Amazing topic :) It's the first time I can read something like this. I was always curious how it works in the real world. I hope Simon will write more and more... :) Simon - how do you use Igniton Select Switches (L/BOTH/R). I mean the order. There are many different informations in the Internet (even/odd days etc.). Added this topic to my favs :) All best.

We start on R for the first flight of the day, and then alternate for each subsequent flight. ie Leg 1 - R, leg 2 - L, leg 3 - R etc etc. Not really all that scientific is it? :) Obviously we can't use both (a failure would go undetected), so we give each a chance. There are certain MEL restrictions based on which side fails, but we have engineering support in almost all our destinations, so they can do whatever cable routing is required based on which side has failed (I won't go into the details, aka I can't quite remember off the top of my head!), since one side is powered by the stby bus, and is therefore critical.

Hey ARM505, RogueRunner here, welcome!! I was not aware you upgraded from fluffies!! Lekker man!!! I'm doing JS-CT in Dec, will give you a PM on flyafrica. Regarding this aircraft, I know you are not difficult to convince to get something but I know you will love this baby. Just do not know how much 'relaxed' simming you are doing vs blowing sh!t up in your free time. And as always, great insightful info once again!!

RR! Fancy meeting you here. So thats how many forums we have in common then? :) Yeah, I'll probably get this just to see how close they got it. But yeah, mostly blowing stuff up still :)

Thank you Simon,for your input into the Kulula 737. I've not flown in this livery yet for the simple fact that I didn't know a real route to try,though I didgo to the website for a few minutes. I love the remarks on the 'plane, and I do load it up from time to time just to read the remarks,but having it taxi in EIDW,does not do it justice,altough the grey sky does make a nice contrast to the green 737.Thank you again for taking the time to describe your experiences.

Thank you Simon, for your generosity, in providing your real world knowledge of your OP's. Much appreciated. I am sure everybody on this forum will feel the same. All the best

