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Sophie: BS Safety Science
(Editor's note: Our four student interns are sharing their experiences at their summer jobs. Their journals are posted with the latest entries at the top of this column.) July 27 Hey, everyone. My internship has almost come to an end. I cannot believe this! I didn't really realize this until my supervisor started talking about a letter of recommendation. With two more weeks to go, I am still working on lots of projects. One of the interesting projects I am working on is putting together an Emergency Response Manual for the Operations Safety Program. There is lots of information somewhere in the company, but not put together as a complete manual yet. I divided this into two categories, GO team event (major accident) and non-GO team event (incident). I asked for more projects in the last staff meeting, and I got this one. I think it is really important that you get yourself involved into the real work. I cannot emphasize enough of this. Always offer your help and ask for more interesting projects. If you really want to do something more than making copies and coffee during your internship, in my opinion, that's the way to go.
(At right) American Airlines OperationsSafety Programs Staff ( I was taking this photo!)
July 17 How are you doing? Let me talk about Microsoft Office a little bit today. Is everyone confident about using MS Office programs? I bet everyone would say yes, at least for the Word and PowerPoint, because most ‘Riddle students have a term project paper and a presentation for every single class (except for engineering folks). We know how to put a photo, table, or movie clip in the PowerPoint slides; we know how to change design templates, and that’s enough. That’s what I thought. However, there was so much more than that in MS Office and I needed to know all of 'em to complete the projects given to me. Even for the MS Word, which we think it is the easiest, I needed to know how to insert a comment or line numbers and how to keep track of changes made by different individuals who reviewed the document. Maybe it’s just me, but I never used ‘comments’ or ‘keeping track of changes’ before. But I needed to use them a lot here since all the documents or reports are disseminated within the department for a group review, and it is really useful when you can see who changed what in the document. That’s something I had to learn while I was working here. Because it took some time to figure out all the little features I never used before, I thought it might have been better if I already knew them. If I did, I could have concentrated on the contents more instead of jumping all over the tool bar. About MS Access, I was lucky because I took an MS Office XP class three years ago. (Well it didn’t teach Word in great detail, obviously) I never thought I would use MS Access again after I took that class, but it was the most helpful software for the projects. Excel is good for numbers, but for more complicated structures and textual information storage, Access is absolutely better. Since nobody in the department knew how to use MS Access well, I got to build database for information tracking use. (Minus specifics, it’s really hard to explain. : ( It was one of the most surprising moments for me, because everyone was willing to learn MS Access from me, an intern. They are, first of all, my bosses, second of all, pilots with thousands of hours of flight time, and third of all, my parents’ age. I was really surprised because they were wide open to any type of new information no matter where or whom it comes from. Although I wasn’t an expert either, so I had to study Access 2003 for Dummies all night to do the short briefing on the database I built, but it was a great opportunity to brush up on my skills as well. Moreover, I never even opened a MS Publisher program, but we use the program all the time for ASAP Reporters and FOQA Reporters, which are monthly publications that Flight Safety Programs publish, and semi-annual safety review report which we submit to FAA every six months for a performance review purpose. Therefore, my advice is, learn and know all the features in every MS Office program like back of your hand. It never ever hurts to be great at any of those Office programs. : ) Do practice, and see you later. July 5th Hey, readers! How was your 4th of July? Mine was perfect. I actually had a four day weekend and my boy friend, Ben. He flew in from Daytona for the weekend. It was really great to be with him, even for just couple of days. I have been talking about my work and people I work with to Ben all the time. He wanted to visit here and get a feel for it. So, on Friday, Ben visited me at work and I gave him a tour around the facility. Because I talked about Ben a lot, everyone greeted him like they knew him. That was really nice of everyone and I’m really grateful for that. Billy, the ASAP manager, even took us on an MD-80 simulator flight. Billy was an MD-80 check airman before he took a position as an ASAP manager, and he still flies weekly. The simulator was, of course, a full motion sim and really felt like a real jet. Since Ben is an ERAU student as well, and especially as a flight major, he was so happy to fly the sim (what a girl friend he has!). I will take a simulator course or fly the sim with Billy in couple of weeks. This is one of the benefits I get as an intern. Other than simulator classes, there are a lot of training classes interns can take. Except for the security part, interns are welcome to any training classes that happen in the Flight Academy. I have taken a Human Factors for Flight Safety class set up for flight attendants and the same class tailored for pilots. Both classes incorporated real events that happened within the company into the training class. It was interesting to see the breakdown of communication between crew members and the way it leads to the incident. There were lots of interesting cases, but because of confidentiality issue, I am sorry that I cannot mention any specific event here. One of the helpful classes was Emergency Procedure Training that is a part of recurrent training for flight attendants. The class included hands on CPR training and emergency evacuation drill. I think I can use some of the information should something ever happen on the flights I get on. We also have accident investigator course, and there are also special trainings that come around every once in a while such as FOQA training I attended last time. I really appreciate all the training opportunities
