Roehris Aviation Pages - Gallery on the job

A310 Landing Training (16.01.2005)
NEW see the movies of my first landings here! I really feel great while sitting on board the Swiss International Air Lines Avro RJ which flies me from Zurich to Munich this early sunday morning. It's the day I should be flying Hapag-Lloyd's "big ship" for the first time. Geez... :-) At Munich, I get myself a chocolate croissant and something to drink, and move to the Hapag-Lloyd crewroom. I grab the flightplans and documentations for the two ferry flights. We are supposed to bring A310-204 D-AHLX from Munich (EDDM) to Prague (LKPR) on a ferry flight with no passengers. At Prague, heavy maintenance is due at the maintenance station of CSA (Czech Airlines). In return, we would get D-AHLZ from CSA, who did the heavy maintenance work on her during the past few days. Weather promises to be brilliant - in fact, all stations are reporting CAVOK (no clouds, no rain, no nothing, but plenty o' sun... :-) ). My "teammates" today are Stefan Kaiser, deputy of the fleet chief A310 at Hapag-Lloyd and TRE (typerating examiner), and Rups Droste, A310 Commander, who was upgraded to being a TRI (typerating instructor) on the A310 and has to give his right hand seat checkride to Stefan Kaiser. About an hour before we are supposed to go off blocks at Munich, Stefan and Rups drop into the crewroom. We go through the documentation, and Rups and I are briefed about the training intentions by Stefan. Fuel and handling are confirmed by phone from our handling company, and off we go to where the big bird spent the night.
	After an outside check and cockpit setup, we call in at Munich De-Icing by radio, to get us into the sequence. Both wings have a frost coating from the well-below freezing temperatures during the night. Now we are ready for pushback. But the airstairs can't be moved. The battery died during the night, at outside temperatures of around -10 degrees celsius. So the mechanics have to bring her to life again, which cost us a mere 30 minutes of delay. But finally all of the doors are closed and locked, and the two front doors armed (in case of ecvacuation the slides would deploy).
	Engine 2 is started during pushback. After the whole engine start failures during typerating simulator training, I am amazed about how unspectacular a real start is, besides the serious rumbling and grumbling from the big CF6-engine revving to life. We are no more on the small Boeing with her two blowers. This is real business! :-) We taxi out on a single engine to save fuel, a normal procedure on the A310.
	Stefan guides ship LX through the Munich sunday morning traffic, the taxiing checklist is performed, and we are gently riding towards the de-icing pad on the runway head of 08R, where the de-icers are already waiting for us. Shortly before reaching the de-icing pad, engine 1 is started, and the bleed and pack valves closed, in order to prevent de-icing fluid from getting into the air conditioning system of our aircraft. The procedure is completed quickly, and only minutes later, we are cleared to lineup behind a landing Lufthansa A340-300.
	Rups on the right hand seat will be at controls from Munich to Prague, while Stefan occupies the left hand seat. He will lose an engine during takeoff, this was already briefed in the crewroom by Stefan.
	Takeoff thrust is set, and the light aircraft accelerates quickly. With only about 10 tons of fuel and no payload, LX is only about 88 tons heavy (in comparison to the Max Takeoff Mass of 136 tons), and the two CF6 engines accelerate us nicely. "V1 - Vr" calls Stefan, and Rups gently lifts the 'bus into the air. Only seconds after liftoff, Stefan cuts back the throttle lever of engine 1, and Rups covers the simulated engine failure perfectly. Would anyone have been in the back of the aircraft, he wouldn't have felt one little movement. Only the sound of the engine spooling down to flight idle would have alerted the passengers about the problem.
	Rups gives the standard commandos, and masters the failure perfectly, so Stefan allows engine 1 back into what it is supposed to do: work, and push us towards Prague.
	Rups in front of a magnificent scenery: The alps in their whole majesty. A brilliant view. Stefan and Rups are kidding that many people would have paid good money to be with us, enjoying the scenery. I'm sure about that...
	The short, "ballistic" flight is nearing its end. Prague is already visible out of the captain's sliding window, and soon we are leveling off at 4000 feet, vectored to the ILS runway 24 by Prague ATC.
	And once again, Rups has to cover engine troubles. This time it's engine 2 who has given up to work for us, because Stefan has cut her to idle. Rups does great work once again, and leads us onto the ILS 24 with manual flight.
	Established on the ILS 24, single engine, and in the position to complete this flight perfectly. But as briefed, Stefan calls out "go-around" at 200 feet radio altitude. Rups pushes the remaining throttle lever forward, rotates the aircraft, orders the flaps up one notch to 20/20 position, and the gear to be brought up.
	He concludes his training with a beautiful visual pattern on one engine only. A full stop landing on runway 24 is followed by taxy-back to the holding position of runway 24. There I have 30 seconds to bring myself into position. The before takeoff checklist is read, and off we rush, down runway 24. "V1 - Vr", a gentle pull on the wheel, and LX is in the air. 86 tons of aircraft in my hands...
