For months, hardly any aircraft took off because of the corona pandemic. Now they are starting again, in the holiday month of July the number of passengers at German airports doubled compared to the previous month – but the travel boom before the pandemic is still a long way off. Do the pilots lose their routine as a result? And how does the return to the cockpit work? Leila Belaasri, 36, a pilot at a German airline and spokeswoman for the pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), explains how to practice flying when you are not allowed to fly.
SZ: Ms. Belaasri, are you flying again?
Leila Belaasri: Yes, I’m back to everyday life. I’ve been on the road again since spring.
How did it feel to take off after such a long break? Did it tingle in your stomach?
Indeed, it did, it was tingling with joy. I was incredibly grateful. For me, working as a pilot is the fulfillment of a childhood dream. I think many people feel like this: I’ve seen many beaming pilots faces in the past few months.
“The gears mesh, but the grease is still missing”: The pilot and spokeswoman for the Cockpit Association, Leila Belaasri, is back in an Airbus A320.
(Photo: Sarah Kastner Photography / Cockpit Association)
And the time before? When you had to stay home instead of being allowed to blow up?
That was of course a major turning point, a situation that hardly any colleagues were familiar with. You didn’t know when to go on. That demanded a lot of resilience from us, but on the other hand it also made it clear that you live for this profession, that the career choice was the right one because you longed for the cockpit.
Can you unlearn to fly in such a long break? Or do you train continuously in the simulator?
You don’t forget how to fly, but the speed with which you scan instruments, with which you apply certain processes and procedures, is lost a little. Many pilots have therefore practiced what is known as chair flying as a mental preparation.
Chair Flying? Chair is the English word for chair. What do you have to imagine by that?
I visualize the cockpit and the processes at home. I usually do this with my eyes closed, for example, imagine what preparations have to be done before starting. Or I visualize a certain situation, such as a defect in the hydraulic system during a cruise. Then it’s about imagining how I have to proceed, which steps are necessary first and how to work together in a team. That helps a lot, because simulator capacities are limited. So-called refresher events are then trained in the simulator. Flying in an airliner is teamwork, you have to adjust to each other. This is also trained in the simulator lessons. When it comes to requalification, however, it is important that what has been practiced is also applied in reality. Permanently requalifying pilots in expensive simulator hours when there is no flight operation does not make sense.
How do you measure whether you are fit for the cockpit again?
Regardless of the pandemic, regular reviews of their skills for pilots are part of their professional life. Our commercial pilot license is limited to twelve months. Within this period you have to do at least one check flight in the simulator and a scheduled check flight on the plane with passengers to prove your skills. We must also have completed at least three landings within 90 days. In the pandemic, that was usually not possible at all, which is why these tests now often have to be rescheduled. However, through the training and the constant exams we have learned to sharpen our self-perception and to assess the limits of our performance. As part of the requalification, great care is taken to ensure that you not only perform your tasks competently, but that you have self-confidence that you really feel comfortable in your place in the cockpit again.
How is the pandemic affecting education? At the European Flight Academy, the Lufthansa Group’s flight school, operations are currently suspended and no new courses are starting. Will the young pilots be missing at some point?
There is little point in offering new training if ongoing courses cannot be completed. And the fact is that every airline is currently interested in keeping its existing staff in jobs. The aviation industry is volatile, it always has been. There have already been various crises in which training measures have been interrupted or hiring freezes have been issued. But it always went on again after a certain time.
How do you experience the passengers?
We tend to see a very high willingness to adhere to all rules and restrictions. For example, there is only a very low percentage of people who do not wear the mask correctly. But to be fair, it must be said that the same regulations do not apply everywhere in the world; in some countries, for example, cloth masks are allowed. But if you act with a certain amount of patience and willingness to explain, it works perfectly.
At the airports, too, many employees were and are on short-time work. How does that work? Can you feel it when you are out and about?
Three months ago nobody could have predicted that we would have such positive growth in passenger numbers in the summer months. Many people are involved in the processes so that we can get into the air safely, and at one point or another there is still a certain lack due to the short-time work, but the airports are now getting better and better under control. Everyone involved in these processes, including us as pilots, work with a high level of situational awareness: It is important that you approach your work with good preparation, a certain forbearance, prudence and risk awareness. We’re not back to the routine we had in 2019. But that was to be expected after such a long hiatus. The gears are already meshing again, but the grease is still missing to make them run perfectly.