Of Much Use?

Now this is something I’ve heard a lot of students talk about. “There’s no use of the C.A.R!” or a slightly more debatable one, “Where in the field, while you’re working on an aircraft in heat/cold/rain with passengers waiting to board, and your boss breathing down your neck, will you go looking for the C.A.R?!... and some other times like, “C.A.R is all paperwork!”

In my first ‘meeting’ with the C.A.R, on several occasions, I struggled to understand it’s relevance. For example, Just what does a Type Certificate have to do with airworthiness, and where does the Certificate of Airworthiness fit into the jigsaw; or, just what is ‘dry’ lease and how does it differ from ‘wet’ lease…and why on earth do I, training to be an AME, have to know these things?!”
It was a bitter struggle for me in the months leading up to the first few examination attempts. “Should I try and understand it first and make notes to remember? Should I just read the question banks? Should I simply MUG para-by-para?! What should I do?”

To me, just the fact that I was in a professional Aircraft Maintenance stream was such an inspiration, something in there just refused to want to memorize like college subjects! Besides, and to tell you the truth, the sheer volume of the C.A.R was intimidating enough! You have to remember here, as already mentioned, in our days we had objective AND essay type questions. The essay type questions did require a whole lot of memorizing. But memorizing without understanding things like the sheer relevance of certain Parts or even Series, isn’t easy for some people. It wasn’t for me.

So, how did I get through this potentially hazardous obstacle?

An Animal?!...Ask Questions.

An Animal ?
Going over the last few notes I’ve made, I’m inclined to think, there’s a lot more to C.A.R than just the dreaded ‘law’ thing…which past and present students and teachers alike will tell, needs to be ‘memorized’. Every exam you write requires certain if not large amounts of memorizing. However, if you just care to stop, look and understand the C.A.R and read every series and every part through real life examples, this animal (as it may seem), isn’t all that bad you know!

In our time, going back to the days we had classes with Mr. Nair, we were lucky that Mr. Nair had a vast amount of experience to draw on every time we had difficulty in understanding something. So, he’d bring to fore his experiences and that of his colleagues and go to great lengths to explain things to us. Not every AME school can boast of instructors not just vastly experienced, but also WILLING to go to great lengths to actually explain the the C.A.R!
That said, it was not until YOU asked the questions..!- If all you do is sit and watch and wonder, ANY teacher would find it hard to know exactly what it is that is going on in your mind! And so we found that happen all too often in our class too. The first few days is always like, “Oh! If I ask this question, will it be appropriate? What would the guys sitting in front/behind/beside me think? let it be, just sit tight! And hope and pray he doesn’t ask you a question!” In all candor, I have nothing but regret in admitting to this form of thought. And we realized it soon enough. A friend Ashwin Kolhatkar and I used to sit together in those CAR lessons. While we were still sitting in utter bewilderment about ‘A’ particular topic, Mr. Nair had already moved on to the next Series/Part. Not his fault! Nobody had any questions!! In a matter of days we were rushing through the dreaded CAR at breakneck speed and it all seemed to be going over! Anyhow, we soon started tugging at his pace…with ‘doubts’…sometimes funny and irrelevant, but that’s how we realized, no matter how stupid your question is, if you don’t ask, you shall never find out….oh yes you might find out, but the circumstances will most certainly not be to your choice, and in most cases not to your liking either!
So, the bottomline is, if you’ve got a question today, ASK!
And that is the whole point of the CAR, it’s about reading it, understanding it, learning some things, and then questioning or testing yourself. Mr. Nair was huge help here too. He had an endless list of questions that he’d collected over the years from students who sat the exam. Here again there’s a problem. Now, I haven’t written a lot many exams dealing with ‘the Babus’, but atleast the DGCA takes back the question papers after the exam. So, it’s all upto memory for students to sit down straight after the exam and write out as many questions that came to mind. But, believe me, those question banks, they really prepare you well. Having said that, breaking the sequence of things and going through questions without having read and understood the CAR, is in one word, madness! I know, I’ve tried it!

