Back Into The Deep End

Just like with most jobs, pilots can sometimes end up taking substantial periods of time away from work for a variety of reasons. But what happens when they return to work? Unlike most jobs, this isn’t one where you can jump straight into the front seat of a jet after a few months away and operate as effectively as you did prior to your time off. It definitely takes a bit of time to get yourself back into the groove and used to the speed at which things happen. Whilst handling the aircraft generally comes back like riding a bike, the pace at which the operation runs and the level of situational awareness you need to be building given the environment around you definitely takes some time to catch up with.

Thankfully operators and authorities have strict requirements for the re-training you must undergo before flying again, the extend of which is dependant on how long you’ve been away from work.

Today was my first day back in a real aircraft after 6 months of not flying due to recovering from an operation. (Well, 3 months of recovering followed by 3 months of me waiting to have my re-training rostered!). Preceding today, I had to undetake a day of groundschool in a classroom to get me up to speed with any changes in the operating procedures over the last few months, followed by 2 sessions in the simulator; the first getting me used to handling the aircraft and operating in a multi-crew environment again, the second to put me through my paces under examination conditions with a variety of emergency scenarios thrown my way.

I’m now straight back into the captains seat of the jet, however I have a training captain accompanying me in the right hand seat as opposed to a normal first officer. They’re there to observe me and check I’m safe to be released back to flying with normal first officers.

My hopes for a nice straight forward first day back fade away as soon as I arrive at the airport and see the array of defects that our aircraft has. Firstly, the front toilet is broken. This means everytime we need to use the facilities, we have to walk all the way down the cabin to the back of the aircraft. This isn’t good for two reasons. One, I’m introverted and walking down the cabin mid flight with 4 bars on your shoulder tends to reliably draw a lot of attention towards you. Two, it unnerves some passengers when they can see the captain is at the wrong end of the plane to where they should be. Unfortunately pilots aren’t superhuman and we too have bladders that need to be emptied!

The second and more complexed defect is that the auxiliary power unit (APU) on this aircraft is broken. The APU is a small engine hidden in the rear of all large airliners which Is used on the ground to supply air conditioning to the cabin, electrical power to the aircraft and it’s also required to start the main engines.

The air temperature today wasn’t too hot, so no air con in the cabin whilst on the ground wouldn’t be a major concern, however no APU means we’ll have to use a different, much more complicated procedure to start our engines whereby the ground crew attach an external starting unit to the aircraft as we start the engines on the stand before pushing back. As well as being a complexed procedure for us, starting engines on stand with ground crew around brings inherent risks. Even more risk comes when you arrive at your destination and you have to keep the main engines running whilst parked on stand, until such times as the ground crew can connect an external power unit to your aircraft. If we shut the main engines down before the aircraft has either the APU running or external power, the aircraft loses electrical power meaning all the main lights in the cabin turn off, as does everything in the flightdeck. I think a pilot would be lying if claim they hadn’t made this mistake at least once (it’s incredibly easy to forget to start the APU after landing as the workload can be high with complicated taxi routings etc, more so now airlines want you to delay the start as long as possible to save fuel). I’d argue it’s a right of passage. It’s a mistake you make once, learn from how embarrassing it is, therefore never make it again. The time I omitted to start a perfectly serviceable APU was at night, meaning the entire aircraft was plunged into darkness when I shut the main engines down, immediately followed by a curse word from myself, a blushing of my face and a very apologetic PA whilst we had to wait what felt like an agonising 60 seconds for the APU to start and power the lights on.

On a good day, the APU would be running when we park and therefore we switch the main engines off immediately after setting the park brake. This means the ground crew are very used to approaching the aircraft as soon as we come to a stop. In this case however, although we can send a digital message to the ground handing agents ahead of time about the engines remaining on until they connect power, there are usually lots of frantic hand signals from the flightdeck as we approach our stand to make sure the swarm of ground crew are all aware the engines will still be running and to not approach the aircraft. There are multiple horror stories out there where ground crew have gone to chock the aircraft (put rubber chocks each side of the main wheels on stand to stop the aircraft rolling incase of a parkbrake failure) as soon as it arrived on stand and been sucked through a running engine on their way there, leaving quite the mess on the tarmac behind said engine.

