.". That was as much of a hint as I could give him, he was the one being checked at this point, not me.
Explanation. The hydraulic system failure checklist was the most badly written procedure in the 27 manual. The 27 had two main hydraulic systems, A and B. A system did most of the heavy work such as raising and lowering the landing gear and it also ran about half of the flying controls, B system also ran half of the flying controls and other stuff I can't remember. If a hydraulic system failed it did so with extreme rapidity since you had 3000 psi pumps pushing a meager 3 gallons of fluid through a hole, the result was that when you carried out immediate actions they usually did not help much. After the immediate actions there was a fork in the road in the checklist for secondary actions, the leg of the fork you followed depending on which system had failed. The problem was that the explanation of the fork to be taken was concealed in some sort of triple negative condition that must have been written by a Chinese electronic device manual writer. Sure enough Fred started down the wrong fork.
Further explanation. When I was an FE on the 27 we were made very aware of this potential confusion with the hydraulic failure checklist so we followed the sensible practice of high-lighting the problem area, making margin notes or sticking a sticky-note over the relevant text. However, in their infinite stupidity, the FAA subsequently decided that these notes constituted an illegal revision to an approved manual and insisted that all such notes must be removed thus committing generations of new FEs to repeating the same error over and over. It was apparently too complicated to simply amend the confusing text because it had to be approved by --- the FAA.
Back to the check ride. Fred is now proceeding down the wrong checklist path, this is a major problem on a check, especially your first year check. I see the problem but I can't really say "Hey, Doofus, you are screwed up" cos' that may be his job gone. I didn't think either of the SCs had seen what had happened yet, they are discussing something to do with the sim. I needed to sacrifice myself (very mildly, of course). "Sorry Fred, I've always hated this checklist and I'm lost, you left me behind. Could we start again with the secondary actions so I can catch up?". The two SCs looked forward and start to take an interest. Fred began again and this time he segued beautifully into the correct fork. The rest was gravy. Manual gear extension worked fine. Preps. for a system failure landing worked fine. The FO was still flying and, as required by the rules, he offered me the aircraft for the landing because we had only partial flying controls, I told him he'd done a great job and he might as well do the landing so he can brag about it even though it is only in the sim., just remember there is no ground steering so stop it on the runway and don't try to turn off. Piece of cake.
As we are preparing to leave the sim. I hear the SC say to the Trainee SC, "That's the most laid back PC I have ever seen". Pilots 3 SCs 0. Ever heard the expression cooperate and graduate?
.