The Piper Archer on the inside, I will be looking at this for the coming 73 flying hours.
The second week started out a bit strange as I was still resolving my instructor problems. Well, it wasn't really a problem, I just didn't know for sure who would fly with me. I spoke to Kevin Illige and Mark Lazarus about it and they decided to schedule me with Mario Gheda, starting from Wednesday. This meant another day off but I should be able to catch up after that. So I did some shopping on monday, and had another look at the procedures.
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The Piper Archer on the inside, I will be looking at this for the coming 73 flying hours. |
On tuesday we received a visit from some high level people: the CEO of the KLM Flight Academy, a CEO from KLM, the head of flight crew from KLM and someone from the Dutch airline Transavia. They came over to get a first-hand look at the flight training setup at Pan Am, and to give a presentation about KLM and what the future will look like for us and for KLM. It was an interesting subject and KLM seems to be on the right track. With a bit of luck they might even have some jobs for us when we finish but noone wanted to confirm this. A lot still hinges on what the travel market will do and on KLM's plans for new aircraft. We'll wait and see. Another plus from this visit was that we were invited to an informal dinner at a local waterfront restaurant in Fort Pierce. It gave us another chance to discuss KLM and our future and to sample a nice meal (KLM was paying, of course it was nice!).
On Wednesday I had my first flight with Mario and although I figured I knew most of the procedures this turned out not to be the case. When you are in the aircraft and you have to control the aircraft as well my memory lost track sometimes. Fortunately Mario wasn't that concerned and I made up for it in the two flights on Thursday and Friday. We practiced some manouvres and the traffic pattern. Although the Friday flight started a bit too early for my liking (I was at operations at 6.00) the air was very smooth, there was little other traffic and the landings went allright.
Early start!
What else did I do? Well, I saw a movie on Thursday called 'Blackhawk Down', wanted to go away on the Saturday or Sunday but didn't as I couldn't get a car. So instead I did my laundry, read a lot and worked on my tan (which is not improving much yet, needs more work). And that concluded my second week here.