Friday, April 25, 2008

Duty Student

So summer is finally here. During the briefing at Markham Campus, the tentative schedules for each groups have been set and my group is scheduled to start on May 5th!

Group A is already in Phase 1 which is flying already up to first solo. B group is in their Phase Zero. And some people in group C get stuck with having to be trained as a duty student.

Duty students, as they say, are very important in running the flight program as they are "in charge" of operations.
The main duties of a duty student (haha) are:
  • Lead mass weather briefing at beginning of each shift (which is going to change soon)
  • Answer phone calls!
  • Maintain listening watch of current ATIS and Seneca Ground, for up and down times of Seneca airplanes. These are very important as they say because we always want to keep track of where our planes are. After 5 minutes of ETA/down time and if we still haven't heard from them, we have to try to call/radio em in, and if still no contact we inform the Duty Instructor and certain procedures are done.
  • In charge of calling services like refuelling the airplanes when need be.
  • And logging in trip slips and log numbers of each plane on the computer.

In other words, we are everyone's "secretaries" for that shift.

Right now there are two duty students for each of the two shifts of the day. But since we are going to extend operating hours from 6 to 23, that would mean splitting up the day into possibly 3 shifts.

Most of the students from my group that were duty "trained" is going to do it all by ourselves starting saturday because the senior students still have their exams on the following week. It should be a combination of scary and fun at the same time.
I guess I need to get on the good side of our scheduling flight instructor so that I would be scheduled for less duty shifts in the upcoming months or so.

Can't wait to actually fly! So much reading, starting ahead or getting familiar with the AOMs and SOPs is exciting!

No comments: