News:

 13 may:

 After some quiteness due to busy nls0311 crew members we have again good news to share with you! 3 guys found a job. Reyndert Wittert got accepted at easyJet and is currently doing his type rating on the Boeing 737. Robert got a job with Denim air and is also doing his typerating at the moment on a dash-8. And finally Gerald Samson also got a job with Denim air and he will start next month with his typerating for the Fokker 50. Congratulations to you guys.
Our guys at Transavia have started their flying on the line already and our easy Airbus guys will start their line flying in the beginning of June.

1 march:

 More good news in the category 'goed bezig!' Jeroen Sengers and Fabian Klever both found a job as First Officer Airbus A319 at Easyjet. They will start their typerating in Madrid and Moscow!

Also, we now have the our careers section working!

9 january:

 Happy new year to everyone! We have more good news about NLS0311. Two more students have found a job! yes, that's right Sebastiaan Verweij and Graham will join Bastiaan and Leon at transavia.com We hope that our other collegues will find an employer soon. Now that the first students found jobs it might be nice to see were we al work after some time. NLS9809 has something similar on their website. As you see an "our careers" link has been added to the navigation menu. We hope to have it working soon.

25 november:

 NLS 0311 first jobs!!! Bastiaan en Leon will start beginning 2006 at transavia.com on the Boeing 737NG. Four more class members are currently in the selection process. Hope to have news soon.

29 oktober:

 2 year's anniversary!!! yes, time flies when you having fun.
As promised one year ago when we celibrated our 1 year anniversary in Evora. Reyndert's crib was the place to be.
Almost all 0311 members gathered around at Reynderts place.

13 october:

 All 0311 members received their diploma's at NLS Beek.

4 september:

 All class members of AI0311 have now completed the ATPL course at NLS. For now we will enjoy whats left of the summer of 2005. In october we will reunite at the big NLS0311 2 year anniversary in Amsterdam!

6 july:

 Gerald passed his Multi Engine Exam as well! Congratulations and good luck with your MCC Course. Soon he will be back home in the Netherlands!
And with Gerald back home the whole class has finished their Portugal period.
All members of AI0311 would like to thank everybody in Portugal for their help, support and the good time they gave us! It was a truly magnificent time we will never forget!

29 june:

 Lorenzo and Sebastiaan Kegreisz have succesfully completed their Multi Engine Exams! Well done boys! Hope you enjoy The Netherlands again! And good luck on the MCC Course!

2 june:

 Good news again. Gerald passed his IF and CPL checks this week!
Jeroen and Fabian completed their MCC Course on the Airbus A320 in Madrid and have finished the NLS! Congratulations to all of them!
21 may:

 Time for another update. A lot has happened since our last update on the frontpage. Lorenzo and Sebastiaan K have passed their CPL and IF checks and Gerald will have these checks next week. Graham, Bastiaan, Sebastiaan V, Leon, Fabian, Jeroen, Robert and Reyndert all completed their Seneca flying and have finally left Portugal. They are enjoying some weeks off before they start their MCC courses somewhere in June. Fabian and Jeroen have already started their MCC course in Madrid.

22 march:

 After several years of faithfull service Jolanda de Vlugt has left the NLS to persue a career at another FTO based in the Netherlands. She is thus heading North and will start flying the Beechcraft Baron 58 at Eelde Airport. We all wish her the best of luck and many happy landings!


18 march:

 AI0311 part alpha has completed the CPL phase. Hard work has proved to be worthwhile and half of us now hold the long awaited NLS Wing. Graham, Bastiaan, Fabian, Leon, Sebastiaan V, Jeroen, Bastiaan and Robert have all aquired a commercial pilot licence and an instrument rating, Reyndert will follow next week if all goes well, congrats and many happy landings to all of you! Pictures of the wingceremony have been uploaded to the picturepage.


13 march:

over 2 million hits!
Originally we set up this website to keep in touch with family and friends in Holland while being in Portugal for our flight training. The webserver has been running since the day we left the Netherlands nearly eight months ago and has become a popular website, not just for relatives, but also for aviation enthusiasts and the like. Some figures: over 2 million hits in total, 33.000 visits, 142GB of data transferred! All this wouldn't have been possible without the teamwork of all classmembers. Bastiaan Poederbach designed the website using state of the art software on a Macintosh computer, Jeroen Sengers did a lot of scripting work, including the weblogs, guestbook and much more. Reyndert Wittert hosts the website and does most updates and maintenance. And naturally all of us write our rants in our weblogs and upload new pictures and movies. For details click on the picture below taking you to the statistics page.