The ‘Bald’ (f)act!

The more positive minded go something like “I’d rather fail these exams in an exam hall, than someday in the field …..when temperatures are soaring, tempers are flaring, the required manuals go missing, and the aircraft sits nice and pretty on the tarmac rocking in silent laughter!”…..Basically, it’s a thought which leads up to being slightly better prepared, mentally, for the situations you will encounter in the days to come. Caution though, it’s a good passing thought only. Why? because, if you pin your hopes on that and only that…you’ll be balding by the time you pass C.A.R!

Oh, on the balding note- just a small distraction from our erstwhile topic the C.A.R - our powerplant instructor and principal of the institute in our days Mr. Jayaram, always asked us this one “Why do you think most AME’s are bald(ing)?” Your Answer something like: stress, or too much thinking, or say using the wrong (jet engine) oil for the hair? Nope! Mr. Jayaram’s answer was short and sweet, “They put their heads in the exhaust of the jet engine too often man! It blows away!!” Oh yes, he was bald!...and through some uncanny coincidence, ALL our instructors at the time were in some stage of balding!!

Now back to C.A.R.
For many reasons the C.A.R becomes a waterloo for a lot of aspiring AME’s. They sit…and sit again…and again…AND again for this exam and just don’t seem to get it!

To come straight to the point, the reason for this, from my interaction with a few folks in this dilemma, may just lie in their perception of the C.A.R as a whole. You see, when you read the C.A.R in the rookie years, you don’t quite see it as anything else other than pure Theory…Law Theory!. It’s very hard to understand the C.A.R until you actually apply it in the field. So, unless you pass the exam in the first few sessions, you tend to carry that initial perception of C.A.R Theory, through the years….and each time you open that ‘big-fat-folder’ to study for the exam, you end up with a mental block of sorts! A lot of people you meet will therefore tell you to ‘get it out-of-the-way’ in your early years itself. Though I believe that is a good piece of advice, it isn’t the right approach to a subject that is to become your bread and butter in future years. Well what then is the key to this…this…thing!

Exams...Exams....Exams....!

Exams…exams….exams
Now, this wonderful topic called the C.A.R (wonderful only in hindsight mind you!), happens to be the topic of the very first examination that the D.G.C.A puts you through in your quest to becoming an AME. Though a student does not appear in this examination before the best part of a year (a year and half in our times!) after the beginning of the training curriculum at an AME institute, It is not a happy first… that is a surety.

Today, after long prolonging the al-so-mighty DGCA has removed the Subjective style or the Essay type questions….and I still hear some students sitting this exam, whining!

Oh! you should have seen those essay type questions!! As I found out through three failed attempts to pass this exam, you think you’ve figured out exactly what a question has asked …in English ofcourse! And so you write…and write…and feel real good, “Ah, I know my stuff!”…Bam in the middle of it all you happen to glance at the question again, and then you start to wonder, all and sundry, in slow motion, “Is this… Really… the… answer to this question! “Oh.My.God!” and then it went something like this “Quick, get another supplement!…quick, what’s the time!...run…run…run…oh for everything’s sake what did Series D part II deal with??!”...and then you have second thoughts…until, frozen with panic, all you end up doing is stare at your wrist and watch the clock tick away! “I’m a gonner!” You get used to that…by that I mean, sitting in the middle of a hot, dingy, hangar, on a rickety wooden chair with an even more shaky table with everyone around you huffing and puffing in no different a condition!
And then there are the times when you write exams and you feel, “oh yeah, this time I think I’ll get through”…until Bam come the results!
In the days of before October 1998, the DGCA even refrained from letting you know your score. So all it read was a ‘Pass’ or a dreaded ‘fail’. Well, after seeing the latter all too often you kind of get used to it! Failure is just another part of the whole CAR conundrum.
And honestly coming to terms with that, helps… that, and learning not to take the DGCA’s exam language proficiency too seriously!

Now then, the C.A.R.

