Johan’s posting on “Decisions. The Right, The Wrong.. And?” is an interesting topic that is worth looking into again. As an airline student pilot, he has a very good grip of what the CRM (Crew Resources Management) program is all about, albeit coining it in a different way (P.I.L.O.T instead of C.L.E.A.R)… (Sorry… it’s a pilot’s language for those not familiar with flying)

Ah… he is talking about his childhood mistakes on women again! Never mind, I hope he will make the right choice when he comes flying with the airlines soon! (hehe!)

Seriously, in his last posting, Johan touched on two very bad decision making episodes that were very troubling. When it comes to the topic about bad judgment, pilots are often reminded to learn from the mistakes of others as they wouldn’t live long enough to make all of them by themselves!

Captain Dom (see dinner photo below - we met up at the end of my A340 course whilst he and Capt Reiza arrived to start their A320 instructors course in Toulouse) is the man who is involved in enhancing flight safety in Air Asia through CRM or more specifically, discussed under “Threat and Error Management” (TEM) – something Johan mentioned about in his previous posting. The TEM concept will definitely help to cut down mistakes made in the air. I will leave this to him when he can find the time to share his knowledge with all on the good job that he is doing at the moment.

Chinese dinner with Captain Dom (2nd right), Reiza and FO Chang at Toulouse, France

Talking about decision making, I made a very simple decision, yet a memorable one last week as I flew back from London Stansted on the Airbus A340. As the commander of the flight, it was my responsibility to fly the plane safely home, taking into considerations the comfort of the passengers and every other aspects of the flight.

On receiving the Flight Plans from the flight dispatchers (they are not pilots), my eyes immediately homed onto the route that we were taking across the Bay of Bengal. Oh dear, it routed smack through the center of a massive thunderstorm spreading about 300 nautical miles around! I told myself that I must reroute to avoid the ferocious weather when I thought of the previous Air France flight over the Atlantic.

It was my decision, but nevertheless, I consulted with my other crew (one Captain and two other First Officers) on the wisdom of flying further to the North about 150 nautical miles to the left. Who knows… others may come up with something that I was not aware of! However, all agreed. That’s what we call CRM coming into play – a team effort on a simple decision!

A change of route meant that we had to reject the Flight Plans and make recalculations that would result in a delay of about half an hour on that day. This was because the documentations were not done on the spot but had to go through a series of emails 5900 nautical miles away.

In the end, we found that we made the right decision though it took us an extra two minutes longer. Other planes over the Bay of Bengal were “screaming” (communications with the air traffic controllers around this area were not very satisfactory at that time) for 100 miles deviations off the thunderstorms! We were only on the edge of it. It was still a little bumpy but at least we were only there for a short duration. Well, we were pleased that we were not in that rush to get out, especially when contact with the air traffic controllers was quite a hassle at the Bay!

Yes, I remember this saying, “You start off with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck!”

Nevertheless, where safety is concerned, we have to work towards it and not depend on luck. On this note, I have written an article titled “How Safe is Safe?” for the August issue of Air Asia’s Travel 360 in-flight Magazine. So if you happen to fly next month in any Air Asian planes, I hope you will get a chance to read it.

Till the next posting, Bye! Bye!

Captain Lim

My first Airbus A340 flight to London Stanstead on the “Oakland Raiders”

With FO Navin on Xcellence with the “Oakland Raiders”

Before I commence my take-off roll for Part III of the blog, I must pay my respects to Captain Dom and Captain Lim who always continue to inspire me with their work. Thanks so much for your kind words Captain Lim on your most recent blog post here:
http://blog.airasia.com/index.php/an-impressive-airline-student-pilot

I am humbled by your words and inspired to further excel in my studies to one day follow in your and Captain Dom’s footsteps for safer skies painted in red.

If you are reading this post for the first time, do read my other articles here prior before reading on. You would then have a better understanding of what Captain Dom, Captain Lim and I am trying to achieve with you as the respected reader to our AirAsia Blog.

Part I : http://blog.airasia.com/index.php/living-the-dream-so-you-wanna-be-a-pilot

Part II : http://blog.airasia.com/index.php/taking-to-the-skies-one-flight-at-a-time

Okay on to Part III. Captain Hans. This one is for you. How one blackberry message of “you are a pilot... make a decision!” can go a long way eh...

When I was growing up, my knowledge on decision making was a pretty simple affair. I would either be making the right decision or more often than others, (throughout my childhood) be making the wrong ones. Sigh... Women. hehehe

Anywayyyy, It was often acceptable to me then for poor decision making, as I was a boy who learned from his own mistakes. Of course, the older I became, the more I would learn from the mistakes of others and their wrong decisions.

