My first Supy.

I survived! My first supy was to BOM and according to the rest of the crew, it was better than usual. I have to agree I was expecting it to be worse but I was pleasantly surprised. The departure was early morning and the return was just before midday. Leading upto the flight I was so nervous, trying to revise but still drawing blanks on everything...then there was this dream, you know the kind where your so paranoid about something that you see it in your dreams as a worst case scenario. In this one I confused the time of my flight, showed up without the proper uniform, didn't know what to do or where to go, couldn't remember the simplest of procedures, in short it was chaos.

The good news is that nothing of the sort happened. The crew was very nice and happy to answer any questions I had, show me how things worked and explain what to do etc. For me it was great finally just getting in there and carrying out some of the services and helping with others. It was a full flight back so they were grateful for the extra help. It was fun being onboard behind the scenes that i'd wondered so much about when I was a passenger. The highlight of my flight was being allowed to sit in the cockpit for the landing back at base. The view, the way things worked, such a different perspective on the whole art of flying, it was such a treat ending my flight with that.

One thing that will stick with me forever is that at one stage before we were taking off from BOM airport, one of the CC told me to look out the window to see where people were living. At first glance all I could see was the tarmac and grass so I thought it was some joke but then I bent down to take a proper look.... slums. My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe my eyes, I'm not so ignorant as to find it that big of a shock but seeing it for real, not on tv or in some other form but with your own eyes....and so close to the airport, the contrast of the developed airport with squalor. As I looked I noticed two kids playing between the pieces of sheet metal that was their home...I can honestly say I felt really ashamed of myself for those times when I took things for granted and for those times when I was grateful, for not being moreso.

Ahem, the mood of the post slightly changed there...

I have another supy tomorrow and then a few flights before my London layover. I have never been there before so I cant wait! The best thing is that 8 of the crew are from my training batch which is really rare but were are going to have a blast. I have to say though when our trainers found out their initial thought was OMG I wouldn't want to be on that flight - they were kidding of course. I'll definitely be posting about that trip. But speaking of training.....

For the past 7 wks training was at times intense but generally fun. We had great trainers and I was lucky enough to be in a great batch and where we all got along very well. I made some great friends and I hope to have the opportunity to fly with all of them sometime (guys, thankyou so much for being a fantastic group and thankyou for all the laughs esp. Ollie and Mz Luz). I'm still trying to get a photo of all of us from our 1st day to post here, when I do I'll post an edit.

For now I'm off to get some rest before my flight tomorrow.

From the sandy pit, VP.