Multi Crew Coöperation...

Since most airline companies require a student to prove jet flying skills in a multi-crew environment ánd to obtain the total amount of 115 hours of required instrument time for the frozen atpl licence, Ostend Air College schedules its students for a so called MCC-course (Multi Crew Coöperation).

I chose for the Flight Simulation Company @ Schiphol, the Netherlands. Besides MCC they also provide type ratings, medical examinations, crew training, ...
We were lucky to have Mr Jongbloed - a retired and véry experienced captain on Boeing 747 as well as a talented instructor - assigned to us for the 5-day training on B737NG (the famous Next Generation plane manufactured by Boeing).

As a jet flying is quite different from piloting a twin-prop DA42-size ;-)... the first session was focussed on plane and procedure familiarisation. Quite impressive how real-life it looks and feels in this full-motion simulator!

During the subsequent sessions, as we ought to be feeling home in the 737-cockpit, we focussed on correct procedure and checklist execution during the different phases of flight... from "dark-cockpit" entrance up to full-stop landing at destination.

I was impressed how smooth it feels to steer a plane that large and how stable it behaves even during the failure of an engine and theoretically a 50% power loss. But as I said, the aim of this course was "multi-crew" coöperation, so focus on how 2 persons together could turn the high workload in a cockpit into an achievable task. That is why each flight we were assigned a role as pilot flying or pilot monitoring, where the pilot flying would be able to focus on flying the plane while the pilot monitoring would support the latter in "monitoring" primary flight parameters as well as secondary indications that could point to abnormal behaviour of an engine or imminent danger somewhere. There really is a lot to tell about the highly educational content of this course... but that would take me to write a way too long article on this blog, which I'd better save for the die-hard interested people somewhere behind a beer and a bar ;-). Fact is that many approaches, landings, engine failures and fires, rejected takeoffs, ... later, I was handed over the "Certificate of satisfactory completion of the MCC" and that I left the building with an even bigger admiration for those men and women that manage to safely pilot millions of passengers and tons of cargo through the air each day in a safe way. Al this made possible by constructively coöperating in the small but busy and sometimes unexpectedly stressfull cockpit environment! Can't almost wait to play a role in this challenging story.

With no doubt I would like to conclude this post with a special word of "Thank you very much!" to both father and son Jongbloed, who made the MCC course an unforgettable event in my pilot-career.