In aviation, many living would appreciate, that there is no tolerance for mistakes particularly those from poor decision making.

Throughout my flying career and amongst the many thoughts constantly flowing through my head even when I sleep, one of the most important phrases would always be “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Now, I am confident you are no stranger to that phrase, but please let me share with you the importance of it in aviation primarily for commanders of an aircraft.

In July 1988 towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Navy Captain William C. Rogers III of the USS Vincennes was informed that there was a “bogey inbound intentions unknown” being tracked on radar. As soon as the UFO was suggested by his men to POSSIBLY be an F-14 Tomcat Fighter Jet, and after numerous attempts at trying to contact the UFO failed, Captain William ordered that it be shot down & destroyed.

The aircraft was not a military F-14 Tomcat Fighter Jet but a civilian Airbus A300.

Although the much controversial Iran Air Flight 655 which saw the death of 290 passengers will continue to go down in history as one of the greatest tragedies of aviation decision making, Captain William’s story and actual thought processes which lead up to the decision are still being learned in many management courses and universities around the world.

You see, although extremely tough, Captain William made a decision.

In aviation, especially as pilot-in-command, the job is essentially about making decisions. The more experienced you get, the better the decisions you make.

Over the past couple of months, studying flight down under here in Australia as an Airline Transport Student Pilot, I have formulated the FINAL DECISION as a third decision following RIGHT and WRONG.

Captain Williams from the USS Vincennes may have not made the right decision, but ultimately, he made a decision and that decision was final.

One cannot stress the importance of actually making a decision no matter how difficult that decision may be. Often comes a time where we find ourselves trying to “stall for time” with hopes that the situation either decides itself or someone / something else makes a decision for us. History has proven again and again that no good may follow from such a delay.

In January 1989, a year after the infamous Iran Air & USS Vincennes tragedy, Captain Kevin Hunt was flying the Boeing 737-400 British Midland Flight from London Heathrow to Belfast, Ireland when shortly after takeoff; he heard an extremely loud pounding noise haunting the cockpit. He gathered as much information as verbally possible from the First Officer, as he needed to fly the aircraft, and post their impromptu analysis “on the fly”, believed that the left engine failed completely.

He immediately made a decision to shut down the left engine and commence an immediate return to land procedure. Why I say procedure is because, it is never as simple as “point the aeroplane to the nearest airport and hope for the best”. Passengers need to be informed, a check-list of items need to be carried out (ie. weight to wheel / load factor ratio etc).

In this structured madness, the Captain actually called for the shutdown of the wrong engine, so obviously now both engines died out. Both pilots then believed they had a double engine flame out and then began to commence a “glide procedure”. The powerless 737, being a now very big glider, at its best glide ratio was looking at landing right smack in the center of a town called Kegworth which was short of their proposed runway. The captain made the decision to “stretch the glide” which according to the laws of aerodynamics, is impossible. However, making that decision, Captain Kevin didn’t slam the aircraft into the ground (which could have easily been achieved by pitching the nose down abruptly), he decided to raise the nose and reduce its overall ground distance yet also achieving the same objective but with a proven less impactful outcome. His estimated calculations were correct and he landed short of the town ultimately saving hundreds of innocent people on the ground from certain death.

Now neither of these examples mentioned above may have been the right decision (ie. Navy Captain William could have not fired the missile and Airline Captain Kevin could have turned the right engine off instead--literally), but by actually making a decision and having that decision final—it is still far more superior than not making a decision at all.

Therefore, in future when you need to make a decision, do the following. Think P.I.L.O.T. Probe the Facts, Identify the Problem, Look for a Solution, Operate (Execute) your Plan, then Take Stock of your decision(s). Good luck!

So the next time someone asks you “whats for dinner?” Don’t just say “anywhere” or “anything”, step up to the plate, make a decision. Take charge and Bon Appetite!

Till the next blog post...

Humbly Yours,
Johan Farid Khairuddin @ JFK
AirAsia X – Gold Coast,
AUSTRALIA

Yes, I have been rather busy getting to be qualified onto the new AirAsia’s aircraft inventory – the Airbus A340. As I have said in my first post, “A pilot with 50 hours of flying experience thinks he knows it all; a pilot with 500 hours knows he knows it all and a pilot with 5000 hours knows he will never know it all.”

So you see, I will never know it all! That’s what makes a pilot strives to learn as much as he can before he hangs up his uniform. Learning never ends if the pilot wants to maintain a good safety record to his name. That said, I am happy to have been finally checked out on the 4-engined bird – the Airbus A340 – probably the last plane that I will ever be qualified on amongst the more than a dozen types of planes that I have flown.

