Commercial Pilot's Licence E-Book

Anneli Christian-Phillips

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Many of those embarking, or considering embarking, on commercial pilot's training have little idea of what they will have to do, as far as flying training is concerned, to get the licence. The Commercial Pilot's Licence aim to dispel some common misconceptions and to tell you in an easy and user-friendly way what you need to know to get a JAA CPL and become a better pilot. Much of the literature available to CPL students has much to say about what you will have to fly but not how to fly it. This book, by contrast, offers real practical advice on the lesson content and how to fly the manoeuvres, rather than just a list of what you are expected to know at the end of it.Topics covered include:Things to consider before you start; The CPL syllabus sections; What happens during the test; After the test. An easy, user-friendly guide to all you need to know to get a JAA Commercial Pilot's Licence and become a better pilot.Offers practical advice on the lesson content and concentrates on how to fly the manoeuvres.Illustrated with 26 colour photographs.Anneli Christian-Phillips is a commercial pilot with over three thousand hours' instructional experience.

Leseprobe

First published in 2013 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2013

© Anneli Christian-Phillips 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 542 3

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Before You Start Your CPL

2 Pre-Course Requirements

3 Pre-Lesson and Pre-Flight Checks

4 Circuits

5 General Airwork

6 Instrument Flying

7 Navigation

8 Emergencies

9 170A and CPL Skill Test

10 Common Student Mistakes and Failure Points

11 After the CPL ...

12 Privileges of a CPL

Useful Information

Glossary of Terms & Abbreviations

Index

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all my students – past, present and future. I am truly blessed to beable to call myself CPL and PPL instructor.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Flying is more than a sport and more than a job; flying is pure passion and desire, which fill a lifetime.

A. Galland

To mention all those that have a place in my heart (and log book) would take forever, but those who deserve a special mention are my parents, Jane and Don, for their continued love, moral and financial support.

I would like to thank all those that gave their time and help in the preparation of this book, including all those at Crowood. I am truly grateful to Jane for proof-reading all my efforts, who now knows more about commercial flying than she ever should have, without having a PPL or CPL! I must thank Steve for his humour, diligence and support during the last few stages of the publishing process as well as Chris, Tony and Rob for their very useful feedback. And thanks to John and Steve for being ‘model’ CPL students.

I would also like to thank all those who have helped me during my long and eventful flying career – from my first trial lesson on my sixteenth birthday (an unexpected but truly amazing gift), through the PPL, the CPL, the ATPLs, the FI course, the IR and the CPL instructional course. So Nick, Andy, Pete, Lee, Tony, Brian and Annabel – thank you. And all those instructors past and present at Stapleford Flight Centre – they are a pleasure to work with and share the skies of England with.

My soul is in the sky.

William Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1

INTRODUCTION

To most people, the sky is the limit. To those who love aviation, the sky is home.

Anon.

Welcome to The Commercial Pilot’s Licence, or, everything you wanted to know about the CPL but were afraid to ask!

As a private and commercial instructor with over 3,500 hours instructing experience, I have had the pleasure and privilege of seeing hundreds of students start training for their CPL as well as their PPL with the dream of becoming a commercial pilot. But most of them did not seem to know, realistically, what was involved; they had many expectations and assumptions about the kind of flying that was required, but they had no real understanding of what was involved or the skills required to fulfil their dream – not that much different from me when I decided to be a commercial pilot.

When I first wanted to be a commercial pilot, I wanted the thrill of teaching people to fly. But I had absolutely no idea about what I would have to do, as far as flying training was concerned, to get this licence. Some of the questions I remember asking my CPL instructor were: do I have to fly any instrument procedures or approaches? Do we get to go into controlledairspace and fly in the airways with the big shiny jets? Is this it?

