First week at Kungsair Flight Training in Norrköping

Simon is now living in Norrköping to complete the last part of his flight training to become an airline pilot. He has now been there for one week and gathered some photos from the flight school and the ordinary traffic at the airport!  

If you have been following us here at osdphoto then you know that I'm studying to become an airline pilot and that I have been living in Stockholm for the past year completing the theoretical exams for a commercial pilot license. Now when all the exams are done it's time for the last part of the flight training so I have moved to Norrköping to attend at Kungsair Flight Training. I'm going to stay here for twelve weeks to complete a multi engine rating, instrument rating and my commercial pilot license. 


This is the plane that I will fly during my multi engine training. It's a Beech D95A Travel Air built in 1966


Now this is a fun machine, this is the plane that I'm doing my instrument rating and comercial pilot training in. It's a Slingsby-T67M200 built in 1987! It's the only flying plane in Sweden of this model. It has an empty weight of just over 700 kilos and an engine with 200bhp, it's like flying a sports car!


The instrument panel of the Travel Air, it's old, no autopilot and no glass cockpit but it's doing it's job! I think it's great to learn the old way first and not just rely on computer systems!

Kungsair flight training is a private flight school located at Kungsängen airport outside of Norrköping, Sweden.  Kungsair started as a business charter company but was split up and made a flight school for commercial pilot training back in 1988 with Elving Persson as owner and head of training. In 1998 Sven-Erik Simonsson joined the company as a flight instructor and took over as head of training in 2003. Sven-Erik is now running the school himself as head of training and the single flight instructor of the school. Kungsair is operating four aircrafts, two single engine and two twin engined Beech aircrafts.  The students at the school are living in accommodations at the airport, on airside actually! This is great for me as an aviation photographer, it couldn't be better! I can leave my room and walk five meters and be on the apron where I can stand and snap some shots of the traffic! I'm going to continue to post photos during my stay down here, maybe not every week but I will keep everybody up to date with my progress at the flight school and the must interesting traffic!  


This Beech 300 is operated by the local private charter company Waltair. Waltair has been flying private, businesses charter, cargo and ambulance flights since 1994 with it's base here in Norrköping! Now this photo is taken just outside my front porch!


This Cessna-560XL is also operated by Waltair. This machine is for those who require higher speed and longer range. SE-LIR was built in 2008 and is owned by Fly Invest Sweden AB.

During my first week I have flown ten training flights, five instrument training flights and five flights with basic flight training but with higher precision than on my private pilot license. The first weeks we are only flying a single engine airplane, actually we have to fly 50 hours in the single engine before we step up to the twin engine witch we will fly for the last 30 hours. A big difference here from the flight school where I got my private pilot license is the way we work all the procedures. We are working in flows like in big airliner and we only have checklists for the "killer items" the most important things like the before landing checks. When you are flying a Cessna 172 or say a Piper PA28 you are doing every step according to checklists and you even have a bit different flying technics, now everything is about precision and working in flows to make if fast but safe. So this first week has been a lot about training on all the flows and procedures and learn how to manage this new aircraft witch is faster and harder to fly then the standard Cessna on you aeronautical club!  


This Beech 200C is splashing a lot of water on it's way to runway 09 for departure.


As a student at Kungsair, I have the possibility to ride in the backseat with other students. Here is Rickard during line up for another instrument training flight. The plane is SE-LKA, a Beech 76 Duchess also owned and operated by Kungsair, built in 1979.





Rickard is very concentrated as he follows the NDB-approach for runway 09.


Short final runway 09 in a rainy Norrköping!

The last year has been really hard, no flying at all and just studying for the final exams. In Europe we have to write 13 exams in subjects like laws of the air, principles of flight, metrology, aircraft systems, performance and so on, so it's so great to have all that behind me now and focus everything on the flying! I'm having a great time so far down here, flying a minimum of two times a day and I have already meet a lot of fun and interesting people! That's one part of my love for aviation, I get to travel and live in different places and meet a lot of new people! 


Finncomm operates daily flights to Norrkoping from Helsinki, normally they fly this route with ATR but here is a Embraer ERJ-170, OH-LEI.


Direktflyg is flying to Norrköping during this week, seen here on her way out to runway 27 for departure to Borlänge. Note the new propeller with five blades to lower the noise in the cabin!


Thomas Cook is flying once a week from Norrköping to Palma with a Airbus A321. Seen here after departure from runway 27.


JetTime is the most common charter company in Norrköping, flying to destinations around the Mediterranean sea with Boeing 737-700. Seen here on it's way out to runway 09 for departure to Larnaca, Cyprus.


SunExpress is flying once a week to Antalya from Norrköping during the summer with Boeing 737-800. Seen here after landing runway 27 in the last sun of the day.


An incredibly beautiful rainbow and clouds after a heavy rain the other night.

As I said before, I'm going to post more on my progress here and photos from the airport later but until then, stay tuned on the site for more interesting reports from us at OsdPhoto! 

TEXT AND PHOTO
Simon Brygg
simonbrygg@osdphoto.com