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#1 Dublin, four years, and the check flight threads are all a line about 'it was fine'. Here is what the check actually is, what the examiner is looking at, and why crew fail it, from someone who has done the annual ones and sat through the number one course checks.
What a check flight is
A normal flight with a training captain or a cabin crew examiner on board observing you. At Ryanair there is the initial line check after your supernumerary flights, the annual line check as part of recurrent, and the check as part of the number one upgrade. The examiner does not work; they watch, take notes and debrief.
What they watch
The safety procedures in order: the pre flight checks of your equipment, the briefing participation, the cabin secure calls, the door arming and cross check, the safety demo (yes, they watch the demo properly), the passenger handling during boarding, the cabin secure before landing, the door disarming. The service and the sales as well, but the safety items are the pass or fail ones.
The common fails
Missing the equipment check or doing it visibly from memory rather than actually checking. Arming or disarming a door without the cross check, or doing the cross check as a word rather than a look. A rushed cabin secure that misses a bag in the aisle. A safety demo that is sloppy or fast. Not knowing the answer to the examiner's question in the debrief (they ask SEP questions: fire fighting steps, the medical kit contents, the ditching drill). And, on the number one check, poor briefing and poor delegation.
What passes
Doing the procedures exactly as trained, at a normal pace, out loud where they are out loud. Answering the debrief questions clearly. Being pleasant to the passengers. Crew fail the check by trying to look smooth and skipping a step, not by being slow.
The number one course
The upgrade to number one (the cabin supervisor grade) at Ryanair comes after a period as a junior (it has been anywhere from 12 months to three years depending on the base need), an application, a check of your record, a course of a few days on the supervisory duties (the paperwork, the briefing, the crew management, the coordination with the captain), and a check flight as number one with an examiner observing you run the cabin. The check as number one is harder: you are assessed on the crew, not just yourself.
How to prepare
Read the SEP manual the week before. Practise the equipment check as a real check. Do the demo like it is the first time. Say the cross checks with the look. And in the debrief, if you do not know something, say you will check and then check. Examiners fail bluffing faster than they fail gaps.
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#2 Bergamo number one and I do the checks on juniors now. The 'cross check as a word rather than a look' is the most common thing I write down. Look at the handle. It takes one second.
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#3 First line check next week and this is now my checklist. Slow and correct, not smooth and wrong. Thank you.
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#4 easyJet, and our line checks are the same shape. The examiner asking the fire fighting steps in the debrief is universal. Know your extinguishers.
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#5 @connordub you will pass. The people who read a thread about it the week before are not the people who fail.
