General Handling 32 - P1 U/S
After 12 days of not flying, finally I was scheduled to fly this morning. Felt kinda weird when flying just now. Control stick felt heavy. And I took more time to visual with aircrafts.
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Yesterday was a very lucky day! Guess what, I got the once in a lifetime chance to enter a Boeing 747 cockpit!!!!
You see, my batchmate has a FO friend (from our company of course) who was scheduled to fly to Jeddah to fetch the Muslim pilgrims home. A 3-men crew flight. We requested to see 747 cockpit. Permission granted. Arrangements were made soon after that.
Departure time 1900hours. So we waited at the departure hall at 1700hours because we also not very sure what time they were supposed to arrive at the airport.
20minutes later and we saw 2 Captains and 1 FO arrived in a MPV. We sat down in a restaurant and had some coffee together with them while waiting for the immigration office to open. One of the Captains, Captain SH treated us the drinks! :)
It was quite awkward to share the same table with them! You know, they were wearing the black blazers, with the 4 gold bars on their wrist (not forgetting the 3 bars on the FO's). And 5 of us were..urmmm..just nothing compared to them!
Then we saw the FO took out all the necessary documents for the flight. Notams, METARs, TAFs, flight plan, load sheets, etc. I got the chance to have a look at their METARs, TAFs and Notams. Goddamnit! There were so many pages!
The FO said that they would read it during cruise phase. Fyi, such long-haul flight consists of many legs (or sections as you call them). So only certain information are applicable to certain legs. Reading everything at one shot will take forever, he said.
At around 1740, we proceeded to the aircraft! The climax! Haha.
Captain SH showed us personally (yes personally!) to the First Class seats. We passed by the Business Class cabin and seriously it was fantastic! Oh my god! But the First Class cabin was even superb! He showed us how to operate the chair-to-bed massage functions, touchscreen monitor, etc.
Call me anything you want. Haha. But I have never experienced a First Class seat until yesterday! Not even Business Class! Maybe I won't have the chance to fly one of those too!
Yes, we saw the cabin attendants of course! Busy with the final preparation before take-off. Hehehe. Fyi, they were all retired cabin crews hired specially for the haj flights. Why retired ones, you asked? I don't know!
But hey, they all looked between 25 to 29 years old. Very pretty some of them. And very professional indeed. The way they carried themselves, the way they talked, very friendly.
Except for one, a gay b*stard steward. Felt like punching him. Ok, please. He did not molest me. Haha. I just hate gays. I had seen too much in my school last time. So.....you know....yeah.
Anyway, all the steward and stewardess 'booked' the First Class seats. No passengers at all. Ferry flight, remember?
After that we walked to the upper deck, where it leads to the cockpit! =) Cockpit~~ It was awesome, folks!!!
Damn. Just seeing them at airliners.net or other online websites is certainly not enough! Haha. Being able to see it live is pure happiness!! Pure joy!! =D =D =D
As we were busy taking photos and looking around inside, the FO was busy doing his job. Keying in data into FMS, getting the latest weather info, checking the switches and buttons of instrument stuffs. The pilot in command, Captain SJ was less busy, it seemed. But he shared some of the the workload. Haha. As usual, most of the stuffs are to be done by the juniors!
The FO later went outside to do the aircraft walk-around. This is one of the pre-flight procedures to check the airframe visually for defections. (Even the small aircrafts that we fly have to be checked visually before each sorties.)
Captain SH showed us the crew rest bunk just left rear of the cockpit. Very small. Haha. Two beds, top and bottom. Two washrooms just on the right rear of the cockpit.
**There are actually four seats inside. Two are hidden behind.****Pic source: www.teamspeed.com**
Departure time was just 15minutes away and we heard the gay b*stard announcing through the speaker to inform us to get out from the plane ASAP. We thanked the Captains and FO before we left.
From outside I just realised the aircraft's nickname is jb! Haha. I was the last to notice that actually. My friends saw that even before they stepped into the aircraft. Just in case you don't know, all the company's 747s side are named after cities of Bolehland.