So, what is the CPL course really all about? This book aims to dispel some common misconceptions and to help you to get a commercial pilot licence with a first-time pass and so becoming a better pilot. It will hopefully tell you in an easy and user-friendly way what you need to know and how to achieve a first-time pass. It is broken down into three parts. Chapters 1 and 2 look at things to consider before you start the CPL; Chapters 3 to 8 cover the CPL syllabus sections; and Chapters 9 to 13 look at what happens during the test and after. The book breaks the exercises you will fly with your instructor into easy, bite-sized chunks to get you ready for that all-important skill test. It aims to make the course more transparent and to make what is expected of you in each lesson more obvious; the book also contains hints and tips I have picked up over the years of instructing and talking to examiners to hopefully get you that first-time pass. (Whatever you may think or hear, the majority of airlinesareinterested in how many attempts it took you to pass your CPL and Instrument Ratings, and it is often asked on application forms. A series one pass is better than a series two pass.)

So why do you want or even need this book? There are other books available in specialist aviation shops and online that advise you on how to become a private pilot, or how to be a better or safer pilot, or how to become a commercial pilot, and describe the routes taken by the respective authors, but that is not what this book seeks to do. It is your guide to getting through the CPL course and is intended to sit beside the training notes from your training organization to give you the best head start in your professional training.

As you may or may not already know, there is no standard route to becoming a commercial pilot. Every commercial pilot you speak to will have a different story of how and where they did their training, how long it took and what they had to do to get there. The only common thread in the stories of their training is that they will have (at some stage) got the following:

• PPL

• night qualification

• a certain amount of hours as PIC (pilot-in-command)

• CPL

In the case of those who have gone on to get an Air Transport Pilot’s Licence (ATPL), the list will go on to include the following:

• Multi-Engine Rating (MEP)

• Instrument Rating (IR)

• Multi Crew Co-Operation Course (MCC)

• Jet Orientation Course (JOC)

• Type Rating on a specific aircraft

The main purpose of this book is to help you get the most out of your CPL course as you go through it. But then why not just use the course notes you will have been given by your Aviation Training Organization (ATO)*? Often such course notes tell youwhatyou will have to fly but nothowto fly it. This book offers real practical advice on the lesson content and how to fly the manoeuvres, rather than just a list of what you are expected to know at the end of it. Although there is nothing in the course that is particularly difficult to fly (that fact alone can cause some disappointment), the standard and quality of flying required right from the beginning can be a real shock to some students – I know that I would have really benefited (especially financially) from a book like this before I started my professional training.

Having touched on the subject of financing and cost, here is some advice on financing the CPL. Everyone in the aviation industry knows how expensive flight training is, especially if you want to go all the way and become an airline pilot, and there are precious few ways and means of becoming a commercial pilot that aren’t self-funded. However, there are some bursaries and scholarships available for students from various organizations and charities. Details of them can be found in flying magazines and newspapers (such as Flight Training News), especially at the beginning of a new year. Obviously, there will be restrictions on age or experience, or what kind of training you are doing, but do some research and apply for them if you fulfil the required conditions, as the money has to go to someone. I was lucky enough to receive a bursary from the Air League when I was training, which helped me enormously in the early years, so a big thank you goes to them!

This book is organized into chapters that follow the various sections of the syllabus to make the best use of your (and your instructor’s) time in the air and on the ground. It is meant to be used in conjunction with whatever course notes you have been given by your training organization, though if in doubt you should always defer to your instructor. However, the ultimate goal is for you to minimize the hours it takes to complete the course: that is to say, ideally, for you not to exceed the minimum number of hours required (25). By reading and implementing what you have read here, hopefully you won’t make the mistakes that so many others have. Learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before you, rather than making the same mistakes yourself: it is quicker and also cheaper that way.

Everything written here is intended to help you to become the best possible professional pilot, with a sensible and mature attitude. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a sense of humour! You will no doubt have read other books on flying and maybe some training notes, and some of them can be a little dry to read, so I have deliberately tried to make this as easy going as I can. The best CPL students I have flown with and trained are the ones that have learned the drills, and can follow the procedures, be ahead of the aircraft and still be able to crack a smile ... but then switch immediately back into professional pilot mode when required. Flying is meant to be fun, as well as a career. Study hard, do your homework, and learn the drills and procedures, but retain your sense of humour and you will be a real asset to a company as well as a pleasure to fly with.

