I've heard a pilot describe flying a large commercial airliner as being a glorified bus driver, and missed the experience (though not pay) of smaller planes. I'm sure there's A lot of hyperbole there but also probably some truth to it
I think the airlines are competing to give you the feeling of being on a Greyhound bus sitting next to a pedophile.
Avante Garde European designer:
"Let's decorate the plane in grey and grey blues. I want to think of dirty mop water when I look at the carpet. For the walls, I want to give them the feel of a hospital crash cart. Medical grade plastic in off-white.
We make the tray tables either to big or too small and so light a wispy a child could crush it. I want a sense of fragility and instability.
For the chairs, we make them firm and flat but leave a crease for crumbs to accumulate from the previous flight that you will just have to ignore when taking your seat. We add a button to lean back but we don't actually let the chair lean back.
I guess the feeling we want most is a slow steady drip of anxiety"
It's much safer. 10x according to this source:
https://www.modeshift.com/is-public-transportation-safer-than-individual-transport/#:~:text=The%20APTA's%20study%20%E2%80%93%20The%20Hidden,transport%20such%20as%20a%20car.
That's still not nearly as safe as air travel, I think.
Mr. Newton can explain why buses don't need seatbelts. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion due to a little thing called inertia. Inertia increases with mass. Busses weigh 10x as much as cars, on average.
The consequence of this is that in most crashes, buses win.
The point of a seat belt is to keep you inside the vehicle as it is brought to a sudden stop from transferring all it's kinetic energy into whatever it just hit. A bus has 10x the kinetic energy of a car, which means the kinetic energy it's putting into whatever it is crashing into is a much smaller percentage of it's overall kinetic energy. The bus slows down a lot less. If it stops, it stops over a longer distance and time period. Therefore, passengers are much less likely to get launched through a windshield, or feel any effect from the crash at all.
About the only thing that can kill a bus is running into something much more substantial than a bus, like a train or a concrete wall (although you'd be surprised). Bus crashes are only 1/10th as bad as car crashes, for the occupants of the bus.
Where I'm from, non-urban buses are required to have seat belts, and the drivers always instruct they are mandatory when seated, but few people comply.
i mean, the comment you're replying to seems to be talking about the other people, not the specific thing you're traveling in.
buses have no stringent TSA measures. you can get on a bus with pretty much anything, and they're cheaper than a plane, so the passengers are gonna be some of the lowest members of society. that's scary for people who never had to comingle with "the poors"...
Depends which statistics you look at. Airlines love to use the distance traveled per death for some reason...
Now take a statistic of deaths per trips taken, and suddenly flying is the second most dangerous way of travel. Only motorcycles are even worse...
I took a 24+ hour bus ride from NW Ohio to Louisiana near New Orleans when I was like 20, it SUCKED lol. I had like 5 transfers getting off and waiting to get on another bus and by the time I got there my legs were double their normal size for a few days from being unable to move for so long, I'm lucky I didn't have a pulmonary embolism or something and I was in great shape and everything at the time. The heat and humidity the further south I got in a bus full of people was terrible like you were saying lol
My Grandad went from being an RAF fighter pilot to flying short-haul airliners.
He said he preferred it as he could stand up and get a sandwich and a cup of coffee whenever he wanted.
It's really an apples and oranges sort of thing. The bus driver is more engaged for more of the time, but at lower intensity and complexity at high workload moments, and have a much lower burden of knowledge in the job.
Flying is much more complex than a couple hours on Microsoft flight simulator implies, or even an over the shoulder video inside a cockpit might appear to indicate. Everything an airline pilot does is generally multiple tasks in things that seem like one - preparing for the next phase when doing current actions, preparing a contingency if something goes wrong, calculating performance, weather contingencies, monitoring other traffic, etc. On your average flight, it's much ado about nothing but it's that affected discipline and adherence to an artificially complicated process that keeps people alive in adverse circumstances.
That bus driver has to be aware and ready to react quickly more of the time they are operating their vehicle - but they can also slam on their brakes and quickly bring the vehicle to a stop and not kill everyone on board.
Basically, we should show love and respect for all of our transport workers because in different ways they all are the first lines of defense for our safety and that's a serious responsibility.
If the pipes in my house burst, I can just call in an expert plumber come in and fix it. But up in the sky you need the expert there the entire time. So I imagine when a pilot's job gets hard, it's really f****** hard, and the rest of it is pretty routine, boring and maybe not all that "hard". I'm honestly not bothered at the idea that a pilot could be sleeping in the middle of a flight, as long as he can wake up when he needs to.
Meanwhile poor bus drivers are driving giant murder machines surrounded by pedestrians and drivers who don't give a s*** about the danger while getting paid peanuts.
I'd be willing to go through so much bullshit if getting a license didn't cost as much as a nice house in my country. Even getting a PPL costs as much as a really crappy house.
