Page | 46 Let’s start this section out with some scenario running and wargaming. You’re likely reading this book because you’ve had a seed planted in your head about the riches and glory of going to fly in China. And here’s the deal: you’re probably a regional pilot at a dumpy little (big) regional who has just upgraded to the left seat of a commuter jet (CRJ200—900, EMB145, 170/190) and gotten your first taste of a Captain’s paycheck. It’s stakey, way better than FO pay, but does it taste good and you want MORE. You’ve just accrued 250 to 500 hours jet PIC under your belt (slugging it out with weather along the Atlantic seaboard or some such) which satisfies the minimums to apply for some of these foreign carriers. You decide to focus on China because you’ve been lured by the money. So, you put in: the time is now!
Despite your limited experience, they take you because they have been desperate for pilots for years due to the fact that they’re rapidly building a massive modern air transport system from scratch. They haven’t been able to get the numbers they need/want because A) they have no general aviation to speak of since the PLA (military) owns all the airspace and raising a sector of the population capable of such a complex hobby is counter-productive to the party’s goal of keeping the masses in line and easily ruled; and B) it’s widely known by the professionals in the West how completely messed up their country and system is and don’t want to go. Think about it for a minute: this is why they are offering such ludicrous wages, period.
In the back of your mind this China idea begins to develop into a long term gig because if you could pull 7 years you’re in the realm of a million bucks. Great; but, when you lay boots on ground in country, the reality of it hits you. Suddenly you’re life becomes dodging bullets without any support or knowledge base to speak of. You begin living paycheck to paycheck for that little adrenaline high that keeps you going and you’re now praying you can last a year or two. Let’s say you last 3; when you do finally bang out for whatever reason and make your way back to the real world (the West), you put in your resume with a real carrier. Of course you don’t put in with some dumpy regional; you’ll never be able to go back to one of those because you’ve been a top earner on the damned planet for the history of aviation in the aircraft type you’ve been flying (CRJ 200—900, EMB 145, 170/190).
Now you’re waiting for someone to give you an interview… and you wait and you wait. Suddenly, it dawns on you and you start praying they aren’t interpreting the time that you were in China as a major drag on your knowledge and experience. These recruiters aren’t stupid: they know what’s going on. They know that while you’ve been in China your knowledge has slid, your skills have slid, your judgment has slid. They know how fucked up the system is over there, and that it’s human nature to adjust and adapt to cope. So, when they see your resume on their desk, you can bet this is what they’re thinking and you’re moved to the “alternate” pile if you’re lucky.
It all really boils down to this: if you want to retire as an airline pilot at a major/legacy carrier sitting in the left seat of big iron with a big retirement 401k or the like, taking a few years “off” to be a contract pilot in China is not a good stepping stone. Your experience will not grow commensurate with Western flight deck ideologies, your skills will drift based on idiotic training hammered into you by a bunch of monkeys, and you will ultimately find that the shining reputation you were diligently working on at that dumpy little regional back home has become tarnished. Really, the only way around this is to have permission for a LOA: DON’T FALL INTO THAT URGE TO RESIGN, DUDE. In this case, when you return stateside you can walk right back into a seniority number and scrape off the barnacle-ism China undoubtedly has been growing on your wings. Even still, it’s a risky proposition and I’d hope you wouldn’t dishonestly claim a family emergency or some such to get the LOA… etc. etc.
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Complications
Let’s break of a little piece and get into it. There seems to be this very primal idea in China that can be expressed with the following language:
1. your work as an airline pilot (i.e. the stuff you do on deck) should be super difficult; and 2. if you aren’t task saturated you aren’t earning your money.
I suppose it’s an assumption that comes from being the elite of the country (which is no particular joy for a Westerner BTW). Taking into account the two tiers of their society: the elite and everyone else, you are somehow fending off the billions of (communist ideology infused) rank-and-file who want your job, your life and your identity. It’s really awkward.
The way this manifests itself on deck is as I mentioned above: there is the propensity for an extremely complex workload intense environment. Now, granted there are times when the workload is just going to be high; it’s a fact of life we’re all accustomed with and have been trained to engage properly. Sterile cockpit, SOP, CRM and a plethora of other stuff has all been designed in the West to streamline the actual button-pressing, yoke-wielding duties on deck of your modren jet transport airplane.