I get at AA. This is such a hands-on training that I would never be able
to learn at school. I think I’m going to wrap it up now. You know you can
e-mail me at kahyun.kim@gmail.com if you have any questions, right? June 27 Hey, readers! I left DFW last Friday and came back on Monday. The way flight benefits works for interns is slightly different from other employees here. The ticket we get is called tag ticket, nobody knows what it really means, and the seat is assigned when we get a ticket. Conveniently, we don’t need to standby for an empty spot or anything. I parked my car at the flight academy and took a shuttle to DFW to catch my flight. Flight interns at AA get jump seat privileges, but safety interns don’t. In the AA Flight Safety Internship Guide, it said in order to get a jump seat privileges, one must hold a commercial pilot license. Maybe safety interns with a commercial pilot license do get jump seating. I am working on my private written now, and I am going to have to figure out how I am going to make time for flying next semester with 18 credits of class load. I knew I needed to know how to fly in order to work as an aviation safety specialist. However, working at AA made me realize even more need for flight experience. Anyhow, I got to New York, and stayed in Queens with a friend of my family. He also tour-guided me the whole four days. I usually travel myself and I am not quite used to someone else doing my travel plan or giving me a tour. So, I wasn’t really comfortable with following the schedule at the beginning, but he showed me a good look of what New York is like and how New Yorkers enjoy the city. I saw two Broadway shows and went to so many places in Manhattan. The shows, Chicago and Blue Man Group, were fantastic. Bars and clubs? I didn’t even know there was a real bar called Coyote Ugly, I thought the movie was a total fiction, but there was one. Bartenders were amazing at singing and dancing, not to mention, insanely good looking. It was such an entertaining bar even for a girl, so I could imagine what it would be like for the guys. Jazz clubs and R&B clubs were great as well. I don’t go bar-hopping or clubbing much, but it was a lot of fun in New York City. I also loved the modern art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The city was full of energy and so many different styles and cultures were existed together. I am going to use my next flight benefit to go to Seattle with my boyfriend. Since I fell in love with Seattle after living in there for two years, I always talked about how beautiful it is and how much I love Seattle to my boyfriend. After a year of hearing that, now he really wants to visit there. So we decided to go there before he goes back to Korea after graduating ERAU end of this summer. That was my first trip using my tag ticket. I will talk to you about
some of the training classes I get to take next time. June 19 Hey, readers! What’s going on? A thunderstorm was really bad last weekend here. My electricity was out, so I could not do anything. I went outside and tried to take a photo of lightning, but it was really hard to capture. It took an hour and hundreds of useless shots to have two decent shots. Thank god I had a digital camera, not a film one. Well, I’m sure guys in Daytona are having a thunderstorm every single day, though. My life has been really hectic since last entry. I am taking two distance learning classes, and I just had a midterm for SF350 Aircraft Crash and Emergency Management. The exam covered the whole book, so I had to study every night for this exam after work for a week-! It is not easy working full time and taking two online classes at the same time. Well, either on campus or here, it’s always about the time management. Let me talk about the distance learning a little bit. I decided to register for two online classes this summer because I wanted to graduate this December, but I didn’t want to miss this internship. The process was simple. I spoke with deputy Dean of the College of Aviation, Dr. Richey, and told him I was going on an internship and wanted to take online classes. Then he e-mailed Record and Registrations to say he wants to authorize me to register for online classes. I went to Record and Registrations, looked into class schedule, registered, and ordered books and other course materials. All the information is disseminated through Blackboard just like regular classes. In my class, we have weekly questions posted by instructor and we answer those questions through bulletin board. Completing those questions is a good way to keep on track of the course schedule. When we have an assignment, we need to place the file in the digital drop box. Midterm was available online as well. I just had to click on the exam link, follow instructions and type in answers on the screen. After one month of experience, to be honest, I like actual classroom courses a lot better than online classes. I miss that classroom dynamics with my classmates and professors. However, I think it would be a good way to take classes if I was working as a professional and want to work on some additional courses to stay current. Actually there are a couple of people who are working on their Masters degree through Embry-Riddle’s extended campus and distance learning here at AA. Last week, I had a chance to be in the FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) training! I have heard of FOQA just couple of times in my safety classes and guest speaker meetings before I came here, and now I can do the flight data analysis, isn’t it amazing? I was so excited to be there. Two FOQA analysts and Operations Safety Manager were in this training with me from Operations Safety. It was a 3-day course and we learned how to use the flight data analysis software program. This software is the main tool for the FOQA. FOQA