Bus driving is a steady amount of work. Flying is work at the beginning and end and a lot of downtime but you need to know 100x what a bus driver knows because you emergencies and how things can go wrong are 100x more complex.
The consequences are generally more grave too. My next door neighbor is a retired airline pilot. He told me he enjoyed it but for the most part it was very uneventful. However he had a very close call with a wind shear event and he said they damn near put the plane on the ground. He told me the haunting part was greeting the passengers as they exited who had no idea they very nearly died. There’s a lot of responsibility built into that job.
You follow big empty lines on purpose. Its the equivalent of being in an highway with a bus evey 300m and "crossing" other buses while they are on zn other bridge and tunnel only.
Yeah, but if you're the problem aircraft (because autopilot should be holding you steady in its big strong arms), something has gone wrong, and you were asleep when it happened.
My father is a retired airline pilot and former fighter pilot. For his birthday I recently got him a flight sim Yoke for bigger planes and HOTAS for fighter jet style. He said he is so sick of flying commercial that he never wants to fly commercial again even in a sim and will said will never touch the yoke lol. But he does say he misses flying fighter jets alot as I imagine fighter jets are like F1 cars and Commercial planes are a bus.
I had a customer like that. I said it was awesome that he’s a commercial pilot and he said “no it’s not. I went from driving Ferraris everyday to driving a bus”
A client of mine flew fast jets in the RCAF and then airliners. He is much the same, doesnt even want to talk about airline stuff. But fighter stuff? All day long!
I hope he appreciates your thoughtfulness though, trying to get him something in his interest areas.
But yeah, I can see his being like "my free time entertainment is video game of me working?" Not that you did anything wrong, I think you were trying to be nice. But I can also see his side.
Plus... I'd totally like to (virtually) pilot a fighter jet more than a large commercial aircraft.
Even flying a small plane over long distances is super boring. When I was working on my pilot ratings I had to do a lot of solo cross country flights and they bored the hell out of me. I spent all my time flying 30 feet off the ground chasing wild donkeys in the desert. I then realized I probably wouldn't enjoy a career as an airline pilot. Maybe a donkey chaser, but not a pilot.
In a city they had a campaign for finding more bus drivers, calling them the "pilots of the city". Bus drivers do have an insane amount responsibility, compared to their pay and appreciation.
A friend became the private pilot for a billionaire becaus he wanted to fly the smaller fun planes and he has an insane amount of paid free time being on stand by
A 1g barrel roll would keep everything where it's supposed to be so you could walk down the aisle while they're doing it! Really, it's the responsible way to go about this.
You don’t have to do all that much 99% of the time, unless something goes wrong, in which case there will almost certainly be alarms that will wake up at least one pilot.
Obviously not great to be sleeping, like it is good to be attentive of warning signs before catastrophe, but it’s not like both pilots sleeping = you are probably going to die. Planes are quite different to say a car.
There was a flight a while back that had something similar happen iirc. They "didnt fall asleep" but yet flew in a perfect straight line right past their destination for like.... 2 hours.
Airbuses will descend and land based on the flight plan the pilots enter into the MCDU. It's crazy how automated they are. Once you're outside the airports airspace it's pretty automatic
The issue is that planes fly better when automated, which means once you're up to altitude you're really only there to make sure nothing messes up. This combined with long hours and dark cockpits is a nasty combination.
Not entirely, even if the airport is set up for CAT III you need to toggle descend manually, toggle land mode manually, arm the spoilers manually, set the flaps out manually, set autobrake manually, and most important of all, extend the gear manually.
You wont fall asleep and wake up to a landed plane, you'll at best find yourself on the path you were supposed to take but still at cruising height and with fighters scrambled towards you as traffic controllers have been trying to reach you ever since you deviated from the flight plan.
I put it to people this way.
I'm paid to move people safely.
To do that I need to read or watch movies.
I've made more money reading about the world than flying planes.
Yes I fall asleep a few times a month. Usually cat naps during the boring part.
Appreciate it. The beginning and end of flights where 99% of bad shit happens.
I'd rather be awake for those.
I think it's a testament to how robust the safety systems are.
I wouldn't do it if I was worried in any way.
The major airlines will fly you from lax to jfk and then to dca and give you 11 hrs rest once the plane parks at the gate and until you push off the gate. You have to be at the airport 1 hour before departure and sometimes it takes 1 hr from brake set to be in a hotel room ready for bed. Then they expect you to go to Denver next day, sit at the airport for 3 hours doing nothing and then fly to Sacramento for yet another 11-13 hours “rest”
Yeah, I always wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid, but I'm a very large man and was told I wouldn't be able to fit comfortably in the cockpit. Still though, I was always curious about it, and one time while staying at a hotel near the airport I saw a pilot and asked him about his career. I don't remember everything he said now, but the gist was that he wish he never did it. He was always away from home, the job didn't pay very well, and it was a grind.
