How Airline Pilots Can Prepare For Departure In Under 25 Minutes

as a regional airline pilot one of the most common things you'll do is the part of major hub flights um an outstation and return to the hub onboard the same aircraft with the same crew it's called a turn and when you're doing a turn at an out station you might just have 20 or 30 minutes to deep plane passengers program for the next flight reboard and apart on time there's a lot that goes into making this happen efficiently so in this video I'll show you some of the steps that we make as pilots to prepare for the part [Music] once we've arrived at our gate and the parking brake is set where often times already programming the next departures sometimes even before the first passenger steps off the airplane the very first thing I do is turn on my iPad cellular data so that I can access our company crew application so that I can confirm that I'm fit for duty for the next flight and download the next flights release as passengers are deep planning I set up the unit link pre-flight page with our flight information set flight numbers into the clock and transponder print updated weather for departure and arrival test the tcats and trim systems and set the next airports elevation into the pressurization control panel by then usually the last passengers are getting off the airplane and I'll follow the last passengers out to complete my post flight Walker out after every play were required to complete a post flight inspection of the airplane and as the first officer that's almost always my responsibility the post play walk-around is a very general visual inspection for things like making sure that the aircraft chocks are in place did the landing gear is in good condition that there's no leaks that all of the service and access panels are closed that there's no damage to the airplane or birdstrikes and that there's no plot on the ramp it's a very quick inspection and it's something that we do between every play [Music] [Music] once I'm back in the airplane nothing slows down and there's still plenty left of program either the captain or myself will begin entering our file drought clearance into the FMS which is our navigation database and then we'll go ahead and call for a clearance or printer that that's available through ACARS we'll set our initial altitude per the departure seizure for that airport and then we review all of those wave points we also have to go ahead and send our fuel load to our dispatcher and begin printing initial takeoff performance data [Music] [Music] let's take a second to talk about what a flight releases it's a document sent to us by dispatch and it contains almost every piece of information that you could possibly need for a flight like many airlines we can download an electronic version of our flight release directly to our iPads an envoy now sometimes on rare occasions we do use the traditional flight release which is 15 plus pages of paper they contain the same information regardless and as I said before the flight release really does contain tons of information that's useful everything from filed altitudes and speeds fuel planning route planning weather no domes takeoff performance all sorts of things are inside the flight release it's one of our most important resources that we have on the flight deck [Music] while the responsibility for programming a new departure is shared by the captain and first officer the captain's main role is reviewing paperwork she or he is the final authority for the airplane so making sure that maintenance logs look good that weather is legal for departure and that the route is programmed correctly are some of the biggest responsibilities that they have sometimes a gate agent space issues during boarding their first stop might be the captain for an answer on how to continue and when something like that happens the best thing that you can do as a first officer is continue programming the departure to keep things moving so that when the captain calls for a before start checklist everything is programmed and ready to go [Music] we usually rotate plate light so whoever's turn it is to fly will give up before takeoff briefings the other pilot covering all of the normal items like expected tax zero takeoff configuration rejected takeoff criteria and route weather and any specific concerns for the flight the last step is the captain calling for the before start checklist which we use to verify that we've done all of our pre departure programming correctly and after all that work now it's just a matter of waiting usually around 10 minutes prior to scheduled departure time the flight will officially be closed out and we're waiting to receive two documents over eight cars an electronic weight and balance report and a takeoff performance closeout report both of these documents are extremely important and we compare the numbers between the two of them we also compare the flight attendants seating chart for passengers in the back to the electronic weight and balance to make sure all the numbers match if the numbers match the captain will turn around and say cut to close in which point the gate agent will go ahead and remove the jet boots from the aircraft and the flight attendant will close the door [Music] whether delays maintenance write-ups aircraft swaps cruise swaps and gate changes can all slow down the process of turning an airplane on time and when you think about it it's really amazing how every person working around the airplane plays an individual role in making that on-time departure happen flight attendants ramp agents gate agents viewers caterers and cleaners all have a job and it happens simultaneously and now you know just a little bit more about what we're doing as pilots to get the front end of the airplane ready for departure [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Swayne Martin

Views: 457,339

Keywords: Swayne Martin, Airline Pilot, Envoy Air, American Airlines, Turns, Airline Turn, Quick Turn, Departure, Preflight, Postflight, professional pilot, airlines, embraer 145, e145, e140, embraer, regional airline, regional airline pilot, pilot pay, learn to fly, how to become a pilot, Chicago O'Hare, cockpit, takeoff, landing, airline schedule, flying, aviation, FMS, ACARS, dispatch, pilot life, lifestyle, dream job, pilot job, operations, airline ops, flight attendant

Id: C14X5bh_frU

Length: 7min 17sec (437 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019