analysts periodically download flight data from Digital Flight Data Recorders and analyze the data in order to investigate incidents, anomaly, and current trend. They can even use this for fuel efficiency study. During this training, I finally met Peggy Sterling, Vice President of Safety. She was in the executive opening for the training. Actually, I heard jokes about her being tight on budget before, so I have wondered how she would be like in person. It was impressive just to see her in person. I think those jokes showed how much of effort is being put towards cost saving in this airline. The training was really intensive and full of information. I learned a lot about flight data analysis and all the features of EMS (name of the software). My suggestion is, take advantage of any kind of training opportunity. Ask for it. I actually helped with developing the presentation files, generating charts and statistics off raw data, for the executive opening, and asked if I could be in the training and FOQA people invited me. I get two round trips as flight benefit while I work here. I am using one
of them this weekend to go to New York. Actually, I wanted to go to Germany
to see World Cup soccer games, but American wouldn’t let me fly
to Europe with my pass. ; - ( I will see you guys later when I come back from NY. My e-mail address is kahyun.kim@gmail.com. If you have any questions, e-mail me! June 5 Hey, how’s it going? I’m getting used to everything around here and life just got more interesting. I told you I was going to talk about those unexpected friends in my apartment. They were practically everywhere, roaches! Can you believe that? What a housewarming present! I couldn’t use my kitchen for the first two weeks- Enough about them, I guess. My suggestion is, ask for the pest control at least a week before you move in. My position in AA is a Flight Safety Intern. This position has been filled almost always by students from Embry-Riddle. I’m working with the Operations Safety Programs which consists of Flight Safety Programs, Cabin Safety Programs and Maintenance Safety Programs. I am mostly working with Flight Safety Programs which includes Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) and Flight Operation Quality Assurance (FOQA). (I’ll discuss them later in detail.) We are located in the Flight Academy building of the AMR corporations in neighborhood of headquarters. The facility has the world's most extensive simulator training equipment, dispatch center and flight attendant training center. Especially 737 and 777 simulators are really impressive because they have this Heads-Up Display (HUD) for the low visibility approaches. The HUD shows the picture of the runway, so you would have visual reference even in the zero visibility situations. I expected my first week to be some kind of on-the-job-training, but I got to work on the projects right away. I worked on a research project to find out the compliance status of safety recommendations that were issued by NTSB after an accident from five years ago. In order to complete that project, I had to dig in to FAA Web site and NTSB Web site, and I had to find and talk to someone who did participate in the investigation of the accident within the company, also I had to go through lots of Web databases. I literally clicked on every single menu and tab of the FAA Web site, and finally the letters that FAA and NTSB exchanged about the safety recommendations came up. Also, after asking everyone about whom I have to talk to, I was able to talk to the fleet manager who was a representative of AA at the time of the actual NTSB investigation. He walked me through with every single item on the safety recommendations list, and helped me find out what has been done about it. I was surprised about that how friendly everyone was, and how much they were willing to help me do the project. What I learned was to talk to people about the project, find out who has the information, and ask for it. If I didn’t talk to anyone and try to find it myself off the Web, I wouldn’t have finished it in time. It was not easy, and still isn’t easy for me to talk to everyone since I am not really outgoing person, but when it comes to work, I know I have to communicate, and we all have to. So, my first week was pretty hectic with working on projects, learning everyone’s name, attending meetings with my bosses and learning every aspect of the Flight Safety Programs. There are two major programs, ASAP and FOQA, in the Flight Safety Programs. ASAP is a voluntary reporting system that pilots report any kind of unsafe action that happened within a flight. This program was initiated by FAA in order to enhance aviation safety through the prevention of accidents and incidents. Its focus is to encourage voluntary reporting of safety issues and events that come to the attention of employees of certain certificate holders. AA collects the reports and reviews them in the Event Review Team meeting on the weekly basis. Event Review Team consists of each representative from AA, APA (Allied Pilots Association), and FAA. When an action is decided to be performed about the issue raised from an ASAP report, all three parties have to agree on the conclusion. Otherwise the action can not be taken. What surprised me was how open AA is to the government. There is no covering up, or showing only the ones we want to show. Every safety concern or event that exists in the airline are open to FAA, and AA and FAA work together on those issues to improve safety. It was truly amazing how much of effort is being put in for the sake of safety, and how many actions they take every day to improve the safety of flight. FOQA is another important chunk of the flight safety program. American Airlines has Digital Flight Data Recorders (DFDR, bear with me, airline business is an acronym business) on every flight. Those recorders have capability of recording approximately 600 parameters. FOQA guys download those data and analyze the abnormality. It often is matched with ASAP report and helps the investigation of an event. They also feed the data into simulation software and make a simulated animation of the flight that had an event. The software program is