AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013 - 87

But before the participants get into the
simulator, they first utilize cockpit management trainers—low-fidelity mockups of
the Airbus used by flight crews to perform
“dry time” without tying up valuable training resources. The flight crews pair up and
rehearse procedures.
Prior to the flight, Phillips engaged the
students in a pre-sim briefing, conveying
every detail of the proposed flight. These
are the sims that the pros use. “No one gets
it right the first time. But after you have been
here for two weeks, after your fifth or so session, you will be a professional.”
SHOW TIME. Then, after all the briefings and
instructions, it’s time to show that we have
the right stuff. In teams of two, we enter the
simulator’s cockpit, which makes even professional airline pilots think they are in the
real thing. At about $20 million each, that is
the point.
One of the primary lessons learned from
the program is the criticality of checklist
usage. Comparing the relative complexity
of the A320 to a Cessna 172—even one with
a G1000 glass cockpit—Jain was surprised by
the simplicity of the Airbus checklist, and the
reliance on flows and do-and-check versus a
read-and-do system.
Others took away different lessons.
Patrick Smith, a 26-year-old private pilot
from Florida who is working on his instrument rating, said, “I think the biggest
carryover lesson to general aviation is that
any pilot should spend the time to learn systems inside and out for the aircraft they fly
or intend on flying. You never know when a
piece of knowledge about a particular system
will save the day.”
Christopher Tenney, a 42-year-old pilot
and former construction worker originally
from Maine, noted the importance of “cockpit resource management, use of checklists,
and seamless coordination of flight crewmember duties.”
THE REALITY CURVE. “The biggest surprise is how well most of them do. This is
the equivalent of flying a 170,000-pound
airliner and the majority of the ATOP participants do very well. After they get the
airplane on the runway, they have a great
sense of satisfaction. Yeah! I flew an Airbus!

AT JETBLUE UNIVERSITY,

participants can fly the
Airbus A320 simulator.

I flew a 737! How many pilots can say that?”
said Phillips.
“ATOP also adds strength to a resume. It
is, for many pilots, the first and only exposure
to multi-crew operations, CRM, and turbine
flight that is not only loggable, but looks great
in a resume.”
But, Phillips stresses, the road to airline flying is fraught with pitfalls and rough
patches. “Candidly, the ATOP has fueled fantasies of giving up the daily grind—whatever

that happens to be—for airline flying. But the
transition is very difficult; not so much the
flying but the economics of the change. How
to bridge the change from a good-paying job
to regional airline pay at $22,000 annually is
a huge challenge. Earning $50,000 a year is at
least five to seven years down the road. Then,
there’s the cost of training to getting all the
FAA certificates and building time.” AOPA
EMAIL christopher.freeze@aopa.org

Go/no go?
All shook up and still flying
BY STEPHEN COONTS

TOM HAINES’ “Waypoints” column, “Making
the Weather Go/No Go Decision” (October
2012 AOPA Pilot), reminded me of some of
my adventures flying light airplanes IFR.
The experience that sticks in my memory as the worst was a night flight from
Pensacola, Florida, to a suburban Miami
airport. The weather was forecast to be miserable, with cloud bases at several thousand
feet, solid up into the flight levels, rain and
light turbulence. I was flying a Cessna T210,
by myself. I was current, cool, and knew
I could hack it, so off I went for a couple
hours of hard night IFR. I was hacking the
program just fine until somewhere around
Tallahassee when the autopilot decided it
had done enough and quit. I recycled CBs
and cussed—none of that helped. I settled

in to hand-fly my steed. The turbulence
got worse. It was medium chop now, and
I was really working at flying the airplane.
Raindrops streamed by in the glow of the
wingtip lights.
I was making all those little needles
behave, still having fun, when halfway down
the west coast ATC gave me a new routing to
my destination. I copied it down, bouncing
madly and studiously aviating, and by some
miracle managed to read it back correctly.
Just where do they want me to go? I
studied my charts by flashlight, aviating
mightily, while the weather gods shook
the bejesus out of me. Controlling the airplane in turbulence while I tried to read
charts and approach plates took me to
the edge. It was worse than combat. The
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013

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