Casual chit chat in the cockpit of a commercial airliner only begins at 10,000 feet, finds Jaideep Sen.
Hotel-Oscar-Oscar-delta-alpha; Hooda, Captain Aditya Hooda. 28 years old, a commercial pilot based in Bangalore, Hooda’s got three stripes – that makes him a co-pilot on flights (captains with four stripes are commanders). “Inside the cockpit, the commander’s in charge,” explained Hooda, “outside the cockpit, we’re both captains.” Hooda’s aircraft is the ATR 72-500 – alpha-tango-Romeo; a 72-seater, twin-turboprop short-haul airliner. “ATRs are the most economical passenger jet in service right now,” said Hooda, “with an endurance of five hours [in air], we do a lot of flight sectors of an hour, hour and a half.” And Bangalore’s location, with the number of airports around it, has made his craft “an absolute hit”. The cities Hooda flies to often include Chennai, Coimbatore, Cochin, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Trivandrum and Vizag.
What is most ironic about a regular day on the job for Hooda is the time he has to schedule to get to work. “The new airport is 45km from my home, so I always calculate one hour and 15 minutes of travel in daytime traffic,” said Hooda. A flight to Chennai from Bangalore, in comparison, takes 50 minutes.
“If it’s a 9am [0900 hours] flight, 8am [0800 hours] is the reporting time.” The captain would’ve received a confirmation call the previous night, and he’s up an hour before his 7am pickup. Once he’s at the airport, “the first thing to do is check what we call ‘nav mocks’ – a computerised flight plan of timings, winds expected and such details. “It’s the captain’s responsibility to provide a ‘fuel figure’,” said Hooda, “that’s how much fuel I will be taking,” which also depends on fuel prices [around Rs 40 a kilogram] at the city that he’s flying to. “For example, fuel’s expensive in Chennai, so I don’t refuel there. If I can refuel – like in Mangalore, where it’s cheaper – I do a complete fill; those are called ‘tankering sectors’.” A “trip fuel” figure measures the gas required for a one-way flight (500-550kgs for Bangalore-Chennai one-way). Checks follow on the weather and on activity in the city’s airspace: “Like during the air show in Bangalore recently, the airport was closed from 10am to noon. Things like that get raised as a ‘Notam’ (‘Notice to airman’; November-Oscar-tango-alpha-Mike) – so incoming pilots aren’t in for a surprise”. Closed runways and maintenance alerts get notified as Notams, explained Hooda. Aircraft checks involve an MEL, or a Minimum Equipment List, “if there are problems – however small – all info is passed on to the captain.”
“We reach the aircraft half an hour before the flight. A coffee, signing of documents and checks take 30 minutes in all,” said Hooda. “The craft’s parked in a certain bay and I, as a co-pilot, say hello to the cabin crew and walk into the cockpit. My responsibility is the internal check of the cockpit.” The commander’s responsibility, before he walks in to take the driver’s seat, added Hooda, is to perform an external aircraft inspection called the “360”, “to check on possible leaks, the tyres and wings”. Cockpit preparation involves checks on the radio and of the runways, explained Hooda, apart from aircraft-specific actions, which would be different on a Boeing or Airbus. For instance, ATRs work with a GNSS, or Global Navigation Satellite System – golf-November-sera-sera; “a basic nav system, for checks on routes, vapours and other factors.”
Before takeoff, the captain welcomes passengers and explains safety measures, while after touchdown, it’s the co-pilot’s turn to address passengers, “reading a script in front of us, thanking people for flying with us”. The auto-pilot goes on about a minute after takeoff; “it depends, if it’s nice, bright, clear skies, you might want to fly for sometime”. Any cockpit philosophy is a “sterile cockpit” till a height of 10,000 feet is reached, explained Hooda – “no chatting whatsoever, except for flight course details – till you reach the ‘one-zero-zero’ or 10,000 feet”. At “flight level 100”, the seatbelt switch for passengers gets released too.
Turnaround time for the ATR is anywhere from 20 minutes to half an hour, explained Hooda. “That means the plane is cleaned, and the coach with new passengers – Chennai to Bangalore – comes in.” Touchdown on the return flight is at 11.30am. On any given day, the maximum flying recommended for a pilot is eight hours, said Hooda; for instance, the five-sector flight that he flies occasionally – Bangalore-Hyderabad-Rajahmundry-Chennai-Rajahmundry-Hyderabad – takes about seven and a half hours. In his flying career of a few years now, there hasn’t been an emergency situation, said Hooda, “and I hope it never comes”. Minimum rest time between any two days of flying is 12 hours, said the captain, adding, “Dude, one flight – to Chennai and back, takes everything out of you.”
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
Register
