Sitting and staring down the runway: you’ve just received clearance from tower to takeoff. You turn on your lights. You bring the power up to full throttle. You barrel down the runway, rotate, and climb to cruise. For a moment, on the way to your destination airport, you make a passenger announcement (PA) to your imaginary passengers that you’ll be touching down in 45 minutes and flick off the imaginary seatbelt sign. It’s just you and your flight bag, ForeFlight on your iPad in your Cessna 172, on the way to your first solo cross country destination.
Okay, maybe we are the only ones who did that, but if this sounds like something that may have crossed your mind, then you are like us. You dreamed of the day you’d be able to take a jet full of passengers to amazing vacations, work trips, adventures, and to destination near and far
You are going to spend a lot of time and energy master the skill of flight over the next few years. That is going to come with amazing highs and a lot of lows and setbacks. But we know you will get there. You will reach your goal, and that will be in large part to disciplined study and commitment to training. And just like any good training program, you need resources to round out your knowledge.
Our manual is just such a resource. While this book is not designed to help you fly a plane right now, it is designed to help you frame how you train and think about your future at an airline. This book explains how the airlines are structured, how airline training works, the regulations you need to know as an airline pilot, how airline pilots think about checklist philosophy, how airlines hire, and how airline pilots build and control their schedules.
Simply put, this book teaches you how to manage an airline pilot career, well before landing your first job. It will help you build confidence on the way to becoming a professional pilot and assist you in achieving work-life balance when you get to an airline. It even helps you get ready for day one on the line, when you get to actually make that first PA as an airline pilot.