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Published: September 3rd 2009
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Irish Bar
Sheraton Hotel The last few days of July were rather kind to us namely in the form of a few much easier days of training and our first pay day. We had two days of training at the Qatar Aeronautical College where we studied Security and Dangerous goods. The two instructors were ex-British army/RAF and it was a welcome change to hear some Brits! I was also able to get a few contacts there as it’s at the Aeronautical College where I might be able to finish the pilot training next year if Qatar Airways approve me for it. Fingers crossed it will work out. Their facilities and training aircraft looked very new and impressive which was great until they gave me their price list... the training was about the same price as the UK, so no saving whatsoever. Only advantage is that I could do the training alongside my job here.
The other bits of training consisted of two days of grooming. Yes that’s right, grooming. We were taught all the finer points of wearing the uniform and the specific rules for certain routes. Due to the Holy importance of Mashad and Tehran (both cities in Iran), we have to wear
Sky Bar
La Cigale Hotel the jacket at all times outside of the aircraft to respect their conservative values and beliefs. It will be interesting when we start flying as we’ll come across many different nationalities and will have to deal with their traits and ways. We’ve been warned that certain nationalities click their fingers at you, some poke and prod you and some only live for Whisky on board. I’ll report back on these warnings one I’ve got a few flights under my belt. In the evening we went out to the ‘Irish Bar’ where we met so many other crew. It was basically a Qatar Airways and ex-pats bar and I even bumped into the lady who recruited me back in Manchester!
CRM was the next section and we explored the importance of Crew Resource Management. This was originally designed to improve team work and communication in the flight deck following some high profile crashes such as the Tenerife disaster in 1977. More recently the CRM training has been extended to include cabin crew as well as a result of other crashes that could have been avoided or reduced in severity by more effective communication between the pilots and cabin crew. Today
was the day I finally received my degree results from the UK, so was very happy with a 2:1 and went out in the evening for a meal to celebrate.
First Aid duly followed and was quite an intensive few days learning all about the medical kits onboard, the signs, symptoms and medication for various ailments ranging from motion sickness to heart attacks. The worst part for everyone was definitely seeing the live child birth video and how to deliver a baby. There were certainly a few pale faces in the room during that! Apparently several babies have been born on Qatar flights over the years, but I certainly have no wishes of being on board if a passenger does give birth!!
The evening of the 11th August bought the first real flight. I was an observer on the Doha-Dubai flight along with my batch mate, Luis. It was a full Airbus A330 with 275 passengers in economy! The flight was the quickest 48 minutes of my life and we all had to work really hard to serve everyone a snack, drink and clearance, then ensure everyone is prepared for landing before returning to our jump-seat. During the
Before my first flight
QR114/115 Doha-Dubai-Doha time on the ground, we had to show the Cabin Service Director (Boss) that we knew how to operate the door, check the emergency equipment and so on. The flight back was just as intense and before I knew it was back in Doha.
The first smell of flight was short lived though as we were soon back in the training classroom in QR towers. However, there were a few changes to the normal state of play. Business attire was replaced by crew uniforms and the revision session was replaced by cake and drinks... non alcoholic of course mind! The wings day was the final day of official training and our last visit to the towers and was concluded by a talk by some of the senior trainers, presentation of the certificates and a few extra seminars. The next day was what we were all really looking forward to though despite the 0530 pick-up time...
Soon enough the alarm was ringing and not long afterwards we were on the way to the airport. It seemed odd to be going to passenger terminal as opposed to the technical building. The technical building is where all the crew meet, have
Poolabatics
Ezdan Towers the pre-flight briefings, grooming checks and then go directly to the aircraft about 45 minutes before the passengers begin boarding.
After a very quick flight, we arrived in Dubai where we were taken by bus to the Emirates Training Centre. Dubai Airport was incredible to see and the little bit of the city we saw en-route to the training centre was much more developed that Doha. Although give Doha another 5-10 years it will be comparable. As you can see in the photo, the training centre was built to look like an aeroplane and the facilities inside were equally impressive. The Emirates crew restaurant was about 15 times the size of ours and had a balcony deck that overlooked part of Dubai, whilst the ditching and evacuation training area had a Boeing 777, Airbus A330 and Airbus A380 full size section mock ups to practice all the evacuation procedures in.
We met up with the Emirates pilot who was going to ‘fly’ the simulator and present all the situations to us such as cabin fires, decompressions, oven fires, toilet fires. There were 28 people in our group and we formed groups of four people and took it in
Ab Initio 439
A very rare photo with all 20 of us on... turns to ‘serve the passengers’ when something would go wrong in the aircraft. For my group, we had a seat fire so based on the training during Safety and Emergency Procedures we all played a different role. The person who discovers the fire first is the one who fights the fire. I was the communicator, and the other two were assigned back-up and passenger control duties. I had to inform the commander about the situation as soon as possible and keep him updated on the progress so that the pilots can plan a diversion and then based on the updates from the cabin crew, they then decide whether a diversion is necessary or if it is safe to continue to the scheduled destination. The ‘fires’ were very realistic with smoke and lighting used to create a very real impression of an actual fire.
Next stage was to jump down the evacuation slides. It was impressive to see just how quickly we all evacuated from one door, but some gained a bit of valuable advise the hard way... don’t go down barefoot or in shorts. The slides give off a lot of friction to slow you down at the end
AB 439 cake
Never had to work so hard to earn a slice of cake.... seven weeks in the making! and will take plenty of skin if it has the chance!!
The final part was to crawl onto the large slide raft with our inflated life jackets on and practice assembling the canopy. Once we had done that, we had to drop into the (very cold) water and form into groups of six people so that we can stay together and stay warm. Although it was very cold in the pool, it would be fair to say that the mid-Atlantic would be a lot colder, so it was a valuable lesson to learn that forming a group and treading water were the most effective ways to keep warm.
We left the training centre having had a lot of fun, but also learned a lot about how to handle ourselves and the passengers in all of the various emergency situations. All that remains is one more observation flight to Istanbul on 17th August, and then I’m fully qualified to be released into the real world of flying
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