THERE WILL NOT BE ANY PHOTOS OF THE DITCHING AS WE TRAIN IN A RESTRICTED AREA WITHIN THE COLLEGE. AND BECAUSE MY CAMERA IS NOT WATERPROOF. SORRY !
We got wet today ! Completely drenched. Today was our chance to prove we could correctly board the slide/raft from sea. Meaning if you happen to find yourself in the freezing water at sea, and that your raft is in reasonable reach, you can swim up close, grab straps and climb upon the floating device, with no help of course. Hard job all together. Remember, we’ve just had an emergency ditching, in other words, we landed on water. Now this is considered as CATASTROPHIC and would be Captain’s last resort. So far, realistically, there as not been any surviving crew per our Trainer. And the chances of surviving a ditching are close to nothing. But you never know, you might just be able to find you’re way out from the aircraft, after evacuating remaining – living – passengers, open an available exit, did the appropriate procedure to inflate your future home and finally quit the aircraft safely…. HIGHLY UNLIKELY. You’d be setting yourself on this raft, massive dinguy with your remaining survivors. Back to climbing on the device. I didn’t mention that we were completely dressed, top to bottom, adding to the weight you had to pull in order to climb on the raft. NOT EASY ! I climbed in first although I was told to let the ladies go first. But it was close to our lunch break and didn’t want to starve. We had been through stressful and huge pressure 10 minutes prior to ditching because we drilled our anticipated landings so hard. Still making mistakes. And feeling the trainers despare… Anyway here are some photos of the manuals we have : YES WE HAVE TO READ/LEARN THIS IN 3 WEEKS.
We will have assessments on Thursday, so I’ll leave you to it, and I’ll put my nose into that red thing ! Cheers !