Ok, next lot: We're on the departure, climbing out while hand flying the aircraft. The autothrottle is engaged and doing it's thing, having been through N1 prior to 80KIAS, HOLD mode from 80KIAS, and is now in ARM (ie we could move it should we choose) mode on the FMA, and TOGA and LNAV modes are the the pitch and roll modes respectively. FD is annunciated, since we're hand flying. The A/P could be engaged at any time provided we didn't have stick input, if we felt like it, but as I mentioned I like to hand fly (I mean, it's fun right?) until at least 10K', sometimes higher. There's no rules against that thank goodness! The FMC is following the preprogrammed SID laterally, but not vertically yet (we're still in TOGA mode). For our (slightly odd) noise abatement procedures, we will reduce to climb thrust, and begin to accelerate at 1000'AGL - this is done by the PF calling 'Set climb thrust' (the PM presses the N1 button on the MCP and calls the annunciation as always). The A/T will retard the thrust levers to maintain the computed climb N1 (automatically reduced by the FMC depending on the reducing take off N1 setting), and the PF calls 'Set flaps up speed'. The PM sets the flaps up speed in the IAS window based on the flaps up speed on the speed tape. Often there is a change of ATC frequency to the departure controller at this point, just when you're nice and busy. Flaps are retracted on schedule, as called for by the PF. Once the 'Flaps up, no lights' call is made and we are through 3000'AGL, the PM will call for for VNAV. Now the AFDS will command a pitch to accelerate from flaps up speed to whatever the next FMC limit is (often 250KIAS below 10K' if you've accidentally left that entered), and the speed window on the MCP will blank. The after take off checklist can be done here. We will now comply with the FMC programmed SID in the vertical path too, with it's associated speed and altitude restrictions (often just expressed as, for example, 8000A - ie be above 8000' at that point, as per the Jepp plate) Which is not necessariy the coolest thing to do, since SIDs often involve wandering all over the sky at pathetic speeds, getting in everybodies way. (I'm looking at you, hideous KODES 1A from FACT to FALA, which involves taking off and flying in the opposite direction to our destination!) So our friendly ATC will often just clear us direct to a point somewhere along our route. This is totally dependant on traffic/atc moodiness/phase of the moon. We will obviously be wanting to get clearance to climb to our planned cruise altitude a.s.a.p., since any restriction to level flight costs fuel, and more importantly delays our reading of the newspaper. Generally we only receive one or two restrictions on our way to the top, and normally we'll be cleared higher before even reaching them. Sometimes however, we get stuck behind a sluggish MD (thanks 1Time!), or even worse (shudder) a turboprop, and get a multitude of little steps and/or vectors around the enemy. I mean, fellow airliner. Through transition altitude, which varies from place to place here (8000' for FAJS, 7500' for FACT for example), you can press the handy button on your EFIS mode controller to switch to standard altimeter setting (QNE!), and be on your way through the flight levels. Through 10K', we do a few checks (ie cabin is pressurising), accelerate, and turn off the landing lights assuming we haven't already done that due to being lit up like a TIE fighter in Star Wars by all the morons on the ground with lasers. Yes, we have a lot of morons here, although this may be a world-wide problem. The morons that is....maybe the lasers too. :) FS: Since you're not limited to our company SOP's, you can actually pre-arm VNAV (assuming you've programmed the appropriate pages) in the same way as LNAV can be, which may actually be better, for the same reasons as I've mentioned before. Just wind up your altimeter as required to whatever you've cleared yourself to, or ATC in the sim has given you and off you go. Once you've gotten tired of watching it fly the departure, you can issue yourself a direct clearance to some point along your route. Or even give yourself random headings for fun, before re-engaging LNAV to some point along the route ahead of you. Through 15K', we have cleared our 'safety window' (ie no messing around below this altitude) and can now start doing the paperwork, something that is probably completely absent from the average FS experience. We fill in our take off time (you did remember that right?) and compute our ETA at each waypoint along the route, as well as the predicted fuel remaining at destination. Crossing each point, we'll jot down the actual time at that point, and update the fuel remaining at destination based on actual burn. The PM (who is doing all the radio and paperwork) will then switch from VHF 1 to VHF 2 to speak to our operations office, and pass them the fuel uplift (in litres this time) and take off time. Once he's back on VHF 1, VHF 2 will be set to the emergency, or 'guard' frequency (121.5Mhz) and remain there until we need to listen to our destination ATIS. Meanwhile, the aircraft climbs up into the rarer (and much colder) air, where we can fly efficiently. Through about FL260, we'll transition from flying at a planned KIAS value to a Mach value (it depends on the speeds and the day, it isn't a fixed alt), normally having climber at just short of 300KIAS, to M.76 or so (dependant on cost index) The FMC combined with VNAV means this is all transparent to the pilot. On the climb page of the FMC, the change will be apparent. Approaching any commanded level off, the PM will call '1000' to level off' to alert both crew to an impending level off. If it's an intermediate alt on the way to the programmed cruise alt, VNAV ALT mode will engage when levelling off, but for the level off at planned cruise level, VNAV PATH will engage in the pitch mode, and FMC SPEED in the A/T mode. And from here it's just monitoring, filling in the flight plan, and a series of frequency changes as we're handed from one area controller to the next. If the upper winds are not quite as predicted, or turbulence is bad, we can make a jump up or down to a different level as we see fit (confirm the new alt in three places - FMC, pressurisation panel, and MCP) This pretty much continues until we're about 100nm to top of descent (TOD) assuming ops normal. FS wise, this part can be a bit boring. I mean, it can be a bit boring IRL too, and we have lots more to do, including listen to our fellow aviators getting lost/stuffing it up on frequency (pax brief over VHF 1 anybody? - Which results in insane levels of ripping off, lol!) We read books/the newspaper, play on our laptops/ipads etc. And yeah, monitor the instruments, don't worry! Plus, do any Jepp updates we've been given, general paperwork etc.

Speaking of kulula routes if you want some realistic ones for ZWP - Destinations: Cape Town(FACT)Johannessburg (FAJS)Durban (FALE - yeah, epic, I know) This is the new airfield to replace the old FADN. FALE isn't in FSX by default.George (FAGG, some nice mountains to crash into north of the airport, quite close)Port Elisabeth (FAPE)Lanseria (FALA, where the video in my previous post was taken at the start) So, FAJS-FAGG-FAJS, FAJS-FACT-FAJS, FALA-FACT-FALA, FALA-FALE-FALA, FAJS-FAPE-FAJS are all realistic routes. Default FSX tends to make South Africa look like the Sahara desert though unfortunately, it's really not a great representation of the country, and of course the stock airfields are pretty terrible. I mention the routes only for completeness.

Play on our laptops/ipads etc.

Seriously? In my company we have an outright ban on any Ipods, no using the laptops for games, we can't even read books as apparently we can get too into the story and lose our situational awareness. We're only allowed op related books and the newspaper...

Quick question, since I'm unfamiliar with a couple acronyms you used (namely 'pm'). Aside from flight attendants (stewards, whatever...) exactly how many crew members do you have on a typical flight in that plane (the flying-101)?It's really cool that you're sharing all this inside info. That's been my favorite 737 since the first photo I saw of it.

Quick question, since I'm unfamiliar with a couple acronyms you used (namely 'pm'). Aside from flight attendants (stewards, whatever...) exactly how many crew members do you have on a typical flight in that plane (the flying-101)? It's really cool that you're sharing all this inside info. That's been my favorite 737 since the first photo I saw of it.