Air Asia’s Latest Airbus A340 – 9M-XAC

My roster for the month of July includes 4 flights to London (Stansted) and two to Tianjin, China – another new destination for the A340s. So I am gonna be rather tied up to do the things that I like to do as well as contributing to this Blog and thinking of more interesting articles for AirAsia’s Travel 360 Magazine.

Back to Johan’s post here – I am rather impressed by what he wrote as an airlines student pilot. He has displayed a very in-depth knowledge about aviation and the safe operation of an airline. For instance, he dwelt on the topic about the differences on the Airbus versus Boeing issues, what contributes to air safety and the gist about CRM (Crew Resources Management). These are the topics that I have frequently mentioned about in my website. I wish all the new entrants are of his caliber!

Till the next posting, I wish you all the best…
Captain Lim

As an airline pilot under training, I was fortunate to have been assigned the observer seat on my return back to the Gold Coast from Kuala Lumpur last week with Captain Wong & First Officer Raveen. Big shoutout to Capt. Hans who heads AirAsia X’s Flight Operations for making it happen for me! Capt. Hans, you really gave me that extra drive to continue pursuing one of the most challenging careers in the world. Now too, I believe could be, the most under-rated and taken-for-granted occupations too.

Most of us had once (if not still) have the misconception that pilots are there in the cockpit merely for show. I mean, with this age of technology, theoretically the big tin can fly itself through the skies right??? Well... with the above statement being partially true, I have had countless statements thrown at me, going along the lines of... “Eh! You pilots don’t really do anything right... everything is all on AUTO-PILOT”. Then they would go on to the infamous query... “So, what do you really do in the cockpit ah?”

What doesn’t help my case in defense is that, recent stats show that 80% of all accidents and incidents result from “pilot error” or now, known as “human error”. I am writing this blog to share with you a world without pilots. Then, show you a world with. My objective would be to give you both sides of the coin, for you to draw your own value then, take to the bank.

With the advancement of Airbus Technologies through the years standing more towards taking the side on computers rather than Boeing Technologies views which believe that “the human should have the final say”, a lot has been debated between the Computer vs. Human. Without going too much into detail, just in case you weren’t familiar, Boeing believes that if the pilot flying a 747 Jumbo inverted is the only way required to save the life of all its passengers (say to avoid a collision with another aircraft) then so be it— of course this would possibly mean exceeding the 747’s structural limitations. The Boeing plane might break apart.

Airbus on the other hand believes that, by building in “hard limits” to the airplanes fly-by-wire controls (for example), you could never exceed these structural limitations ie. a specific angle of bank of 67”; therefore, the aircraft should never break apart.

As student pilots, we should work not towards a continuous debate but towards utilizing all our resources for the benefit of safety while maximizing situational awareness.

Let me share with you some points we cover in flight-training, which prepare us pilots, with the right knowledge and experience, to help battle the “human errors” in flying and, when those sophisticated electronics and computer systems—fail.

It is widely accepted and proven, that any incident or accident is caused not by one particular event but a chain of events. In flight training, we the student pilot are equipped with the knowledge to a) identify the events which could lead to an undesirable outcome, b) break the chain of events that could have already begun and/or more importantly c) manage the undesirable outcome successfully should the undesirable outcome—become even more undesirable.

This is known to many veteran aviators as “Threat Error Management”. Google it. Big shout out to Captain Hassan for also sharing me his thoughts on T.E.M. over a Teh-Tarik session last week before I left back to Australia.

The better you are at T.E.M., the more aware you are of your surroundings and/or understand what is going on around you and your airplane. Here is another string for you to Google—Situational Awareness.

Situational Awareness and Threat Error Management (T.E.M.) are essential to safety and are preached religiously all throughout flight training. Let’s face it, as a captain of an aircraft, if on a normal day with a full night’s sleep we know we could do a low visibility approach onto a wet runway in light rain without too much hassle however; if the same approach conditions exist and prior before setting up to land, our landing lights become inoperative, the radio becomes wonky, other aircraft/traffic in the area begin to lose their sense of direction due weather (happens quite often as a student pilot) then... ‘nuff said.

Clearly we were aware of the situation, but if we proceeded with the approach, we would have disregarded all the threats and could eventually be another statistic in aviation tragedy.

Without going too much into the flying aspect just yet, I’d also like to share that, there are just so many details which go into any flight that as a student pilot still in flying school, you have to do it all yourself too!

