About this episode

Capt Nick discusses his experiences and challenges as a pilot during the transition to new Airbus airframes at Virgin.

With the influx of new Airbus airframes, Virgin needed more pilots and not just to occupy the right hand seat… there were opportunities for promotion to Captain much earlier than had been the norm. When I joined the time to command was about 8 years. Looking back I did my first sector with Virgin in July 1994 and it was now November 96, 2 years 4 months later and I was already starting my pre-command training.   A typical month of Tornado flying might accru 25 hours in 15 sorties. As an airline pilot I could easily do that in 2 sectors!   Who wouldn’t want an expenses paid trip to a tropical island?   We were headed to the fabled island home of the extinct Dodo   The result of a Flight Management computer issue was commonly the PLEASE WAIT message   When the Kai Tak IGS approach wasn’t available, we would usually get a VOR approach over Chung Chau and Stonecutters island   Roy and Curly certainly pulled my leg!   The pre command Sim was certainly a challenge   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Jeppesen Charts.

People in this episode

Host: Capt Nick

Topics covered

• aviation
• pilot training
• airline operations
• historical aviation
• flight management

Keywords

• Virgin
• Airbus
• pilot training
• Tornado flying
• Kai Tak
• Dodo
• Flight Management computer

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Virgin

Products: Flight Management computer

Books & works: Dodo

Places: Tropical island, Chung Chau, Stonecutters island, Kai Tak

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