An important point that often comes up on the course – usually as we get near the end – is that students have been told at the beginning of the course, or when they sign up, that the CPL course is 25 hours long (if you don’t already have a CPL or IR). There follows, therefore, an inherent assumption that it will only take you 25 hours’ flying time before you hold that pass certificate in your hand. However, it often doesn’t work out like that in real life. It is quite likely that you will not be ready for test in 25 hours; in fact, not many people are ready to test at 25 hours at all. The average is 28–33 hours, not including the test itself, which takes about 2 hours.

Hopefully, using this book will help you reduce the hours you will need to get to test standard, but everyone is different and there can be many reasons why you may need more than25 hours: lack of continuity because of bad weather, lack of familiarity with the UK’s airspace, sickness, aeroplanes going unserviceable, personal and financial problems, or simply because you haven’t done enough homework and ‘arm-chair flying’.

If you do the entire CPL course on the complex aircraft type (that is, with retractable undercarriage and a constant-speed propeller) that you will eventually do the CPL test in, you will probably complete the course and be ready for the skill test in fewer total hours than if you start in a basic aircraft and then move on to the complex type later on. Obviously the exact saving will depend on the school and your own personal circumstances, so you should work it out for yourself before you start. It may make the early part of the course a little more expensive but it will potentially be cheaper in the long run to do 25 hours in a complex type rather than 30 hours in a mixture of two aircraft types. Also, as you will be more familiar with the aircraft, you are more likely to help yourself to that first-time pass.

If you are feeling a little nervous about starting the CPL and worrying that you may not be able to fly as well expected, don’t forget that your instructor went through much the same challenges in their own training as you may well do. (I know that I made every mistake in the book!) Keep in mind that your instructor is there to guide you to passing the course, and that they will always do what they can to help you improve, and help to get the best out of you and your time in the air. So listen to them and take their advice – good or bad. It is likely that your instructor will have seen pretty much all of the mistakes that can and do occur during CPL training and will be well versed in spotting them. The CPL course may come across in the first few lessons as being a rather expensive way to be told that everything you learnt as a PPL is not good enough, but it is always constructive criticism designed to make you into a great professional pilot, and your instructor has only your best interest at heart. So: listen to them, make notes in the pre- and post-flight briefings, ask questions (whether you think they are silly or not), sit in the back seat of other student training flights and mentally critique what they are doing wrong, take the course seriously and you will not go far wrong.

This book is a practical flying guide to the CPL course only: it is not trying to be a book on how to get a commercial flying job. If you want advice on how to get an airline job, the best person to ask is a current airline pilot. I have deliberately not gone into the Multi-Pilot Licence or Instrument Rating as that would fill another book for another time. And also note that this book is based upon conducting the CPL course on a single-engine, complex aeroplane such as the Piper Arrow, so if you are planning to do the course on a different aircraft, then you will need to refer to your instructor and/or POH for the important aspects such as speeds. Also, it follows a modular CPL training syllabus in the UK. If you intend on following the integrated course route, the way you get to the CPL may be different but the skill test is still pretty much the same, and there will still be useful information in here for you.

For those of you who aren’t sure of the difference between integrated and modular CPL courses: an integrated course means you stay with the same training organization from the PPL, through the hour building, the night rating and CPL, then onto the Multi Rating and Instrument Rating and possibly through to the Multi-Crew course and Jet Orientation Course and type rating needed to fly the big jets. These tend to be done over a shorter time as it is full-time study and flying, and tends to be more expensive than the modular route. The modular route involves doing exactly the same training but with different training organizations, possibly over a few years. It tends to attract students that have decided to become a commercial pilot later in life or have family commitments, or don’t have the money up-front to pay for the flying training all in one go, which can be in excess of £90,000 from the day of your first lesson to getting a type rating and being ready to fly as an airline pilot.

And one final bit of advice that will serve you well if you keep it in mind:

Never let an aircraft take you somewhere your brain didn’t get to 5 minutes earlier.

Anon.

______________

* Flying Training Organizations (FTOs), as they have long been known, were renamed Aviation Training Organizations (ATOs) when new EASA rules and regulations came into force in April 2012.