All airbus pilots please help!!!?

Question

I'm an fanatic about flying and want to become an airline pilot myself. I have 2 questions to ask. They are as follows

1) If you don't mind me asking. How did you become a pilot?

2) In the mcdu when you are told by ATC to either proceed direct to a wpt or join the airway south/ north/ east/ west of a wpt. Correct me if I'm wrong you would go to the DIR page. Does this page however let you select a inbound/ outbound intercept course? If not can you tell me how you would go about this.

Thanks and please try to give as accurate details as possible.

Answer 1

1) I trained at Oxford Aviation Academy from Jan 2006 to Jun 2007 on their integrated course. Not cheap, but definitely one of the best. Now employed as an FO with British Airways on the Airbus.

2) When told to proceed "direct to" you are correct, you go the the DIR page, and then can either scroll through and select the waypoint, or type it into field 1 left (blue brackets). If the point you type is in the flightplan it will automatically select that one and erase (or put abeam points in) any waypoints before the direct to point. If not already in the flightplan it will take you there, but will be "off plan". It will leave the rest of the flightplan in and you will need to manually tidy up.

For joining an airway east/west/north/south of a waypoint (which I've never experienced) you would use HDG mode to "point" the aircraft to the relevant side of the waypoint and push the heading k**b to arm NAV (in blue). As long as you are intercepting the flightplan route NAV will capture (turn green). You have to make sure that the aircraft is intercepting the flightplan route (green line) before the TO waypoint (white on the map and displayed top right.)

Intercepting an inbound/outbound radial is only possible if programmed into the FMGC as a flightplan route. The Airbus does not have a facility to lock onto a VOR radial. This was controversial at the time but Boeing have now adopted the same principal (not available on 777).

Programming this into the FMGC is simple. Use LAM/360/10. If this was placed in after LAM on the flightplan, the aircraft will track to LAM and then the LAM 360radial to 10miles.

If you wanted to intercept the radial AT 10 miles and track it to say 20miles, then you would put in a point LAM/360/10 (which would appear as PBDxx (PBD01 later) in the flightplan, stands for Pilot Built Database) then LAM/360/20 (again appearing as PBDxx). If you then do DIR to PBD01 then aircraft will go to the 10mile point, and afterwards track to the 20mile point on the LAM 360degree radial.

If you are ever having problems with programming your FMGC flightplan, try going into HDG mode before changing the plan. This usually sorts out why the aeroplane won't let you do it. Of course it could be that the simulator version you are using isn't advanced enough to reproduce the real thing.

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

I am not a Pilot but i want to be one when 'm older. I'm 15y old

I started of with a Flight Simulator on PC and i have been going on it somemany times. I'm so Fascinating about flying and i have been Training on the Game.

I know about 50 to 100 things about Planes and all i need to do is just learn to fly a plane that's all.

If you want to be one then do what i do or ask the Airbus Pilots.  Train at Biggin Hill or Gatwick or book a flying lesson.

Hope i helped.

Answer 3

idk