Boeing 777: Preparing for Your Type Rating

The 777 first flew in 1994 and entered service in 1995. It comes in several passenger versions (777-200, 777-200ER, 777-300ER) as well as a freighter version, with engines from different manufacturers depending on the airline. A new generation, the 777X, is currently under development.

Depending on the version and the airline, systems and procedures can differ: always rely on your operator's documentation for precise values.

The 777 is a fly-by-wire aircraft, but, unlike the Airbus A320, it's flown with a control column and yoke, and its protection philosophy is different: flight envelope protections are designed to assist the pilot without preventing them from taking action. Understanding this difference in philosophy helps you answer questions about how the aircraft behaves in the event of a failure.

The flight control computers and their degraded modes are a chapter of their own: remember what happens when one of them is lost.

Three hydraulic systems, left, center, and right, power the flight controls, landing gear, and brakes. For each one, remember what it powers and how the aircraft compensates for the loss of one of them.

On the electrical side, learn the architecture of the power sources: engine generators, APU generators, backup sources, and the battery. Fuel, air and pressurization, ice protection, fire protection, landing gear and brakes, navigation, and automation round out the syllabus.

The 777 displays its alerts on an Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System, the EICAS, with messages classified by severity level. Depending on the airline, failure checklists are presented either electronically or on paper, which changes how they're carried out but not the underlying principle: identify, execute, check the consequences.

Learn to distinguish between the alert levels and what each one implies, as well as the rare memory items.

Start by going through the chapters to spot the ones you know least well. Then work through short question sets: one set, its explanations, and a review of your mistakes the next day. Values and limitations call for regular review rather than a single cramming session.

Also keep the long-haul dimension in mind: fuel endurance, alternates, and flights over areas with no nearby terrain. These are as much decision-making topics as they are knowledge topics.

If you're preparing for a check with a specific operator, ask them for their list of topics: each airline places its own emphasis on its own procedures and versions, and it's better to spend part of your time on that than to revise everything at the same level of detail.

Checks on a long-haul widebody cover systems, but also decision-making: what do you do after a given alert, where do you divert to, with what fuel, what limitations remain available to you? You need to be able to explain your reasoning, not just recite the procedure.

Architecture questions come up often: which sources power a given bus, which hydraulic system powers a given surface, what happens to the flight control when a computer is lost.

Allow thirty to forty minutes. Review a chapter for ten minutes, work through a question set on that chapter, then read the explanations. Finish by noting down the three points that gave you trouble and redrawing the system diagram.

Since the site doesn't offer an illustrated course for this aircraft, rely on your airline's documentation for diagrams, and use the question sets to check that you've understood them. Go back over your mistakes the next day.

The first pitfall is carrying over what you know from Airbus to Boeing, and vice versa: both have fly-by-wire controls, but the protection philosophy and the interface are not the same. When a question asks what the aircraft does in the event of a failure, answer based on how the 777 itself actually works.

The second is neglecting the architecture chapters in favor of procedures: in a check, explaining why an alert appears counts just as much as knowing what to do next. The third concerns versions: depending on whether it's a passenger or a freighter aircraft, certain systems differ. Always place the question in the context of your airline's version.

Under the ATPL's Type Rating tab, the 777 has question sets organized by chapter, in English, just like its documentation. There is, for now, no illustrated course dedicated to this aircraft: the question sets and their explanations are the revision tool.

These question sets are training tools: they do not replace your aircraft's manuals (FCOM, FCTM, QRH) or your airline's documentation, which remain the sole authoritative sources. ForAllPilots is an independent site, with no affiliation to manufacturers, airlines, or authorities.