Together with the pilots of the S7 airline, I arrived at Domodedovo Airport, passed a medical examination, a pre-flight briefing, met the flight attendants, received permission to take off, rode a minibus to the plane, inspected it, started the engines and ... did not fly anywhere. However, I photographed the entire process of preparing for the flight ...
The pilots enter the office through a separate entrance in the terminal. Just like everyone else, they go through a full screening:
The airport is divided into 2 zones: clean and dirty. A clear zone is an area within an airport that can only be accessed through security. The rest of the terminal building is called the dirty zone:
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Immediately after the inspection, the entire crew undergoes a medical commission:
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Here the pilots receive a flight task, where all other notes about the flight will be entered. You can pass the medical examination no earlier than 2 hours before departure and no later than one hour. The doctor measures blood pressure and pulse. He looks at the pilot and assesses his condition. If there is suspicion, additional tests may be performed:
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In the next room, senior flight attendants receive first-aid kits. After the flight, they hand them back. The contents of the first-aid kits are constantly updated, and a special doctor ensures that all medicines are with an unexpired expiration date:
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After the medical examination, the pilots go down one floor and enter the briefing room:
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At the end of the hall, in the window, the co-pilot receives the documentation for the aircraft in an impressive suitcase. It is always worn by the assistant commander. A kind of hazing:
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There is a large table in the middle of the room where the pilots prepare for the flight. They study route documents, schemes for entering the destination airport, check the weather report on the route, choose the best route, determine the amount of fuel needed, choose an alternate airfield, etc.:
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Here they also receive weather data for all flight segments, wind speed and direction at altitudes, and possible turbulence. The entire route is divided into sections, and the pilots know in advance the expected strength of turbulence on each of them:
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S7 Airlines has a separate desk with computers in the briefing room, where the Aircraft Commander (PIC) can view Additional information about the flight:
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If the commander has doubts about weather conditions, then he can consult with the meteorologist on duty:
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At the balance controller, the assistant commander fills out and submits a sheet with information about the flight. This includes information such as flight number, direction, tail number, curb weight of the aircraft (AC), total refueling, taxi fuel, takeoff fuel, flight fuel, flight time and number of seats. This information determines where the aircraft's center of mass will be:
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After completing the training, the PIC calls the chief flight attendant and instructs him:
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The philosophy of AIRBUS is that the crew should not be let down. Therefore, every time the PIC and the co-pilot are different. Same with flight attendants. An explanation of this philosophy is in or on the first page with comments on this). They get to know each other already in the rest room before the flight:
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Here the senior flight attendant instructs the crew:
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After completing the preparation, the pilot approaches the controller and informs him that he has decided to fly:
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Pilots go to the plane in a special minibus. By the way, for the airline, each such trip costs 1000 rubles:
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On the territory of the platform, all people must move in green vests. Pilots are no exception.
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There is no ignition key in the aircraft, and it is turned on with a button. An initial check of the system operation is carried out:
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The co-pilot conducts an external inspection of the aircraft. Checks for the absence of the check "Remove Before Flight" on the front landing gear, "because if it is present, the landing gear will not be removed:
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Visually inspect the nose of the aircraft for damage:
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Checks the status of the sensors. In no case should they be iced:
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The technical door must be tightly closed:
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Visually inspects the engine blades:
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If they are icy, then a technician is called and warms them up:
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The filling hatch (black hole in the middle of the wing) must be tightly closed:
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Examines the wing mechanization and static electricity dischargers (sticks sticking out of the wing):
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Denis is an instructor pilot of one of major airlines Russia. Which one is easy to understand by reading his blog. And if up to this point you could be tormented by typical questions from the category “How do planes take off?”, “How do planes land?”, “How do you fly a plane in manual mode?” After reading Denis’s detailed posts, a lot will become clear.
Yuri Yashin
Without a doubt, Yuri is the most smiling of all public pilots. Now he works for S7 Airlines as a co-pilot. Airbus aircraft A-320. Thanks to Yuri's passion for photography, we have the opportunity to see picturesque pictures from the cockpit, as well as photos of aircraft at destination airports on the blog. And thanks to his talent as a storyteller, we regularly learn about flying everyday life.
Marina Lystseva
Marina says: "You don't have to work for an airline to be as close to the planes as possible." The fact is that Marina is an aviation photographer whose telephoto lenses reach everywhere. Her passion for aviation began 15 years ago when she worked as the editorial manager of the Aviation and Cosmonautics Bulletin. And it still continues, now to the delight of blog readers. And yes, a small remark: in the interpretation of the author, the nickname is correctly read "photographer";)
Andrey Ivanov
Andrei admits that in childhood, like all children, he dreamed of becoming a pilot or astronaut. Vision did not allow him to learn to be a pilot civil aviation, but did not deprive the dream of flying. Today Andrei combines several hypostases associated with the sky at once. He is an aeronautical engineer, private pilot, Il-14 restoration project manager and director of AOPA-Russia.
