Let's Go Anywhere: A Week Full of A(bbre)viations

Another week of SEP has passed with hardly a night of full 6 hours sleep. We are all breathless from lessons, practical assessments, tests and exams. BTW I should also mention that I have 100% marks for all the above.

Now that's giving me false hopes because we have a nerve-wrecking practical exam this Sunday (on A330 doors and evacuation procedures) followed by lessons on A340-300 and A340-500 that same day. Come Monday there will be a big exam on all Airbus types we learned: aircrafts layout, equipment locations, drills, communication systems, fire, and various types of Standard Operating Procedures. Passing mark is 80%, a re-sit will require 85%, third time under 90% and you're going home. Tough. I am definitely aiming for nothing less than 95%.

The past week also see us doing plenty of simulator drills. One worth mentioning was ditching, also known as emergency evacuation when aircraft lands on water. We had Captain announcements from "Attention Crew At Stations" to actually opening doors in armed mode so that the slide raft ejects and inflate. Then we exit a/c, enter raft, detach from craft, some procedures after, we were told to get into the pool. Cold cold water! After much screaming and laughing we did some exercises to prevent Hypothermia then we each take turns to haul our fat asses up the raft. It's hilarious. It wasn't the most glamourous sight at Emirates Training College but we sure had a whale of a time!

A group of us are getting together to study and I think that's good cos it helps keep me awake. Having said, the coming week will be the worst week of training so I was told. By Thursday we would have to be experts in all aircrafts operated by the company including the Boeing, amongst many more subjects. One girl from my abinitio didn't make it thus have to repeat the whole gruelling week with the next class. Same thing is happening to all abinitios, some classes having a few repeats.

All training photos can be found in my Picassa gallery, with captions. Enjoy!