Canada Day

The June schedule was all about the simulator. It was the same machine I’d done my sim check all those months ago, so I already knew what it looked like inside. The training in the sim essentially mirrored what we had just done in the IPT, except now it was costing about $1000 an hour.

The first few sim sessions went okay, but I found it hard at first to integrate the procedures from the IPT into the actual hands-and-feet motion of flying. For a while, it was either “one-or-the-other”; as soon as I started to focus on flying, I’d forget the procedures. Multi-tasking was not in cards yet.

Still, we kept improving. Until the day before the Pilot Proficiency Check (PPC), otherwise known as the Final Exam. Then, it seemed like everything we had learned just fell out the window. It was abysmal. I was surprised the instructor recommended us at all.

PPC day came. JF didn’t seem to nervous, as he’d been through these before. This was my first real type-rating test, and certainly the first in an airline environment. We studied and rehearsed for a couple hours before the test, and then got started.

Turned out, it was the best sim ride I’d done yet. I even got two 4’s on my test report: for my hold and single-engine ILS (which is flown by hand).

I have a Dash-8 type rating. I can’t believe it. I stared at the signature in my book. Not possible, yet there it is, in black and white. This is incredible.

And in case you were wondering, the grand total that Jazz apparently spent training me was about $30,000. Wow.

I spent that night, Canada Day, down at the lakeshore. Fireworks, live music and my best friends  seemed like the perfect way to celebrate my last day in Toronto.