15 february:

 Last week the work on the long awaited NDB was completed. We can all tune in to the EVR beacon frequency 425 and enjoy the TST signal. Next week a calibration flight will try to make the cone of confusion as small as possible. It's a 100 Watt NDB with about 40 miles range and it will allow us to make instrument approaches at Evora, something not possible before. Also AI0405 joined us here in Portugal and they had the usual inauguration, pictures will show up soon on the picturepage!


21 january:

 Today all of AAE, sponsors and others gathered for the wingceremony for those who have completed the ATPL course. It was a beautiful day and a very good one to take a new grouppicture showing all Dutch student pilots currently in training.

 



16 januari:

 The new year has begun and the weather is steadily improving again! A lot has happened lately and we have uploaded many new movies to the movie page for your viewing pleasures! Last week we received the first of two Trinidads from Holland to be added to the AAE fleet, the PH-SXD!


5 november:

Two of our best instructors are leaving us today to pursue a career in commercial aviation. Hugo Fernandes and Mario Pacheco
are going to fly for TAP Air Portugal. Hugo and Mario were classmates at the AAE, then instructors and now moving up to the airline together. We wish them all the best at TAP!

21 October:

As of today we are doing an experiment with online advertising. The banners you see will generate us money to keep this server running in the future. Please be so kind and visit some sponsor links. Each click on a sponsor link will generate cash! Also everyone has passed their Jeppesen IFR exams.

15 October:

Hi all, a small message to tell you that AI0311 first met each other one year ago. On the 27th we will have a drink in the evora hotel to celebrate our one year anniversary. To all our colleague's in Evora...enjoy your flying, happy landings and see you monday!

07 October:

Small news update. Everyone from 0311a passed their 70 hrs check and will go on holidays from 8-18 Oct. to visit family and friends. This week we had ground school for the TB20 and everyone is really looking forward to thier first flights on this new airplane. 0311b is now near completing the 40 hrs. and will fly a lot of solo hours untill their 70 hrs check. guys, enjoy your time on the navigation and diversion flights!

29 september:

Patrick de Jongste, one of our Dutch flight instructors has been offered a job at the Exel aviation group and he happily accepted. In a couple of weeks he will start training on the Embraer ERJ-145, a brazilian made regional jet. Patrick has been an instructor for three years at the NLS and was with the best! It's a shame to see him go. We wish him all the best at KLM Exel! Above is a picture of his new office.

15 september

Time for a news update. During the last weeks Gerald, Lorenzo and Sebastiaan Kegreisz did their first solo flights. Expect videos of that soon. Reyndert, Graham, Bastiaan, Fabian, Leon, Robert, Sebastiaan Verweij and Jeroen passed their 40 hours check and Sebastiaan Kegreisz passed his 20 hours check. We are all quite busy at the moment with flying and the IF-RT course of which we will have our examination next week. That's all for now.

25 august:

Another good week for us! Robert went Solo, Bastiaan, Fabian, Sebastiaan Verweij, Jeroen, Leon and Robert all passed their 20 hours check. And we saw the 1st flights of Lorenzo, Sebastiaan Kegreisz and Gerald. All that has been achieved despite the bad weather of last week. This week the weather looks better so if all goes well we will fly a lot! The movies section has 3 new movies, 2 solo movies of Leon and Jeroen and the Meteobriefing by Sebastiaan. Check them out!

16 august:

This morning two of our students listening out on the radio while making circuits heard two old NLS students contacting Evora Radio while maintaining cruise altitude on their Boeing 767-300 with callsign AirExel 412 on a flight from Brazil enroute to the Netherlands. While overhead their old field they passed their greetings to Mr.Carneiro, the former chief flight instructor. We greet them too and wish them all the best at Holland Exel!

13 august:

Goodmorning everyone! Leon went solo yesterday and Graham passed his 20 hrs check this morning. Most of us flying solo and that have the amount of hours required will have thier 20 hrs checks next week.
Be sure to check out the picture section. Sebastiaan Verweij flew along with Arthur as Diana 419 to Beja on the TB 20 and made some nice pictures of Evora (LPEV) and vicinity.

