Job
First Officer (i.e a commercial pilot lol)
Company
Currently Ryanair flying the Boeing 737-800 but shortly about to join Aer Lingus flying Airbus A320/321
Day to day
Well I come into work about an hour before the flight is due to depart, sign-in on the computer and print out the Voyage report. This gives me all the important information that I need to start the paper work, what aircraft I'm on, the passenger numbers etc. I then print out the flight plans and the weather and NOTAMs for the departure and destinations. In on day the most I fly is to three different places, and its always Dublin - Destination - Dublin, so max of 6 flights (or sectors as we call them!). I look over the plans and weather and note anything of significance. The captain will arrive after around 20mins and we'll go through what we're going to do, how much fuel to take etc. The cabin crew number one will also introduce themselves at somepoint. Once everythings done and with about 30mins to go before departure we will head out to the aircraft.
We will have decided who is flying the first sector in the crewroom, say that I'm going to fly the first flight. So I will go aboard the aircraft and start setting it up, I'll give the dispatcher our fuel figures and the Captain will go and walk around the aircraft to check it out. The passengers will then start boarding. Captain will come back to the flightdeck after his walk around and I'll start briefing for the flight, I'll go over the route checking that its in the computer correctly, check that all the instruments are working correctly, do an emergency brief (basically go over what we will do if things go wrong) and then brief the departure routing from the airport. With everything done and everyone onboard we'll close the doors and depart. Once in the cruise things are quite relaxed. I'll just be monitoring the aircraft, updating any routings that ATC gives us (Scuzi!) etc. The captain will be handling the radios and doing the paperwork (doing fuel checks, weather etc) As we approach the destination and the point where we will start our descent we'll get the ATIS (which is an automated system that gives us all the pertinent information needed for the arrival (runway in use, wind, weather etc) I'll setup the aircraft for the arrival, program the computer with the arrival routing, tune the correct frequency for the nav aids what we will be using, usually an ILS but sometimes a VOR or NDB. We'll then start the descent into the airport. We'll usually get radar vectors (again from ATC!) to position us onto the ILS approach approx 10-15 miles out from the airport. One thing that we try and do is something called a CDA which stands for Continuous Descent Approach. This basically means that from the cruise until landing we try and make sure that for the whole time the aircraft is descending. This gives the least fuel burn, the least noise. So is best for costs, the enviroment and for people below us! Around 20 miles out we will slow down from our descent speed of around 280 knots to our clean speed of around 200 knots. At 12 miles we will start configurng the aircraft for landing, putting out the first 2 stages of flaps (flaps allow us to fly at a slower speed and so reduce the distance needed to land) At 10 miles we will intercept the localiser and glideslope and then descend using it as guidance. Depending on the weather we will also do what is called a low drag approach. This means keeping the aircraft as clean as possible for as long as possible, to keep the thrust needed (and as such the fuel and noise!) to a minimum. At around 4 miles from the airfield I'll lower the landing gear and select more flaps. We will be full configured with all checks done at 1000ft. We then continue down the ILS until we are visual with the runway. Once visual I will disconnect all of the automatics and fly the aircraft down and land it. Generally speaking this is all pretty simple, however the weather often makes it a little more challenging! Once on the ground we'll taxi onto our parking stand, shutdown the engines and then everyone gets off! Another flight done, time to fly home! The Captain will fly it home, doing exactly the same as I did on the way out, we are both equally qualified to fly the aircraft!
Overall Job
As I said I currently fly for Ryanair, out of Dublin. We have a lot of destinations out of Dublin so I get to fly all over Europe, recent places I've flown to include Milan, Nice, Malaga, Berlin, London, Prague.
Perks
Great Salary
Amazing views (Alps from 40,000ft, Sunset/rises)
Getting to see the Sun everyday no matter what the weather is!
Visit new places
Being paid to play with a toy that goes 500mph
Downsides
Different lifestyle to most people - odd hours, shift work etc
Hard to socialise with friends who aren't in the industry
Not being able to plan that far in advance for holidays etc
At the moment don't fly for the best company....thats changing soon tho!
Working in what has become quite an unstable industry with oil prices etc
It doesn't take much to end your career since, we have quite a strict medical every years, as well as being checked every 6 months. Basically we are checked our entire careers to make sure we meet the grade!
Education?
I have a degree in Computer Science and Management from Edinburgh University. However I have always been planning to fly, for as long as I can remember. I went to uni mainly as a backup. After that I spent just over 2 years doing my pilot training which involved 14 exams with a pass mark of 75%, 150 hours of flight training with 2 flight tests in it. I then had to do a Type rating with Ryanair to learn how to fly the 737, and I will shortly be doing another type rating to learn how to fly the A320 for Aer Lingus.
Do you like your job?
Wouldn't do anything else! Words can't really describe how I feel about it though. I feel so privileged to be one of the lucky few who has made their childhood dream come true, plus I actually get paid to do it! In the other thread about working to live or living to work nearly everyone seems to think that working to live is the only way to do things, however it really is possible to love your job so much that you live to do it! The two things that I love about my job are:
1) Coming to work in pouring rain, then rocketing through the clouds with rain streaming off the windshield, then burst out of the cloud into gloroius sunshine.
2) Flying a perfect CDA (see above!) in windy and set weather (with max crosswind) and then greasing it down the runway. Its an amazing feeling to have just flown a 75 ton aircraft with 190 people onboard and having brought them home/on holiday safely in challenging conditions.