called Flightscape, and it is such a cool tool to play with. I asked FOQA people to teach me how to create an animation with the Flightscape, and they are teaching me every once in a while. I think there are so many opportunities to be exposed and even learn up-to-date technology that an airline is using in their actual operation, when you are doing an internship. However, if you don’t ask for it, no one is going to come up to you and just offer you the lessons. (Well, if you have really nice co-workers, you might.) Again, communication is the key. Let them know you are interested in such things. Since I am not a real out-going person or a funny person, I am still working on this area. When I was quite frustrated with me being a bad joker, I saw this quote on the internet, “If you cannot be funny, be interesting” and this hit me. Well, I’m sure a lot of you are really funny and out-going so everyone loves you at the moment people met you, but I’m throwing this piece of advice for those who are little timid outside but full of passion and fire inside. Wow, it became quite long article this time. It’s because I was trying to introduce all the major programs that AA safety has. If you have any questions about anything, feel free to email me at kahyun.kim@gmail.com. And please understand I cannot talk about specifics because of confidentiality issues. I will talk about the exciting privileges I get while I’m working here, and some training classes I took in the flight academy. May 22 Hello, readers-! How is everybody doing? It is really great to talk to you guys through journals. Let me tell you a little bit about myself first. I am Sophie Kim, a senior in Safety Science graduating this December. It’s been a year and half since I came to Embry-Riddle to study, and I love every minute of it. I am from Seoul, South Korea. I came to the states 3 years ago. Before I came to 'Riddle, I did my Associate Degree in Aviation Technology for Flight Dispatch in a 2 year college near Seattle. After that, I transferred to Embry-Riddle, and here I am. Currently, I am in Fort Worth, Texas, working as an intern for Flight Safety Program of American Airlines. Let me start with how I got my internship and how the selection process was. Since I am a Safety major, I wanted to do a safety internship with an airline. So, I started looking into the information distributed through Career Services Web site and their weekly updates. Well, when I started looking for information, I already had an account in EagleTrak, which is Embry-Riddle’s online career services connected with MonsterTrak. So, it was easy to get the list of internships for the summer. However, if you haven’t signed up for it, or even never been to the Career Services office, I think you should go over to the Career Services office early on, meet with your program manager, and take advantage of all the great services they provide. Once you put your resume together (Career Services will help you with that) and it’s approved by your program manager, you can see the listings of jobs and internships on the Web site and apply for them online. Anyhow, so I got this list of internships, and I started filtering out the ones I’m not qualified for and also the ones that I’m not interested in. After that, I could narrow it down to three. Then, I applied for them through EagleTrak. The process was really easy. I posted my resume, a copy of unofficial transcript, and a cover letter. Then the waiting game began. One thing to keep in mind when you wait for the call is, you need to be ready all the time. In my case, I got to talk to them when I least expected. It happens. When I got a call from American Airlines, I was standing in line at the Propellers trying to get a quick bite before my next class. My phone rang, so I just automatically flipped open my phone and said “Hello.” The voice goes, “Hello, this is Penny Pollard with Operations Safety Department of American Airlines. I wanted to speak with you about the summer internship.” After I said okay, just happy to get a call from AA, she started throwing interview questions right away. The questions were like what you expect from this internship, why you are interested in American Airlines, what the job experience you listed on your resume was about, how it pertains to aviation safety… Questions went on, but I was so not ready. So, I recommend you to be ready all the time. You never know when they are going to call you and start asking questions. So, keep all the documents you submitted in your backpack all the time. Trust me, you will feel a lot better about yourself if you have a phone interview when you have your resume in front of you and all ready for it. In my case, I couldn’t even finish the interview because it was too windy where I was so she couldn’t here my voice at all. She asked me to call her back, so I called her back later in the day and couple of times more but I couldn’t get a hold of her. She didn’t return my calls either. It was quite frustrating, and I was quite sure that I wasn’t going to get this internship. Almost 3 weeks after that frustrating phone interview, American called me back and extended me an offer to do an internship. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. Then, all I needed to do was arrange an apartment and get there. It was a 20 hour drive from Daytona, but my boy friend drove with me and took a flight back, so my trip was great. I could move in the day I came in town. However, there were some unexpected residents already moved in. I will talk about this and also about my first week of work here next time. See you then-!
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About two weeks
ago, Operations Safety Programs had a full staff meeting. Because Maintenance & Engineering
Safety, a part of OSP, is located in Tulsa , it was a special occasion. We
went to a local BBQ restaurant for lunch all together.
I am going to be really
busy during my final weeks here. I'll have to wrap up all the projects at
work, will be going on lots of field trips, I still have my online classes
going, and I need to get ready to move out. Wish me a good luck! See you later! |
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