Hi!

For the moment it is saturday 12:15 (afternoon)! We have arrived safely in Mesa, Arizona. After waking up at 4am in Belgium, we were airborne at 12:00 Belgian time. 8 hours later, we had arrived in Washington DC, to catch our second flight to Phoenix which took us another 5 hours! In the end, we have arrived in Mesa at 04:00 AM Belgian time, which is 19:00 o'clock in here.

The trip was quite exhausting for all of us and we have been suffering from jetlag big time! In fact, we woke up at 05:00LT in the morning on friday. We had to be at SATC (Sabena Airline Training Center) around 9:30, so we took the van at 'The Spring' at 09:00 to get there in time. Once we got there, they took again some fingerprints! I think this was like the 4th or 5th time that we had to give our fingerprints.

In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to visit WalMart to buy some food and other things we found necessary to buy. Man, the stores in here are really huge! Just like the cars! Once we got back, we started cleaning our appartment because when we got here it was a big dirty mess, really! In the evening we went to Scottsdale to have a little party.

Our briefings will start on monday afternoon, so we have the rest of the weekend off. This can be quite usefull to arrange our appartment etc etc, and to get used to the way of living in here. The first flights will take place in a week probably. Below you can find some pictures.









Dennis

Hi there,

Once again, it has been a while since the last post! In fact, it is more than 4 months ago! So what I'll try to do now is to give you a small but effective summary! :-)

In fact, we have finished all of our courses in Belgium! We will leave to Arizona (to do our practical training on the Da20, Da40 and Da42) on thursday, the 18th of june, which is in 2 days. If you ever want to go to the USA as a student pilot, you can expect a lot of paperwork!

As for the theoretical part, we've been through some stressfull weeks! In our last two weeks at SFA, we had 7 theoretical tests and 5 simulator missions left. Anyway, everybody who starts to study at SFA, is aware of the fact that those 2 weeks will come someday. In the end, all of us have survived, and what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger, right!?

Unfortunately I have failed 1 of the 36 tests (perfo), with 72% which is 3% below the passmark (75%). This was the 2nd perfo test, and I am quite sure that this was not because of a lack of knowledge but rather because of a bad day! Luckily I had 92% on my 1st perfo test and my 3rd perfo test was a 100% one, so not a problem at all in the end!

Afterwards we could start to prepare for the official exams at the BCAA (Belgian Civil Aviation Authority). We were told that the BCAA exams are more easy than the tests we had to do at SFA, so we could finish them with a really low stresslevel. For the moment the A part of prom 11 (in which I am in) has finished all of their exams without any retake! Great! isn't it?



As usually the 2nd part of this post is about the practical part. We have finished all of our FNPT-II missions as well (Da42). I believe everybody of our promotion (A+B) has passed the famous Mission20 (checkride) at this moment. That means I have passed it as well! The many hours of studying have helped me a lot to finish the simulator sessions with green missions only. The FNPT-II training includes a lot of instrument flying (17 out of 20 missions) like (non-)precision approach, circling approaches, holdings, interceptions, etc etc..

Observationflights! Indeed, it is something we love to do! In the mean time I was able to do 3 observationflights:
- JetairFly: Malaga
- Thomas Cook Airlines: Santa Cruz de la Palma + Funchal
- Jetairfly: Djerba + Malaga
On all flights I had a lot of fun, and I was taught a lot of new things by the crew! You can find a picture below. We were waiting for a backtrack in Santa Cruz de la Palma after the landing traffic in the Thomas Cook Airlines A320.



We had as well the ability to do 3 simulatorsessions on a 'bigger' airplane! 2 sessions on the AVRO RJ, and 1 session on the B738. The sessions were not meant to practice our piloting skills, but rather to show us different aircraft systems etc. But yep, all of us could (try) to land the jet as well! (Did you know that the engines of the avro have a centrifugal compressor and not an axial compressor?). You can see me on the picture and I've uploaded the video of my attempt to put the avro on the ground safely.





This will be it for the moment. I'll be uploading and blogging much more in the next few months to keep my hometown up to date while I am trying to fly in the USA! Tomorrow I'll pack some more bags and the day after tomorrow we will catch our airplane to 'holidayflyingcamp' Mesa! In the weekend I'll put some pictures online from our first few days in the USA. The picture below is taken from the controltower at Brussels Airport, and the Brussels Airlines A320-picture is taken from 'The Quick' at the terminals.

Dennis