10 august:

Solo's! Yes, last week 6 of us went solo for the first time! Jeroen went first Thursday afternoon and Graham, Bastiaan, Reyndert, Fabian and Sebastiaan Verweij flew solo on friday. Leon and Robert are to fly their first solo's somewhere this week.
But we have more news. Gerald, Lorenzo and Sebastiaan Kegreisz have joined us yesterday and are now following ground school. They are scheduled to fly for the first time next week.
Weather is bothering us a bit since monday because of a cold front that is in our vicinity. That means low clouds and reduced visibility. Temperatures have dropped to somewhere in the twenties but no one is complaining.
Be sure to check out the movie section to see some first solo movies!

04 august:

A small update to our site. Check out the movies page for a really funny movie shot in the swimming pool at our hotel. Almost looks like holidays! Furthermore we are really happy with the amount of hits on our website. Thanks for visiting!

01 august:

Yes, we've got good news for you once more! 3 more of our colleagues, who had to do re-examinations managed to pass their papers. Congratulations guys. We will reserve a bed for you next to the pool :-)
Anyway, our own achievements are going just fine. It's really nice to see that everyone is making progression, and doing it fast! Our first solo's should be flown somewhere this week, something that was hard to imagine only 3 weeks ago! Weather is still perfect over here. Today we have some high clouds and maybe they are responsible that the temperatures a just a little bit lower than they should be but despite that it's still +30 degrees celsius! Everyone is relaxing at the moment in the lounge playing monopoly or sitting next to the pool. Hopefully the fires stay away coming week so that we have good visibility. We also have a shift in roster. We don't have to get up at 5 anymore due to the later sunrise. So we get an hour longer to sleep and flight operations start now at 7 o'clock.

I would like to advise you to check out the personal crew pages since most of us are keeping a blog and try to write something at least once a week. (We all thank Jeroen for his efforts to implement the blog functionality into our site).
There should also be a movie about AAE in the movies section.
Also our guestbook is finally working. Please don't mess it up!!

15 july:

Hi all, everything has gone well so far! Our trip started superb. The captain of the TAP Airbus A319 invited us all to visit the flightdeck. Something that's rare these days. 2 of us had the opportunity to sit jump seat during take off and climb, 4 for cruise and 2 others for descent and landing. Bastiaan and Fabian were ""lucky" enough to experience a real generator 1 failure! and saw how the captain and first officer tried to solve the problem via the solutions brought up by ECAM. Maybe the name scary bus isn't so strange after all.
Tuesday was our first day on school and since than we had ground school. The only "bad" thing is that the school is operating on a tropic roster...that means we have to get up at 5, be at school at 6, and be there till 2. Good side...when we get home we can jump directly into the swimming pool. The hotel is very nice and temperatures have been above 35 C ever since we been here. Our first flights are scheduled for Monday!!!

Check the pictures section for the latest pictures.

02 july:

The last exams went well...as always. Unfortunately 2 of us failed their meteo-exams by only a few points, resulting in a one month delay for Portugal.
Last week we started with groundschool for the TB200 Tobago XL, the first plane we will fly in Portugal and is used during the VFR phase (VFR - Visual Flight Rules, means you will navigate primarily by visual means, keeping sight of the terrain below you, following roads, railways and rivers for example).
Furthermore we followed a Bottlang coarse, Jeppesen bible for VFR charts. And last but not least, we went to the Koninklijke Mareschaussee at Schiphol East receiving a security coarse...which was very interresting. We also had the chance to hold some weapons...pictures will be uploaded ASAP. Next week we will have exams for TB200 as well as Bottlang and we will follow a 2 day MCC coarse.

12 july the first 8 travel to Portugal and will be followed by the other 4, hopefully within 1 month, after their re-exams.

01 march:

We just finished the 1st four months of our theory and all went (pretty) well. With a successrate of about 87%. AI0307 will fly out on the 17th of March towards the sunny Portugal. Good Luck Guys! After our divorce with AI0307 we pretty quick got another relation, this time with AI0403. They are still a little bit cold after a snowy WEM ;-)

13 november:

Welcome at the homepage of CAE NLS Ab Initio Class 0311!

We are 12 young people pursuing the dream of becoming an airline pilot. We start with our 21 month training 27 October 2003 at CAE NLS.
The main purpose of this site is to inform our family and friends about our progress and achievements at NLS.
All other visitors are kindly invited to look around and find out about AI0311.
Due to our busy schedule this website can only be updated when time allows. The first major update can be expected during Christmas and should include WEM, comments about our first two months and hopefully a lot of pictures.

15 october:

AI0311 first meet at NLS. This day included familiarisation at NLS and surroundings.