In the early 90s, I had the good fortune to work in Nigeria, flying with a local airline on a Tu-134 leased from our airline. Now, after almost 20 years, this may seem like a reference to compatriots already accustomed to civilization, but then it was a breakthrough into another life and invaluable flight experience, not to mention an order of magnitude higher salary compared to the impoverished Motherland at that time. And so that the picture of "happiness" is complete, I will say that I spent in Nigeria Honeymoon... No, I'm not a fan of the exotic - I just got married, finally, for the second time between African business trips, and there were simply no options to leave my wife for six months. Such is the exclusive honeymoon. Who is in the Seychelles, who is in Paris, but what about us, what is there - to Nigeria ...
By the way, the plane in the photo is really one of those that flew there. We drove almost all of them to Syktyvkar from Interflug after the unification of Germany. Even the coloring is basically the same. Only the company name, flag and registration have changed.
One of the stories from there:
Aircraft drove to Nigeria usually along the route Syktyvkar-Sheremetyevo-Prague-Casablanca-Bamako-Kano. We spent the night in Casablanca with pleasure, and in the morning there was a 4-hour, at the maximum range, throw through the desert. And so one of the crews, consisting of a flight chief, a young co-pilot, flying abroad for the first time, a navigator who rarely flies abroad and, thank God, a veteran of these flights - a mechanic, started for adventure. They flew through Europe like clockwork. Upon arrival in Casablanca, the navigator told the flight mechanic how much kerosene should be refueled for the flight to Bamako. And this figure turned out to be one and a half times less than the usual refueling. The flight mechanic was surprised, but did not delve into the intricacies of the calculation and filled, just in case, as usual, full tanks. Here it is necessary to explain: on the Tu-134, the fuel system and its indication were invented, probably, in order to make life as difficult as possible for the crew. The pilots delved into its subtleties, usually when passing tests, and then safely forgot until the next time. Only mechanics knew the real gas station. They also set the amount of filled fuel before the flight on the "clock" - a flow meter with a clock-like dial, which, as fuel was consumed, rewinded the readings back. His indication was a no brainer. Another device, the actual fuel gauge, showed the actual fuel in the tanks, but its readings were available only to the most gifted pilots.
So, our flight engineer put the fuel calculated by the navigator on the “watch”, and they took off into the unknown. Further from the words of the co-pilot: When we were already in the middle of the desert, the navigator suddenly lit up (before that he had not been noticed smoking on board) ... not enough ... It turns out that he forgot when calculating that he was dealing with nautical miles, not kilometers (all his previous international experience was in flights to Bulgaria and, accordingly, calculations in kilometers). A mile is roughly twice as long as a kilometer. Accordingly, the fuel. When recalculating, it turned out that it would have to end, at best, during the landing approach. Silent scene. The curtain... Everyone, along with cold sweat, has about the same thought: “Yo. your mother!!!" And, before my eyes, a picture of the wreckage of the Tu-134 among the dunes. The co-pilot has an additional thought: “Why are you killing? For the first time abroad, and I haven’t had time to live yet ... ”. Out of hopelessness, the commander still tugged at the fuel gauge selector, in which he still did not understand anything, and asked for a cigarette (he had never smoked before) ... measures to prevent such incidents, hanging in all navigators of the country. And journalists will not even write that the crew took the plane away from residential buildings due to the complete absence of them at the alleged crash site.
The flight mechanic gave them another ten minutes to enjoy the sensations of the inevitable end and with the words “Your fuel is over, now we are flying on mine” set the “clock” to the actual amount in the tanks ...
In general, mechanics and flight engineers are sometimes peculiar people. Pilots often underestimate them. Well, they sometimes respond with subtle reciprocity. Another example from the life of my current airline:
The plane landed at the wrong airfield... Rarely, but it happens. I don't remember the reason (they usually confuse closely spaced airfields with similar runway configurations), but that's not the point. During the investigation, juicy circumstances were revealed: the commander, a real ass hole, was very rude to the flight engineer during the flight and, as a result, ordered him to shut up and speak only if he himself asked him. The Arabs, alas, are in the order of things. Okay, as you say, but he, of course, harbored anger. The case for revenge turned up a couple of hours later. After landing, the commander, when, to his horror, realized that they had landed in the wrong place, pulled himself together and told the flight engineer to contact the company's control center and report this unpleasant incident. The trouble is, for a moment, in writing off as a punishment from flight work for several years. “And I already said,” the flight engineer said, “when we were still flying on the landing straight ...”