That wouldn’t be a great start to my first day back so as soon as I meet the training captain we review the APU inop procedure together before setting the aircraft up. At this point one of the cabin crew members informs us one of the overhead oxygen mask doors has opened above a passenger row and asks me to come have a look. I’d never seen one fall open on the ground before, but the training captain seemed happy to just push the panel shut again and it held. I then realised when finally getting a chance to comple the cockpit set up that turning the seatbelt sign switch between on and off didn’t seem to do anything, the signs on the cabin were stuck on. Hmmmm – very strange, I’d never come across this issue before. The other captain had also never seen this, neither had any of the cabin crew.

I call engineering to ask for some advice, and whilst on hold to them I notice on the overhead panel that there is a small light indicating that our emergency oxygen system had been activated in the passenger cabin. This indicated that someone had pushed the guarded emergency switch in the flightdeck which drops all the passenger oxygen masks. This was a button we’ve used plenty of times in the sim but hope to never push in real life. I’d never seen that indication light on in real life and neither had the training captain. The confusing part was that the light should indicate all the masks have been dropped, however they clearly hadn’t. It now made sense why the seatbelt light was stuck on (as it would stay on if the mask button was pushed), but how was this related to the one solitary mask door that had opened?

After getting through to engineering and explaining the issue, they said they’d send someone over to our aircraft but they’ll be around 15 minutes. At this point 3 bus loads of passengers arrived next to our aircraft. The dispatcher came into the flightdeck to ask whether to board or not. The options were to keep them on the bus by the plane, packed in like sardines at 6am for a minimum of 15 minutes but It could be a lot longer. We could send them back to the terminal, however if the aircraft issue was a quick fix, it would take another substantial period of time to board them all onto the busses and back to the aircraft and we’d likely miss our departure slot, or just get them on the plane and de-board them if this problem is terminal. I opt for the latter.

15 minutes later an engineer comes onboard and after exclaiming multiple times that he’s never seen the issue we’re facing in his 20 years of being here (just what I wanted to hear), he declares the aircraft AOG (Aircraft On Ground) meaning the aircraft is not fit to fly. Damn. We’ve now got 180 people on board an aircraft that’s not going anywhere.

I’m immediately on the phone to our operations department to try and sort out another aircraft and whilst talking to them about the logistics of getting our passengers over to that aircraft, I’m liaising with the cabin crew manager about how we’re going to play letting the passengers know etc. It’s still before 6am and I’m remembering very quickly why the job can be such a stressful one.

5 minutes later we have a plan of action; an aircraft the other side of the airfield is the one we’ll take, but it will require everyone de-boarding, going back into the terminal whilst we complete our checks on the new aircraft and then being bussed back out to the aircraft when we’re ready. What a palaver this is turning out to be.

Just as I’m about to make the PA to the passengers, the engineer comes back into the flightdeck explaining he’s just called his superior who has suggested a reset to solve the oxygen indication issue. Sure enough, it works! He’s happy that the oxygen masks haven’t actually been activated and it’s merely the indication light that needed re-setting. The show’s back on the road. After navigating the task of starting the engines without our APU, we’re airborne an hour later.

Only half an hour passes before we get a call from the cabin, claiming one of the oxygen mask doors in one of the two remaining toilets at the rear of the aircraft has opened itself, although the mask hasn’t fully dropped out and the oxygen cylinder hasn’t activated. Surely this can’t be a coincidence. I ask her to shut that toilet off for now and that we’ll investigate it on the ground at the destination. Throughought the day, various other oxygen doors pop open and eventually every toilet in the aircraft (including the broken front toilet) has something funny going on with the plastic panels that guard the oxygen mask apparatus. Thankfully we’re only doing 2 flights on it but I message operations on the way back to tell them to source another aircraft for the crew who are meant to be taking this one over from us, I’ve got a feeling when engineering see the state of the thing they’ll put this aircraft back in the hangar!