Lufthansa Welcome...

So yesterday marked the start of the weekend and our first rest day since arriving in Arizona. CTC provided us with a rental car for 1 week while we get our own car organised, similar to the situation in NZ. Obviously this is a massive truck as all cars are in America! This allowed us to get mobile, go to Walmart and a shopping mall and get a feeling for the place. One thing you cannot do without here is a car as everything is so spread out. Goodyear itself has a good selection of shops and restaurants but they are all laid out in a "retail park" kind of setting with miles between them. Even to get off the airfield would be around a 20 minute walk...  Not plausible in 100 degree heat as we had yesterday, and this is the colder season!

We have planned to buy a car from some of the Lufthansa guys that are leaving Phoenix in the next couple of weeks. This is pretty easy to do and better than buying a car from a complete stranger! You can pick up a pretty decent car out here for around $5000 with seven seats. Plus insurance which is pretty pricey for anyone under 25. I think the two guys from Lufthansa paid $1200 for 6 months between them, they are 22. The best way is to get an AZ drivers licence which brings the price down but I am not yet sure what this involves. When I do will post it.

There are about 55 Lufthansa cadets out here currently doing PPL practical training and last night they invited us for a BBQ to "welcome" us to the site. To be honest we expected the worst, some kind of initiation ceremony... but this didn't happen. They were a great bunch of guys, good to get to know them a bit better and they made us feel really welcome. A massive bucket of beer was brought to our table and amazing BBQ food provided so thanks to those guys. We will try to replicate their hospitality for the next CTC course to join us.

On the whole out here the atmosphere is so friendly. I cannot compare to NZ but one of the instructors says it is a very different atmosphere to clearways. Although there is us, German air force and Lufthansa cadets we all have a lot in common and seem to get on pretty well. Feels like home already. All the staff at the center are great and always want to have a chat. The food in the cafe is good also and the facility is just stunning, so much more than we expected out here.

On another note its quite a busy airfield out here and last night we had a visit from an MD-11 (i think) landing for its final flight, there is a company based at the airfield that breaks large jets for parts so we have a lot of them around the place. Numerous A320, 747's and 737's as well as many other aircraft. When I can get on the field will post some photos of the graveyard but this can be seen pretty clearly from Google earth or something like that.

(CTC is based in the top right of this photo, where you see the pools, accommodation is opposite that. )

U... S... A...!!

The journey to Phoenix was much better than that of our colleagues who made their way to NZ! One of the first perks was a direct flight from Heathrow with none other than British Airways! The other guys have endured the 30 hour journey to NZ, our journey door to door was around 16 hrs, with 10.45hrs in the air direct to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. We had a slight delay due to a dust storm which are quite frequent out here.

We were treated extremely well by the cabin crew and pilots at British Airways when they found out who we were and the flight was comfortable. We were visited by both the Captain and the Line Training Captain who were aboard the flight and who spent some time talking to us about their experiences, which was amazing. This all lead to a trip to the flight deck of the 747-400 that we flew on at the end of the trip, so thanks to those guys! Cheesy snap below... (after a long flight bear in mind!)

After that the fun ended! The headaches started to set in from our over indulgence at Heathrow and early in the flight. Also our trip to the flight deck and chatting with the pilots had put us right at the back of a queue of 747 passengers to go through customs, where we were immediately met by a man with a gun... Welcome to America! Customs is not the fastest process with only three desks open and everyone giving finger prints and retina scans! 2 hours later we were through!

We were met by the team from CTC and driven quickly to our very comfortable accommodation (photos below.) The guys at CTC had somewhat underestimated our stamina however! We were presented with an application form and internet access and told to report with the form filled in at 7.30am local time to travel for our FAA medical examinations at 10.00am. The time when we were told this was 12am! 

Nevertheless, due to the Jet Lag, we found ourselves wide awake at 5am, (12pm UK time) so this did not turn out to be a challenge at all. We were stuck straight in with a full day of ground school, mostly admin, organisation and issuing of kit, finishing the day with a chat from the Goodyear Police Department. Which was hilarious, they are nothing like boring British police. 

