This is our new F/o. He passed (and did good on) his checkride today! As it was his first jet we had to do some in-aircraft training, so this is our new hire on his first flight in the actual aircraft. For the pilot-geek crowd, the Canadian Air Regulations are written in such a way that if you have not acted as a crewmember on a jet before, you have to do 3 takeoffs and landings in the actual airplane before you are signed off, which must include: normal t/o, visual circuit, normal landing, simulated engine failure on takeoff, simulated engine failure at V1, simulated single-engine landing, non-precision approach, circling approach (if applicable), and at least 1 more landing. I mean, this is on top of spending a couple of weeks at Flightsafety, doing dozens of emergency drills and sweating it out in their simulator with the computer graphics and the motion and whatnot.

You may note that I call him a First Officer but he's sitting in the Captain's seat. Yup. At our company we swap flying legs, meaning we swap between "pilot who is moving the control surfaces of the airplane" and "pilot who is navigating and handling the radios". The placement of the controls / switches / instruments in the cockpit is such that it's a lot easier to actually fly the airplane from the left seat, so that's what we do. All our flight crew are trained and qualified to perform Captain or First Officer duties from either seat, so while our new guy will be sitting in the left seat, the person in the right seat will be a qualified Captain.

Now that he's a flight crew member with us he may turn up from time to time in the blog. I asked him what he wanted to be named online and he had no opinion on the matter, so next up - a contest to give our new F/o an internet handle! Polite suggestions only please :)