I talked to Berck tonight. His first flight yesterday from JFK to DFW he didn’t touch the controls at all, just talked on the radio. He said he felt eight steps behind whatever he was supposed to be doing.

Today he actually flew. He said taking off was nothing like the sim. And then he had to do a visual approach into JFK, following the dreaded white rabbit, one of the most difficult approaches in the country… ON HIS FIRST APPROACH EVER. Most airline pilots spend years as first officers flying into little podunk airports before they ever fly these big airports. Here’s a video of someone doing it at night.

By the time you run out of one line of approach lights, you can see another one. Berck says the very last light is on top of the hotel he’s staying in while he goes through IOE.

He said his captain took the controls at 50 feet on his first landing attempt and 20 his second. That’s progress, right? He really liked his instructor, who seemed to have a similar teaching style that Berck does (meaning he’s a hard-ass).

Next they flew from JFK to DCA, another approach so crazy his captain wouldn’t let Berck fly it. This is the one into DC down the Potomac, where if you as much as swipe the area above the Mall, you’ll lose your career. Berck said part of the approach is a bank below the level of the Washington Monument heading straight for it. Then they flew back to JFK.

Tomorrow he’ll have a brand new IOE captain and will, presumably, be his first student. They’ll be flying into O’Hare, then Cincinnati, then Norfolk, the only non-major airport so far, and spending the night.

You can keep track of Berck’s schedule from his Facebook page (you’ll have to sign up for an account and friend him to see it). Click on the day’s date’s number to see his full schedule for the day.

You can listen to him making bad radio calls and controllers chewing him out at http://www.jfktower.com/.

Here’s a map of everywhere he might fly, at least in the top half. The bottom half out of Orlando is ERJ’s, which he doesn’t fly.

Berck has Tuesday and Wednesday off, so he’ll hopefully fly home Monday night and back Wednesday. He’s running out of clean clothes.