BECOMING AN AIRLINE CAPTAIN

BECOMING AND AIRLINE CAPTAIN

Many aspiring pilot gets to ponder on how do co-pilots or newly certified pilots become an airline captain. Co-pilots are differentiated from captain by the duration of flying hours under his belt usually 4000-5000 flying hours which equivalent to eight years as well as succeeding on series of your certification test before becoming an airline captain. With this; you’ve also gained advancement which is calculated based on your total flight hour’s equivalent to your experiences in becoming a certified captain. A captain has four stripes on his uniform whereas the co-pilot has two or three stripes depends on your level of flight hours with the airline company. The following are the test undergone to become an airline captain;

PICUS TEST

When your airline makes an announcement for CAPTAIN UPGRADING, due to its need of new captains, maybe previous one may have retired or probably left the company for other reasons. If you are one of the co- pilot with a high flying hour you are opportune to apply for the captain upgrade. Then the flight training departments sets you up for a PICUS program.  Acronynm for PICUS are;

 P– Pilot

I– In

C- Command

U- Under

S- Supervision

The above mentioned department is responsible for training you up to a captain stage after passing series of flight test programmes. this program entails that you as a co-pilot act as a captain from the right hand seat of the cockpit, carrying out flight duties like, passengers announcement , dealing with situations during landing and appraoch, taxing towards the run way e.t.c. The amount of PICUS hours varies according to your country, aircraft type, previous gained hours after completing your PICUS program you move on to the next which is the ;

CAPTAIN ASSESSMENT AND INTERVIEW TEST

CAPTAIN ASSESSMENT

Here you are been interview with the company chief pilot, an airline psychologist and other advanced experienced personnel in the sector. The chief pilot possess of kinds of technical issues that you are bound to face concerning flights operations and expects you to respond to the questions professionally because at such point in time you are a semi- captain. You are expected here to explain how you deal with technical issues that balls down to aeronautical decision making.

AIRLINE PSYCHOLOGIST

He pays attention to your judgement on each imaginary affairs you are interfaced or questioned  with. After passing the assessment, what next is your;

CAPTAIN GROUND COURSE TRAINING

This is held for a duration of six days In which has other courses like the Crew Resource Management (CRM), using the minimum equipment list and others are taken.

SIMULATOR TRAINING

This is the interesting part of your captain training process, your constant checks on the airplane management, checklist, and emergency procedures. Your instructor will always pay close attention to your sense of judgement. At the end of your simulation test, you have a;

                                                               A typical simulator

 LOFT SESSION

LOFT stands for LINE ORIENTED FLIGHT TRAINING and OPC OPERATORS PROFICIENCY CHECK. The next step is to fly as a real captain in the real aircraft. Your first supervision stage will be with a Type Rating Examiner (TRE).

LINE TRANING CAPTAIN

This training is usually a 5days training. And questions like fuel planning and management, procedure planning, hydraulic systems, different kinds of approaches, take-off, flap settings and landing etc are been asked. After this is the final test known as;

FLIGHT RELEASE CHECK

At this point you are allowed into the cockpit to fly as a captain with an experienced co-pilot. After completing the line check. From that point you are called the Pilot in command (PIC).

An aspiring captain is graded not only base on your ability to respond to conditions of the aircraft operations but your adherence to rules and regulations involved on  all kinds of flight related activities. That’s what is graded most by your instructor. The captain-ship upgrading differs from airline to airline and flight safety regulations.

Share this

Breakthrough in your health