Before returning to service, the pilot must have made at least three takeoffs and three landings in 90 days at the controls of an aircraft or an approved simulator. This experience, set by the international rules and adopted in the european criteria, and French, takes all its importance at a time when the majority of airline pilots remained on the ground in recent weeks.
A logistics heavy and complex programming must be implemented. John Fernandez, deputy director general in charge of the air operations of Air France, explains how the national company déconfine and is going to make it again operational 2 000 drivers, which is almost half of its workforce, as early as the month of June.
new Situation
The program minimum – 4 % of flights will be gradually muscled, with 75 aircraft operational in June. "The flights of Air France have never been completely interrupted and there were 40 daily newspapers as compared with almost 1,000 in normal times. This residual activity was allowed to fly most of the 470 instructors who can train then the drivers. Air France, in order to optimize the safety of the flights, has strengthened the international rule by establishing a session from 2: 30 p.m. refresher simulator in addition to the four sessions annual classics ", explains the boss of the drivers. And these are not three take-offs and landings that are required, but five, two of which on the real aircraft.
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Each year, a driver must participate in three sessions of simulator three and a half hours, during which, among other things, the knowledge of the aircraft on which it is qualified shall be reviewed by a third party. The fourth session is dedicated to a control. To add a session of two hours and a half, the college's instructors could rely on the (low) experience interruptions of operations.
additional meetings are planned on the simulator. © DR
If the first Gulf war, September 11th, the 2008 financial crisis, the eruption of the Eyjafjöll volcano in 2010 led to reductions in point or local traffic, they have never had the magnitude of the Covid-19, where the quasi-totality of the flight remained on the ground for more than three months.
The complex case of long-haul
in individual situations, such as a long sickness or maternity leave, and allow you to understand what a pilot can forget in case of inactivity, and force majeure. From there, generalize to the thousands of individuals, there is no precedent. In march, all training had been suspended. The activity of the twenty simulators of the company at Roissy-CDG and Orly was able to resume in April.
Read also EXCLUSIVE. The plan déconfinement Aéroports de Paris
If the criteria for recent experience are easy enough to fill in the activity medium-haul (domestic flights, european and mediterranean A320) where the four stages can be tackled in half a day, the challenge is more complex in the long-haul (A330, A350, B787, B777). On a long flight-crew reinforced as Paris-Los Angeles or Paris-hong Kong, one of the three pilots will take the controls during landings and take-offs of this go back and forth. Proper planning will then compensate for these constraints of the network. To respect the principles of fairness between the drivers, groups, sliding three-month have been trained to allow the largest number of seafarers to meet the regulatory requirements of ability and those of the company. It should be noted that the stops calendar of validity of licences and medical examinations were postponed, in general, of four months by the authority for the cause of Covid-19.