In China, SOP is for cramming as many activities into a unit of time possible. CRM is for the captain to be an autocrat (or the FO to test the boundaries if you try and employ real CRM). Sterile cockpit is for the birds, and the plethora of other stuff we Westerners preach is a bunch of whatever that nobody really cares about. As you can imagine, this has a significant impact on your level of risk assumption Here is a perfect example of how this ideology has reared its ugly head [we will be covering this topic again as we go along]:
First, an excerpt from the EMB190 SOP manual: 2.11 Fuel Monitoring
2. Flight crew should ensure that the fuel is balanced between tanks at all times. 2.13 Fuel Balancing
1. The Fuel Balancing Limitation and subsequent EICAS Caution Message are there primarily to increase the life and safeguard the structural integrity of the aircraft fuselage as opposed to being an aircraft controllability issue.
Here we can see an instituted example of making the job more complex than it needs to be. FOs are terrified of having unbalanced tanks, and will initiate balancing if they’re 50kg off. Why? Because the instructors have hammered this policy into them: they don’t know what the shit they’re doing and neither do the company leaders have a clue. Instead of reserving valuable attention for flight critical duties and observations, we’re now focusing on the insignificant and thereby obscuring the important stuff in a morass of half-assed flailing about that has the appearance of being busy and therefore proper. I hope this pisses you off as much as it does me. BE CAREFUL.
Ed. note: You can always tell the bullshit because it’s the stuff that they forget about a month or two later which brings up the questions as to why they called attention to it to begin with and being that it’s short-lived in its implementation and wastes a bunch of energy and morale why they insist on the policy of policing the bullshit to begin with. The problems is that they don’t pay attention to the important stuff either. This Is China (TIC). Love it.
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Now for the story:
CA APU
So there we were at Nanchung, boarded with a full boatload of peeps and gassed up to go. We were delayed of course (but only about 5 minutes past our normal push time at this point), so I decided to go use the head. The second officer vacated the jumpseat and opened the cockpit door. I hopped out and slammed the lav shut for a little quality me time. A few moments later, in the middle of a narcissistic male grooming moment, the lights went out and the music stopped. Emergency light streamed under the crevice of the door. Shit, what now God dammit.
I opened the lav door and the passenger cabin was already bedlam. I entered the flight deck and messages were flipping all over the EICAS screen.
“What happened guys?”
“I don’t know captain, the APU just stopped.” “What do you mean it just stopped?”
“The APU just stopped sir.”
“OK, stop calling me sir. Is there a fault?” The FO was busy clicking the Warning/Caution cancel buttons. “Dude, stop hitting those, we need to see if there is an APU fault message.” After scrolling through several pages of faults I couldn’t find anything salient. Hmmmm. “Guys, what happened?”
“I don’t know captain.”
It was at this moment that I looked at the APU panel on the overhead: the selector knob was OFF. “Did you just select OFF on this panel up here?”
“No captain.”
“You guys didn’t select OFF?” “No.”
“No.”
“THEN WHY IS IT OFF?”
“Oh, captain, I think we bumped it when you got out of your seat.”
=BULLSHIT= There is no way that knob will move if you bump it; it’s designed with a nice deep, solid detent in the ON position.
So, we powered the APU back up and reset all the FMS stuff that had dropped out. I had the FO make a passenger announcement that we had a computer error that we needed to reset and everything was fine. Then (and I hated this part the most) I decided to walk to the back of the airplane to see what the passenger situation really was. I got a number of hard stares (yeah yeah yeah) but lived to tell the tale.
My best guess was that the FO/SO decided to balance the fuel (or stop balancing it) and grabbed the APU selector knob instead of the cross-feed knob (they’re right next to each other in the EMB190 and look identical; besides, the Chinese never verify what switch they throw). See? You make your job unnecessarily complex and you expose yourself to unnecessary chances to screw up. As it was, I never heard anything about it from the home office, but I do chalk it up to a bullet dodged.
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