I've spent the last two weeks doing the MCC course
at NEAR in Ålesund. The rumours say that this
is the best course throughout the training and because
of this I've been looking forward to it for the
last 2 years, and my expectations were sky high.
Amazingly enough all my expectations were met.
The first week was spent in the classroom going
through the theory with Svein K Garnes as the instructor.
He has alot of experience within the subject and
has also flown alot of hours on the BE200 King Air
for Lufttransport, so he knows his stuff. The theory
part of the course was mainly about human factors,
cooperation and how this affects us in the cockpit.
We also were presented with videos of different
planecrashes, whereafter we used the theory to discuss
them. What went wrong, who did mistakes, why was
mistakes made and how could it have been avoided?
There are many factors that come into play in a
planecrash, so focusing on only one person or one
error would be wrong.
The last part of the first week we spent getting
to know the plane we were going to fly in the simulator,
Beech
King Air 200. We went through the most important
systems, the procedures and the use of checklists.
On Friday we got a short flight in the simulator
to test out the theory. It has projectors which
gives 160 degrees view, but most of the time is
spent looking at the instruments.
We had the weekend off, so me, Kristian and Kapur
seized the opportunity to see some Norwegian nature.
A friend of Kapur has moved to Volda which is a
1 1/2 hour drive from Ålesund. We drove down
on Saturday and stayed till Sunday. We woke up Sunday
morning with blue skies and fantastic weather (which
is rear on the West Coast of Norway), so instead
of driving the shortest route home we stopped by
the Geiranger Fjord. Incredibly beautiful piece
of Norwegian nature, which best can be described
as majestic. It's a bit hard to grasp how big it
is until you see one of the cruiseships sailing
in through the fjord.
The second week at school was spent in the simulator.
Altogether I got 20 hours flying, 10 hours as "Flying
Pilot" and 10 as "Non Flying Pilot".
Each flight was 2 hours, and everybody flew 2 flights
with eachother. NEAR has been doing this course
now for a while, so all of the flights is thoroughly
made up to get the maximum effect.
The learning curve for the second week was one
of the most extreme I've experienced so far in the
education. I really felt I evolved as a pilot from
flight to flight. The use of checklists, how to
cooperate, how to communicate and how to handle
emergencies on bigger planes. None of the flights
were normal, something always happened. Engine failure,
engine fire, depressurization and alot of other
failures. In addition to being great training for
cockpit co-operation, I feel that it really gave
me a good idea about how things is done in the airlines.
I think the experience I got from the simulator
really is going to help me later whenever I get
in the simulator as a part of an airline interview.
The flights the first three days were around Scotland
and England, while the last two days were in Northern
Norway. At the end of each day we got a bunch of
papers containing flighplans, charts, SID/STARs
(departure and arrival procedures) and approach
procedures to prepare ourselves for the next day.
The flights were from one airport to another, with
one alternate. The weather in the sim was good the
first day, but the rest of the week it became worse
and worse This increased the workload significantly,
and I was pretty much exhausted after each flight.
The main focus was not on how we fly the plane,
but more on how we cooperate and make decisions.
We had 3 instructors throughout the course. Svein
K Garnes who is the MCC boss, Kjell Magne Longva
who is Chief Flight Instructor at NEAR and Arild
Welle who normally flies the 737 for SAS Braathens.
All of them did an amazing job. The instructor is
seated behind the cockpit and runs the whole show
from the computer, while he is playing ATC and the
lovely Cabin Attandant Cynthia.
I'm not going to go more into detail about the
contents of the fligths, because part of the point
is the element of surprise. So those of you who
are reading this and are doing the MCC course later,
you have plenty to look forward to! And best of
all, no exam :)