PM = Pilot Monitoring, ie. the pilot not doing the actual flying such as the manipulating of the controls / FCU, but instead talking with ATC and doing the paperwork... Two crew for a typical 737 flight, if the flight time for the flight(s) is in excess of 8 hours then a third crew member called the relief pilot is also on board. Having a relief pilot on board also extends the duty day, the duty day with 2 crew on board is 16 hours [usually less in reality due to terms negotiated by the unions]. AFAIK, with the relief crew you can fly legally up to an 18 hour duty day, but again this is less in individual airlines due to our union negotiations...

Oh ok. When you said pm it sounded like a 3rd crewmember, so that's what confused me

Simon thanks so much for this!! :) And it's good to see a fellow South African on the forum aswell :D thanks for all the inside information it made for a great read, especially me who's only 16 and is still dreaming of flying one day :) This was an awesome read, and yeah. Some South African air routes / flight plans for the 737 NGX FMC would be great :) it's a shame I haven't seen the Flying 101 livery yet, we used to live very close to FAJS (my dad being a retired 747-400 captain for SAA) but now we live near FAWK (Waterkloof AFB) which means we see more military jets and our house is pretty much right under the path for airliners departing northbound, not too mention we have a great deck view ;) which is also right in the approach path for Waterkloof AFB's runway 01 (the only runway with an ILS system) which means we get a pretty good view of the presidents 737 approaching fawb and the other frequent traffic. eg. C-130's, Citations, etc

Simon, you have just been honored with a desktop icon shortcut to this thread, and that dont happen lightly on my machine. Thanks for your input and narrative, I would almost rather read this than fly the plane, almost. On second thought, I will just substitute this thread for a "newspsper, book, laptop, IPad" when in cruise! One tiny little note.... I read where you turned off your landing lights but when you were taking the active and turned on the strobes, I didnt see landing lights on mentioned. I assume it was an oversight?

Oh ok. When you said pm it sounded like a 3rd crewmember, so that's what confused me

In the US PM is also referred to as PNF, Pilot not flying.

Simon, BIG thanks for the posts - really enjoyable read! One quick question: normal procedures tell to turn off pitot tubes heating before start (while windows heating is on all the time), and pitots get warmed only after engine start - I keep wondering why is that?? FCOM tells to do this and that, but it doesn't give any rationale WHY should it be done that way.. cheers,Jakub

As far as I know, this is a matter of hazard reduction for the ground crew. They might be injured when touching the hot pitot tubes. So you want them (the tubes, not the ground crew) to be cold whenever the airplane is around people.After landing, you would switch pitot heat off when you have vacated the runway. That way, they have time to cool down during taxi to the gate.When leaving for your next leg, you would only switch pitot heat back on after pushback, when the ground crew is leaving. Regards,

Some answers: When I said 'play on our laptops/ipads', what I meant was 'study work and industry related publications, or study for future checkrides', ok? (looks over shoulder) :) Seriously though, only one crewmember is allowed to be using a laptop at a time in flight, and then only for the actual work at hand (technical doc's or working on landing data) :) PM (pilot monitoring) aka the other guy in the cockpit who isn't actually doing the flying = PNF (pilot not flying), as pointed out already. To add to this, I think that every so often somebody gets bored and decides to do an acronym reshuffle. See, I think they thought that if they called the dude who isn't flying the 'Pilot not flying', then we might get the idea that we could just sit there staring out of the window in dreamland doing nothing. NOW, because they've cunningly renamed it to 'Pilot Monitoring', the mere fact that the terminology has changed means that we'll be all over the pilot flying if he makes a mistake. Put like that, I hope you see the obvious irony. Regarding crewing levels, since the longest day we plan on doing for kulula is just short of 8 hrs flying, and about 11 hrs duty, we carry two pilots and four cabin crew. SA law states that we must have one cabin crewmember for every 50 SEATS, or part thereof, so with 189 seats four is the legal minimum in the cabin. They have a tough job and I'm very thankful to have them. And yes, the pitot tubes being switched off is to avoid crisping the engineers extremities (they get really hot! Er....the tubes...yeah) The FCOM is utterly useless at explaining the why of things, but in Boeings defence that's not its purpose - look to the FCTM (Flight Crew Training Manual) for that. And even then it's sometimes hard to understand precisely why something is being done. Watching arguments amongst senior training Captains on how things should be done is hilarious proof of this. Re the landing lights, completely correct - an oversight on my part (no doubt one of many). Our SOP's dictate that landing lights are switched on after take off clearance is received, and the taxi light is switched off since it's about to get retracted very soon anyway (the runway turnoff lights, along with the taxi light, had already been turned on once clearance to taxi had been received). Can't talk now though, eating pizza (said in Homer Simpson voice)

Simon, Howzit, another fellow "Sefrican" here. THANKS so much for this info, it is awesome!!You said that Boeing is delivering some new 800s to Kulula in the new year, any possibility of the possible routing they would use to get the bird here? Lekker man,Rob