FIRST DAY ON LINE
Written: 19 FEBRUARY 2007

Today was my first day "on line" for Highland Airways. It was a rather hectic day, because we were already one hour behind schedule when training captain Tim and I took over the airplane.

I was originally scheduled to fly the morning flights to the Western Isles, but I ended up being rescheduled for the late morning and afternoon flights. A short period it also looked like I would fly my first flight to Bergen in Norway.

The first two sectors was Inverness (INV) to Benbecula (BEB) and from there to Stornoway (SYY). These two places are located on the Outer Hebrides which are part of what they call "The Western Isles". I flew as "non handling pilot" these first two sectors which means that I sit with all the checklists, paperwork and ATC communication while I monitor the "handing pilot".

The flight time between INV and BEB is about 40 minutes, so there is enough time to make it through everything without too much stress. Between BEB and SYY on the other hand there is only about 20 minutes from take-off to landing, so you have to work fairly fast to make it through all the checklists, remember to fill in all the numbers in the navigation log, communicate with ATC, get the weather for the destination and brief the approach (prior to every approach the handling pilot talks systematically through the procedure to make sure that both pilots know what they are doing).

Out from SYY again we had caught up with the time lost from the morning flights. I flew the next two sectors from SYY to INV and back to SYY again, while Tim flew from there to BEB. There we had an hour lunchbreak before I flew the last two sectors to SYY and INV. I logged a total of 4 hours and 15 minutes on my first day on line while being about 8 hours on duty.

On the 7 sectors we flew today we transported 60 passengers. This might sound like a rather small number if you compare it to the big airlines, but we only have 18 and 19 seats in our planes and Stornoway isn't exactly Heathrow.

It wasn't that much different to fly with passengers, because when you first sit there the focus is on the flying. The passengers are just there and you do your best to keep the flying as smooth as possible, like you normally would... The biggest difference from before is that I now get to fly from A to B without losing engines and simulating emergencies all the time.

The pictures on the right is basically what I had time for the first day, but there will be more pictures as I work my way through line training.