	The visibility is not at the best, despite the good forecast. A layer of haze has settled over the landscape, and slant visibility is poor, also affected by the low sun. Nevertheless the visibility is above 8km, so we have no problem doing the visuals.
	Prague ATC is doing great work by vectoring us in extended visual patterns, while the normal traffic flow is going in and out of Prague Airport. Nevertheless, Stefan keeps a good look outside for VFR and IFR traffic, and checks the TCAS every now and then.
	Even though an engine has been (simulatedly) cutted by Stefan, things start being relaxed, and even a short smile for chief of photography Rups is possible while being established on right downwind runway 24.
	Even Stefan seems to be quite pleased... :-)
	Concluding the next pattern, I am heading towards the threshold of runway 24...
	...soaring towards the runway taouchdown zone...
	...hoping that the landing will not crunch our backs and break our necks.
	Even the spotters were present at the airport.
	Thanks to Alan Lebeda for this shot. (www.planes.cz)
	...and to Jan Hajek for this one. (www.planes.cz)
	...and to Jiri Nov�k for this one. Note the rudder deflection due to the simulated engine failure! (www.planes.cz)
	Taxying in, drowned in my own sweat... ;-) (Picture: www.planes.cz / Alan Lebeda)
	But everything works well, and like a lost dog, we park LX after seizing her for five landings. I hope she's not angry, as I rode her brakes quite a bit. Guess I still need some training in taxying and especially braking, a whole new experience for me (the Boeing 737 had no tiller wheel on the F/O side, so the copilots are not allowed to taxi).
	Her sister ship, D-AHLZ, is already waiting inside the CSA hangar. (Picture: www.planes.cz / Josef Strach)
	Her sister ship, D-AHLZ, is already waiting inside the CSA hangar. She gets her belly cleaned after the maintenance work, before being handed over to us.
	And then, she's pushed out of the hangar, to see the sunlight and sky after the days of heavy maintenance. What we didn't know: A LKPR spotter was taking a picture of us from the other side. Cool! (You can see him standing above the garden chair near the main gear.)
	This is his result. We are standing behind the main gear in the dark. (Picture: www.planes.cz / Petr Popel�r)
	LX is peering underneath the belly of LZ, waiting to get her "wellness treatment" during the next days.
	In the meantime, we have entered the canteen, and sip a cup of cappucino. I am officially welcomed in the club of A310 pilots, and proudly receive the Hapag-Lloyd A310 sticker.
	As A310 and B737 do not go well together , my old sticker has to die, so we let him die in peace and style: On a cookie paper. Bye bye "Zwille" (nickname for the 737)... (The Hapag-Lloyd pilots have a humorous stimulated "fight" between the two pilot's groups, B737 versus A310. A310 pilots call the B737 small, ugly and often talk about the bobby as "paper plane" or "ultralight", meanwhile the 737 drivers say that the big bird is old and fat and raises too much dust on takeoff... just some of thousands of jokes about each other...)
	As we are back in the hangar, LX is already inside and being worked on.
	In the meanwhile, LZ has been prepared by the staff for final checks and takeover by our crew. Rups and Stefan are already heading towards the plane, to have an extended outside and inside check performed, before we leave the tarmac.
	As I am not too much of a help doing checks, I still finger around with my brandnew digicam, and give it a try to some new angles.
	Nice birdie, isn't it?
	Proud guy and his future workhorse...
	Quite a huge main gear. And...four wheel drive!!! (Well, not drive, but at least four wheels per gear...)
	What a big engine. The CF6 is producing more than twice the thrust of a B737 CFM56 engine.
	Rups has completed the inside check of the aircraft, and all seems well. A big torchlight is missing and brought up by the CSA staff, and a small bug at the oil quantity indicator is broken and replaced.
	And then I hop into the right seat again, set up the FMS to bring us back to Munich, and soon after, the clearance is received, the engines are started again.
	And we are heading to runway 24 again. For the fun of it, we do a rated thrust takeoff (full thrust), and you can assume what kind of fin this is. Outside air temperature around zero and QNH of 1029 (so very nice, dense air), and two times more than 50'000lbs of thrust... We are literally kicked into the air, and are leaving Praha with an average climbrate between 6'000 (the max value the VSI is able to indicate) and estimated 8'000 feet per minute, carefully checking the TCAS not to produce a traffic warning. The snow-covered alps once again greet, to our left side this time, as we are rocketing to Munich, soon again leaving FL240 for approach. A nice vector is bringing us onto the ILS 08L, and a manually flown ILS ends the day. I am guiding the big ship to our stand, the engines are cutted, and the cockpit paperwork done. And soon, too soon, we are leaving LZ again. Our work is over, LZ left behind us, and after a last shakehands, we are off again into all corners of the wind. Rups to his homebase, Stefan to our company headquarters, and me...catching the 1715LT Swiss flight to Zurich, falling into seat 20F, and recapturing the moments on the A310 again, exhausted but happy. What a plane, what a day. Geez... I'm looking forward for the things to come! Thanks to Stefan and Rups! Was a great day! (Picture: Alan Lebeda)