From obtaining the weather report from the meteorology department to deciphering what it actually means, planning the performance load sheets for your aircraft and all its thousands of calculations, a lot of work is being put into flying that, unless you are a pilot of have read this blog, really wouldn’t know!

Captain Lim and Captain Dom will probably share with you their appreciation to having most of all their “pre-flight” material and reports submitted to them before their international commercial flights. This allows them time to focus on other important issues which would be getting AirAsia passengers to their destinations a) safely, b) on time and c) with more spending more to spare (having saved so much by paying lower ticket prices!).

Regardless, if push comes to shove, these veteran captains should still able to do all the “dirty” work of flight planning, report deciphering etc, all by themselves, as they are thought in flight school. So Captain Dom, Captain Lim, do you still remember how to calculate Pressure and Density Heights? Hehe.

Back to life as a student pilot here in Australia, I must admit, it does have both its pros and challenges. The pros are pretty obvious, you are in a foreign land, you get to meet new people and experience new cultures, you get to really focus on your goals (as being away from home, you somewhat get to leave your troubles and worries behind... somewhat), and yeah, here at the Australian Wings Academy on the Gold Coast, you get to go to the beach ever so often and hunt kangaroos up the hill with a plastic boomerang. Hehe.. just kidding.

The challenges would always be similar to moving to any new environment, experiencing foreign cultures etc but, the biggest challenge for me personally which stuck out like a sore thumb to me was, the food.

But it’s all good, i’ve learnt how to cook and that helps a lot. So I can “masak” my own roti-canai lah when I have to or make some nice bee hoon goreng ker... Anyways, thinking of food is now making me hungry. Am going to cook something up!

Catch me next week when we really get into the flying of things. In the meantime don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.com/jfkjohan and checkout more pics and videos as well on www.johanfaridkhairuddin.com. Facebook is active, link to adding me is there on www.facebook.com/jfkjohan too! Oh, and i’ve even got videos from the take off from KLIA, enroute and approach into the Gold Coast from last week’s Xanadu 2702 flight on file.

Till the next posting, take care and be safe!

Remember, always anticipate.

Sincerely,
JFK

My 3rd posting…

Wow! I am amazed by Johan’s talent! He has broken the news through his article on the much talked-about ads of the mysterious Airbus A340, “The Oakland Raiders” What a scoop! His background in the media and his journalistic inclination has definitely been a good asset to Air Asia as he pursues his career to be a pilot.

JFK was there when the aircraft arrived from Singapore with Captain Michael Lee and First Officer Zulismadi at the controls, see this post here. Yes, I have flown with both of them in the past and they have interesting stories to their name.

Capt Michael Lee and SFO Zulismadi

When I first flew with Captain Michael Lee, I asked him why he chose to become pilot. This was what (if I can remember it correctly) he said, “There are too many square hats (doctors) in my family and I wanted to wear a round hat!” Well, he is definitely a brilliant chap (I believe he has been head-hunted to be here, ha!ha!) and today he is one of the Chief Pilots in AirAsia.

First Officer Zulishmadi was equally passionate to be become a pilot that he worked his way through the AirAsia Flight Operations, learning the basic trick of the trade there before being selected to become a pilot. Ask him anything about the day-to-day running of an airline, he has the answers!

Oh ya, not forgetting my fellow blogger here, Captain Dominic Henry Chin. He was recently appointed to head the Human Factors Department, whose roles, amongst others, would be to ensure the CRM (Crew Resources Management) program continues to help pilots to become safer in their flying operations. He has a degree related to Flight Safety from the University of Newcastle, Australia and no wonder he was talking about being safe and the “Dead Duck” story in his previous posting!

To Johan, I know you have given up the limelight of the entertainment industry to become one of the future airline pilots. I hope you will love the job to the end even though there are some pros and cons to this profession. See my answer to a doctor in “A stressful doctor wishes to become a pilot”.

I am sure many aspiring pilots, after reading your posting, would have a good idea of the road leading to the acquisition of a commercial pilot license. In my time, Human Factors or Human Performance and Limitations (HPL) was not one of the core subjects to be learned. Today, much emphasis is being placed on this and AirAsia has even created a special department under this category. Maybe Captain Dom can elaborate more on this.

I like what you said that if you love what you are doing, you will never work a day in your life! Yes, it is true. If you love what you doing, you don’t feel that you are working! (ha!ha!)

To the other pilot wannabes, I would leave the part on the candidates’ expectation in the selection process to Captain Dom as his is also involved in the recruitment of pilots. Ah, that is provided he can spare the time to do it as most of us are tied up with our work!

Till the next posting…

Captain Lim