Visual Approach - Brussels Belgium

By Bruno Barreiros

Hope to find everyone OK.

It's been more than a month without much news from my side but I had some busy days. Today's report is related with my OPC (operator proficiency check) session for the A320 family. As you might know the company I'm flying with owns an A321.

So, starting from the beginning, my trip once more started very earlier from my home base (Lisbon, the beautiful city). I woke up around 3:00 am, got prepared and headed to the airport around 4:00 am as I had an earlier flight with Lufthansa at 5:00 am. Direct flights that day were absolutely sold out with all companies that fly from Lisbon to Brussels airport, so we had to get a flight from Lisbon Airport (IATA: LIS, ICAO: LPPT) to Munich Airport (IATA: MUC, ICAO: EDDM) and from Munich to Brussels Airport (IATA: BRU, ICAO: EBBR).

We arrived at the hotel at around 14:30, so more than a 10 hour trip from my home to the hotel in Brussels, quite busy. Once at the hotel we had some food and returned to study to be well prepared for the OPC session. At some point I decided for a quick nap as my session was scheduled from 02:00 am till 06:00 am and pick up time was around 00:00.

We had a journey of around 15 minutes by car from the hotel to the sim session. Sim was scheduled at CAE Brussels facilities which were in the other side of the airport from where I was. Below you can find some photos of the CAE facilities along with the simulator I was performing my OPC check.

In regards to the check profile for an OPC, legislation mandates some mandatory maneuvers to be performed. For example, sometimes we got a TCAS event, windshear event, terrain event, engine failures with / without damage, engine fire, RTO (rejected takeoff) with evacuation, single engine precision approach or non-precision one, sometimes a visual approach, go-around's in dual and single engine. Most of the times we also got single or dual failures, like dual hydraulic failure (quite tricky one), some bleeds failure, fuel leaks, etc. Also LVO (low visibility operations) revalidation, we got some CAT IIIA and CATIIIB procedures.

At the end the session went quite good and I was happy with my job and headed up for a well deserved rest at the hotel after a very long day.

The day after we had time to visit Brussels and roam around. I leave you below with some photos of the city and from the flights. Hope you enjoyed reading and see you in next post.

Thank you.