Watch Out!

As the welcome home note posted on the front door says, "Yippee...congratulations to our newest 737 Captain..."

Ya but!?

For the last 2 months I've been in the Alaska Airlines training system for transition training from my comfortable position of the last 17 years on the MD80 - the last 10 as Captain - to the 737. As Alaska has a phase out plan to get rid of the Mad Dogs (as the MD80's are affectionately known) by the end of next year (2008), pilots are slowly transitioning over as their seniority allows. Some of the most senior pilots will retire before the phase out is complete and thus will not have to undergo what I've just endured. Unfortuantely I'm not that old or financially secure to retire just yet.

Firstly a two-week course of ground school teaching us systems and procedures required to fly the jet. Then several sessions in a fixed based (non-moving) simulator which teaches us how to apply the systems and procedures knowledge. Then several more sessions in the full motion simulator which practices various scenarios which we may face; mostly system malfunctions and low weather practice. Zillions of approaches to various airports and irregularities with multiple repeats to get the feel of how the jet flies and the physical & mental gymnastics required to put it all together - it's quite a humbling and hectic experience. This culminates with a gate event called a Maneuver Validation. Then a few more full-motion based simulator that replicate actual flights from various points throughout our route structure (i.e. Sitka-Juneau, Juneau-Ketchikan, etc.) where we fly real time, which compared to the maneuver training is much preferred pace. This is capped by a check ride (which is what we faced tonight) for the FAA standard evaluation.

Well, by basis of our performance tonight, both my First Officer & I did fairly well and passed - though we still had a few post briefing items that the examiner made comments on. And as perfectionist types that pilots generally are, we beat ourselves up more by what minor mistakes we made here and there, but overall everything went just fine.

So as we have one more full-motion simulator session to get in a different variation of our 737 (we fly the -400, -700, -800, & -900 models) and then it's off to fly the real jet with real paying customers.

So I warn you well in advance - if you're flying down to Burbank next Monday (April 23rd) on flight 432 departing SEA at about 1PM, this is your fair chance to make alternate plans.

Now I will have a Check Airmen instructor flying in the right seat with me, but this'll be my first opportunity to actually fly the real jet - and Burbank is a challenging enough airport than to make it my first landing. Now true enough I've flown into Burbank countless times and have much experience flying in & out of there - hey I learned how to fly out of there in small Piper's in the late 70's, so I know the challenge that lies ahead. Being a newly transitioned Captain flying a new airplane type into a short runway with several opportunities for distractions (lots of light airplane traffic, smog, terrain near the field, etc) will make for a demanding first 737 flight.

Personally if I had my choice I would've preferred to make my maiden voyage into LAX or Ontario or some other longer runway with a pad for a little margin for error. There will be no such margin into Burbank. Which means that everything must be just so, or we go around and try it again.

I'll let you know how it goes.