First day of IOE!

Leg one!

Today was pretty darned exciting.

I flew a 767-300ER from ATL to JFK with a check airman.

First of all, we were in the “E” concourse, which I’m not really all that familiar with, PLUS it’s ATL, which I’m not really that familiar with and flying to JFK which neither my captain and especially myself really aren’t that familiar with!

There are A LOT of flight attendants onboard, I was really surprised, it’s like they were everywhere and the A-line noticed that I looked a little bewildered.

She asks, “You look a little nervous!”

“Yeah! It’s uhh, my first leg of IOE and…”

“Bah!” she said, “You’ll do fine, go turn the air on, it’s hot!”

First call to ground: “Delta 192, uhh HEAVY?!? 6E…taxi with golf!”

If you were monitoring ground control, you’d have laughed your ass off because the captain was laughing in the background when I said, “HEAVY?!?”

It was a full boat to JFK, but since we weren’t carrying 12 hours of fuel, the plane was an absolute rocket ship and the captain pre-warned me that it’s going to climb like a bat out of hell…

…which it did…

We were 250 knots and 10,000 feet before I got a good grasp on what was going on.

To get a feel for the aircraft, I flew it up to cruise altitude — generally, when you’re in training, your first inclination is to turn on the autopilot and wait for the abnormal situations and system failures, but I had to remember that I’m no longer in “SimWorld”.

The IOE captain’s a very gregarious and patient guy and I especially appreciated his “we’ll talk about the crap we have to talk about during the IOE during the transcon leg tomorrow, today, just enjoy the aircraft”.

The ER, albeit not a 747-400, is BIG. The cockpit it big, the extra space plentiful and there are fold out tables, clipboards, etc to make setting up the ‘nest’ a lot easier. Hell, I was surprised of how much extra space is being the “P-61 Panel” which is a quasi ‘flight engineer panel’ behind my seat.

The FMS was a little different than the simulator, what they call a “Plugin Play” which is a lot like the standard Pegasus, but doesn’t have the GPS and there are a lot of screens and selections I decided were “DFW” so I asked lots of questions before I executed anything.

“DFW”, by the way, is pilot talk for “Don’t ‘Mess’ With”

All is find and dandy on the descent. The 767 has a very logical, low-stress autopilot and the “gotta hit 15 buttons and mess with the throttles, even though the autothrottles are on” doesn’t exist. It’s great!

The captain thought I’d get the VOR DME 22L so I briefed the approach, threw it in the box (selected the approach in the FMS) and sat back all fat and happy on the descent.

And yes, I’m feeling confident, but I’m also scared crapless because I had built such a gentlemanly familiarity with the MD-88/90 that I didn’t quite have with the 767.

Then the next thing you know: “Delta 192 heavy, turn left 360, join t he 043 radial into Canarsie, cleared VOR 13L approach”

Aroo?!

Holy cow! Get it in the box! Rebrief the approach, set up mentally for a landing. Oh, gotta hit the VNAV! 13L… Hmm.

“Follow the rabbits…Follow the rabbits” I kept thinking.

Piece of cake.. Walk in the park… All that jazz.

Final flaps, final approach speed set, it’s just a cessna at that point.

…Forget about the mad dog ‘English’ you’ve got to do…

…Smooth control inputs…

“50…”

“40…”

“30…”

“20…”

…start easing the throttles…err THRUST LEVERS back, but not all the way…

“10…”

*bump*

Speedbrakes deploy, autobrakes kick on and we’re going to roll onto intersection ZA.

“Delta 192, turn right onto 22R taxi forward, hold short of Golf, contact Jet Blue ramp”

“Jet Blue ramp? What the heck? Did we get a gate change?

I switch over on COM2… well, it’s really COM-R because there are three VHF comm radios.

“Jet Blue ramp, Delta 192, we were told to contact you”

(and this is highly paraphrased): “We in the ramp at Jet Blue would like to welcome you to New York, nice job Doug Taylor and good luck with training!”

The captain asked, “You’re that guy from that website? Oh, this is going to be good:”

“Yeah Jet Blue, he ain’t done yet!”

I can’t remember the rest, but I’d like to thank the guys in the ramp tower for the warm welcome to JFK!

We continued taxiing into the gate and it certainly felt strange with how high I was sitting and trying to think about wingtip clearances taxiing into a narrow alleyway, but it all worked out!

This is going to be absolutely sweet.

I love the jet, love the operation and it feels great being on the serving end instead of the receiving end of wake turbulence!

More tomorrow!

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