Eventually, we understood the C.A.R, in the context of AME’s, to be Civil Aviation Requirements – Section 2 Airworthiness…! Huh?1 Where did Section 1 get to?? Well, our civil aviation rules are a bit like that…a puzzle...and with the outright potential of intimidating the best of professionals on first reading!
Personally, I didn’t realize that the Civil Aviation Requirements had 8 sections until the DGCA had all the CAR’s loaded on their official website. Till date, the search function on that website is what it’s always been….defunct!
So it dawned on us, like everything else did after the first few days at AME school, that C.A.R was like a bible for the AME. That it was to be given no less reverence than our very own jobs! It also dawned on us that when you ink your name on a document associated with the airworthiness of the aircraft or any of it’s components under your area of authorization, you automatically declare that the job has been done as per the C.A.R, and, if found in contravention of it thereafter, would lead to suspension or even cancellation of your license…if you were lucky! No doubt, that would mean you go home and confess, “Honey, I lost my job!”
However, On the other hand, if all goes well & you’ve done your job per the rules, you get to go home, keep your job, and in all likelihood, sleep in piece! Until the next time, that is…! So, that’s how the importance of the CAR was embossed into our very DNA!

First Days

“ Aiiye bhaisaab…do ka dus….do ka dus…dekhiye…sirf dus me do…!” the guy was getting in my way even as I tried to dodge amongst a sea of people in the evening rush hour! “What nonsense!” I hissed under my breath… “Arre Jaane do bhaai” ….The guy becomes arrogant now – “Hahn jao na!”

What A Day! It’s the 17th of July 1996, on the footpath outside the VT station (Oh, that’s CST Railway station for the new generation) and I am on my way to Sterling Book House …after attending a long day at The Bombay Flying Club. Rendezvous? To Buy The CAR. Now, there was lots of students at the institute that insisted on getting photocopies from the senior students and buying/borrowing the amendments…not me! “I am an approved student of an Approved AME Institute…oh yeah! and I must have my own brand new copy of it”…I admit, I was a bit of a stuck up! Against popular belief, it does help….sometimes…!
Well, I knew the CAR was a large hard cover file like thing…but I never knew it would be so large that it would refuse to fit in my backpack until it was stretched out to all corners! And so there I was…the center of all annoyance as I clambered into a crowded train with the bag knocking people each time I attempted to turn or move. That was how the C.A.R came to me….grand!
It wasn’t until I opened the sacred file and attempted to make some sense of it that I realized that the poor backpack wasn’t the only one that would require accommodating this large ‘thing’…!

The next day, our C.A.R teacher Mr. V.N.C Nair, retired Air India engineer (and a highly inspiring person to be around, as I found out all through my years of association with B.F.C), took us through the CAR – “What is C…A…R…?”… Suddenly it strikes me“O mi gosh! what is it?!”… Some students chorused “Civil Aviation Requirements”…some others said- “No, It’s Civil Airworthiness Requirements”…….Mr. Nair looms along the two groups of benches, a silent smile wide across his face, just nodding and observing everyone of us… every now and then stopping by a bench and nodding at a person to get his/her opinion of “What is C…A…R…?”….. the agony called C.A.R had begun..!

Well C.A.R for the layman is like LAW…civil air law. It lays down the guidelines under which we AME’s are expected to maintain commercial aircraft. An AME is entrusted with the responsibility of certifying an Aircraft including Aircraft components and items of equipment on an aircraft as airworthy; or, fit-for-flight. Safety is paramount, however, the AME task’s also have to be completed in as short a time interval as possible for the Aircraft to do what it was made to do – Fly!
An AME’s job is one of great responsibility, in many ways greater than a Pilot’s. The pilot too is dependant on you …after all “There’s no Highway in the sky.” In the days to come, we would be told this very same thing, in different phrases and with different forms of emphasis and… exaggeration as well! But, this was drilled into us all, right at the inception, all to well. There is more than one person I know that works on those guidelines till date, and it serves him/her well.