Green on Green on Green
*this blog was started several weeks ago. I've been a blogging slacker as of lately.
Not a whole lot has been happening on my end over the past few weeks. Recent cutbacks in our total block hours has left us with a plethora of reserve captains, therefore flying has been relativly slow around here. As of today, I have a whopping 14 hours for the month and havent flown since the 3rd. So while sitting some awesome ready reserve, I happened to run into an FO that I flew with a few weeks ago. It remeided me of our trip which was an eye opening expirence for me.
Green on green is a term used when you have 2 pilots that are new to an aircraft and/or seat. 100 hours in the aircraft is the benchmark that is used to determine the green status. On this particular trip, I was green as a Captain and this was the very first trip off of O.E for the First Officer and the Flight attendant. So on this trip, we were a green on green on green crew.
I'll start off by saying that the trip went very smooth with no problems what so ever. For those that read this blog that are passengers, green on green is not a bad thing. It usually just means more work for the captain because we have to pay extra special attention to what the F.O is doing as well as teaching and helping in addition to normal captain duties. This was a stark contrast from my first trip that had me paired up with an expierenced F.O that had more hours in the CRJ than I did.
The Green trip had us flying from MEM to CLE. The autopilot was deferred, so that added more to our workload, plus CLE has a lot of construction going on, which means there are a lot of notams for closed taxiways, runways and non standard markings. Moving the plane on the ground in CLE takes extra special care because of the construction. I flew the first leg and used my F.O as the autopilot once we were in cruise. He was happy to be flying and did a great job. The flight was uneventful right up until we started preparing for the approach. I took the controls and had the F.O set the plane up for our arrival. The weather was clear and a million so we were planning on doing a visual approach backed up by the ILS. I stated I wanted to set up for 6L because the atis was stating that was the landing runway. The F.O proceded to get the FMS, radios and V-speeds set up. This is where he made a few simple mistakes that were caught with a little oversight. No big deal, just a few clicks of the speed setting knob and everything was right with the world. Our approach and landing were normal, but once we got on the ground, things started to unravel a little bit. After landing, the F.O has a lot of work to do. They need to complete their after landing flow which includes raising the flaps, turning off the landing lights and strobes, starting the APU, calling ground to get taxi instructions and calling ops. For a new F.O, doing all this, plus getting complicated taxi instructions at an airport they have never been to, can be a little overwhelming. That turned out to be the case here. After several bungled attempts to read back our taxi clearance, I had to step in and do it for him. He was close, but you need to be very precise especially when reading back hold short clearances. I made sure to taxi slow so that he could keep up with everything that was going on and could keep his situational awareness. We made it over to the gate with no problems and proceded to shut down the plane and head to the hotel.
The next day was just about the reverse of the previous flight in. On our taxi out, I needed to get on the radios again to read back some of our taxi instructions. He proceded to fly the plane very well and made a nice approach and landing back in MEM. I definatly got to learn a lot on that trip. It opened my eyes to the fact that not all F.O's are created equally. Some are going to need a little more oversight than others. But thats my job now. To oversee that everything related to my aircraft works as safely and efficiently as possible.
Not a whole lot has been happening on my end over the past few weeks. Recent cutbacks in our total block hours has left us with a plethora of reserve captains, therefore flying has been relativly slow around here. As of today, I have a whopping 14 hours for the month and havent flown since the 3rd. So while sitting some awesome ready reserve, I happened to run into an FO that I flew with a few weeks ago. It remeided me of our trip which was an eye opening expirence for me.
Green on green is a term used when you have 2 pilots that are new to an aircraft and/or seat. 100 hours in the aircraft is the benchmark that is used to determine the green status. On this particular trip, I was green as a Captain and this was the very first trip off of O.E for the First Officer and the Flight attendant. So on this trip, we were a green on green on green crew.
I'll start off by saying that the trip went very smooth with no problems what so ever. For those that read this blog that are passengers, green on green is not a bad thing. It usually just means more work for the captain because we have to pay extra special attention to what the F.O is doing as well as teaching and helping in addition to normal captain duties. This was a stark contrast from my first trip that had me paired up with an expierenced F.O that had more hours in the CRJ than I did.
The Green trip had us flying from MEM to CLE. The autopilot was deferred, so that added more to our workload, plus CLE has a lot of construction going on, which means there are a lot of notams for closed taxiways, runways and non standard markings. Moving the plane on the ground in CLE takes extra special care because of the construction. I flew the first leg and used my F.O as the autopilot once we were in cruise. He was happy to be flying and did a great job. The flight was uneventful right up until we started preparing for the approach. I took the controls and had the F.O set the plane up for our arrival. The weather was clear and a million so we were planning on doing a visual approach backed up by the ILS. I stated I wanted to set up for 6L because the atis was stating that was the landing runway. The F.O proceded to get the FMS, radios and V-speeds set up. This is where he made a few simple mistakes that were caught with a little oversight. No big deal, just a few clicks of the speed setting knob and everything was right with the world. Our approach and landing were normal, but once we got on the ground, things started to unravel a little bit. After landing, the F.O has a lot of work to do. They need to complete their after landing flow which includes raising the flaps, turning off the landing lights and strobes, starting the APU, calling ground to get taxi instructions and calling ops. For a new F.O, doing all this, plus getting complicated taxi instructions at an airport they have never been to, can be a little overwhelming. That turned out to be the case here. After several bungled attempts to read back our taxi clearance, I had to step in and do it for him. He was close, but you need to be very precise especially when reading back hold short clearances. I made sure to taxi slow so that he could keep up with everything that was going on and could keep his situational awareness. We made it over to the gate with no problems and proceded to shut down the plane and head to the hotel.
The next day was just about the reverse of the previous flight in. On our taxi out, I needed to get on the radios again to read back some of our taxi instructions. He proceded to fly the plane very well and made a nice approach and landing back in MEM. I definatly got to learn a lot on that trip. It opened my eyes to the fact that not all F.O's are created equally. Some are going to need a little more oversight than others. But thats my job now. To oversee that everything related to my aircraft works as safely and efficiently as possible.
posted by Windsor at 6:20 PM
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