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SINGAPORE : The first batch of seven Singapore Airlines pilots will head to the French city of Toulouse this weekend to start training to fly the world's largest commercial plane - the A380.
The group is also the world's first commercial pilots to fly the superjumbo.
Captain Gerard Peacock has been an SIA captain for the last 25 years.
He will be among the first batch to go to Toulouse for a training stint.
He and the other chosen pilots, who started their training last month, will first have to learn the advanced computer systems in Singapore.
They will have practice procedures on the Flight Training Device, an Airbus innovation which SIA is using for the first time.
After that, it's off to Toulouse for training on the simulator.
An important part of an A380 pilot's training will be at least 40 hours in a flight simulator.
The simulator training is important because the A380 is a new plane and the simulator will take them through abnormal situations and how to deal with them.
Pilots will then do about 12 hours of test flights where they get behind the controls.
Despite all the advances, there are still a lot a pilot will have to get used to, and it will take at least a month of training to get him or her A380-ready.
Said Captain Gerard Rene Peacock, an A380 Project Pilot with Singapore Airlines: "In the past, we had to refer to manuals on board the plane for our computations and despatch requirements. Now, it's using a computer instead of flipping through pages of manuals. So, pilots will have to get used to that.
"It's a little different from the plane I fly now. I am rated on a 747. I realised very quickly I need to be a lot gentler on the controls."
But Toulouse will not be new for Captain Peacock.
Captain Peacock said: "I was one of two project pilots attached to Toulouse, with Airbus. I basically constituted the airline input into the training syllabus so I spent about 12 months there.
"My colleague spent the other 12 months there and we alternated every month. We sat down with Airbus instructors and Airbus design engineers, and looked into airline requirements for training syllabus."
More batches of pilots will go to Toulouse every fortnight. By September, a total of 40 pilots will be trained. - CNA /ls
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