The organisation out here has been really good in Phoenix considering we are the first course out here for CTC. There is a car which has been arranged for our use for the first couple of weeks, we have fully catered accommodation, the food is good, all be it american! so everything comes with cheese! Cable TV is available in the living spaces, and the briefing rooms and crew room are comfortable and well equipped. So all in all things are looking great, and excited to get stuck into some more of the flight safety briefings tomorrow. 

The DA-40's flew for the first time today after assembly so we are expecting to start flying on schedule next Friday as there are no differences exams for the US! Happy days.!

Ground School...

Hi Again,

We have arrived in Phoenix, it is hot and very busy! But more on that in the next post, I will wait until a little
more has happened and we are all in a better mood!

Thought a little bit of information about what to expect at ground school might be helpful to some people so here we go.

In short ground school is long, hard and a struggle for motivation! It is a really good thing that everyone will tell you this, because what I actually found was it really was not so bad. The work was manageable, if you spend all the class time concentrating and making notes, and roughly four or five hours in the evening consolidating what you have learned in the day, making more notes and completing the CBT (which may be annoying at times but is really useful.)

We are very lucky at CTC that we have loads of resources and the time to literally live and breath the subjects, if you work hard a good average is perfectly achievable. I did not consider myself to be very intellectual when I started this course, I had no Maths or Physics A levels and a degree in Management!But with hard work I have managed to leave ground school with a 93% ATPL average, all first time passes, which is perfectly acceptable to me!

Module 1 exams in my experience were not too bad. The question banks that are available could be relied upon pretty well to give a accurate idea of what to expect in the CAA Exams, also the CTC mocks were very accurate in my experience for module 1. Most of the questions are knowledge based and as long as you have the knowledge, no problem! The only problem with Mod 1 for me is that it lured me into a false sense of security for module 2, I tho

Module 2 was a whole different kettle of fish. Module 2 is not really knowledge based at all, more skill based. You need to know the processes and procedures to answer the questions inside out, and be 100% competent at carrying out these procedures. There are very few "question and answer" questions. Most are calculations or processes that need to be followed to find the answer. Making this more challenging, all of the answers are plausible and you will be able to get all of them if you change the process very slightly. So, best advice is find the way that works for you, stick to it and trust it. The CTC mocks for module 2 were a lot easier than the real CAA Exams, and the question banks were not really very reliable at all. Another thing I found useful is to be really careful when extracting data from graphs,  tiny variation on the initil graph or table, by the time that you get to the final answer there will be a huge variation. If I had to do Mod 2 again I would spend a lot more revision time putting myself through real timed exams, the time limits in mod 2 are very tight, especially for G Nav, Perf, Mass & Balance and Flight Planning.

The Long Road Ahead!

Hi All,

I am Luke and am about 6 months into my training with CTC Aviation on the CTC Wings course. I have just recently received my 14 ATPL Exam passes and am about to head to Phoenix, Arizona to complete my basic flight training up to the level of CPL. I am one of the lucky 6 that has been chosen to complete the training at the brand new CTC Airline Training Center Arizona. So, I thought I would write a little bit about it for those who are thinking of following in our footsteps!

We fly to Phoenix tomorrow, 26th March 2014 with British Airways so for now, we don't know too much about what is going on! We know that the centre has had 7 million pounds of investment, and that we should expect a new fleet of Garmin 1000 equipped DA-40 and DA-42 aircraft. Thankfully with air conditioning due to the dessert climate! Also TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) due to the busy nature of the airspace in the US. But that is all for now! When we know more I will update.

The visa application process for the US is slightly more complex than the process for New Zealand in out experience because you must file all the documentation yourself, normally CTC take care of this for you during a busy exam period, also you must find time to visit the American embassy in London for an interview and to produce every document that proves your existence on the earth! Furthermore you must apply to the Transport Security Administration for permission to train in the US with includes another extremely long form, some fingerprints and of course, a fee payment!

Will post again soon from Arizona!