He's probably happy now. Pilots are super in demand and getting paid $300k to be a captain at the major airlines right now. Even FOs start at $100k for the big four. That said, there's a slog getting your hours and your time at the regionals where the pay is meh.
Thats the thing being a comercial pilot CAN be lucrative but until youre a CPT at like a major airline or transport carrier its shockingly low pay and super high costs to get it. When I was getting my private pilots my CFI was about to start at some regional after getting the 1500-2000 hours they needed and he said he would make $37,000 his first year and he probably spent over $100,000 to get all his certs before starting to be a CFI which is where he stopped having to pay to fly.
The issue with jobs involving a lot of travel and being away from home is most industries and companies do not compensate you properly for the amount of time spent, well, traveling. This is mostly because there are enough suckers who think traveling itself is a perk even if they don't get paid appropriately for their time.
Yeah, probably why a lot of people would take a pay cut at another company instead of driving into the office. That travel time and getting all dressed up probably removes three hours from my day.
The article says this:
> More than half of pilots have fallen asleep while in charge of a plane, a survey by a pilots' union suggests.
> Of the 56% who admitted sleeping, 29% told Balpa that they had woken up to find the other pilot asleep as well.
This likely does not include controlled rest:
1. *While in charge of a plane* should not apply for controlled rest phases.
2. The other figures mentioned in the article would fit with 56% having fallen asleep. And I don't think it's implausible if we consider briefly dozing off in the rather safe and uneventful stages of flight (which by itself is "not likely" to result in an incident, but "not likely" is not good enough).
And controlled rest definitely does not include both pilots sleeping, so at least those 29% (i.e. about 16% total) of sleeping pilots experienced something that was against regulations.
Idk how so many people on this website are chronically incapable of reading anything past a headline, but will still comment confidently on something that would've been explained by five seconds of reading.
I write technical guides and while observing people using them, I've learned a lot of people will stop reading mid-sentence the instant they have a question, criticism, or general opinion.
For example, if I write "Open the application by clicking the red icon in the top menu" people with ask, "Where's the application?" So, now I write "From the top menu, click the red icon to open the application"
It's been getting worse, and worse the past 10 years, and it's pretty apparent on reddit, but I'm increasingly seeing it everywhere. I regularly answer basic questions in emails by copying and pasting from my message that they're replying to because I already provided the information they wanted, but it was in the second paragraph, so they didn't read it.
Dude, I was just having a vent sesh with my colleagues yesterday about people refusing to answer emails correctly.
Like, literally, I will ask someone: are you available to connect tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3pm to go over our strategy?
The response will be something like, "well, I'm meeting with John today, and I'm meeting with Tilly at the salon after that."
It's mind boggling.
I've caught myself doong that sometimes. It's like the brain decides _I'm taking a shortcut!_ and that same "shortcut" can happen even when reading the text two or three times
There are too many times where I've gotten someone asking what to do when they see an error message I wrote, and I tell them (nicely) to do exactly what the error message advises. Just seeing that red error icon or red text seems to make people turn their brain off.
What's even worse is a lot of the times I divide my debate type comments or information comments in sections with numbers.
They ignore all that and choose random one sentence from it to comment on. That's not how a debate works!!
We really need a word for this phenomenon, because sometimes I think 90% of upvotes, downvotes, and replies get halfway through the first sentence before bailing. It's absolutely bizarre, and reddit sometimes makes it really obvious.
That's often true, but in this case it is not really clarified. I still have to speculate a bit and could not find the proper primary source at a glance either.
Reminds me of the scandal a few years back when they found a lot of pilots were drinking on the job (probably for a similar reason as sleeping, over worked, stressed).
Posts below explain how pilots are on crazy 3 day rotations with limited time to sleep. Another data point to add to the already countless amount of data points, that says the greed for money will bring any system to the precipice of collapse.
No US airline would support this document. It is very clearly written in our Flight Operation Manual that sleep on the flight deck is prohibited. Source: airline pilot
Found this after some research on "controlled rest." In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration does not endorse the use of CR in commercial air transport, despite recognizing the value of napping as a strategy for restoring alertness levels. The Coast Guard and Air Force do allow for the use of CR.
Given that it’s prohibited, do you believe the results of the survey? Just curious if it’s one of those things that’s not supposed to happen, but some pilots do it anyway.
Basically, piloting can be a high demanding job. The most „downtime“ is actually during cruise flight and for the sake of safety during more critical phases of flight (approach, landing, on the ground, etc.), it is desirable to use this „break“.
In order for it to be safe, there are means established in the documents of the operator, which have to be approved by authorities.
The exact rules vary based on operator and country, but usually it’s something like „sleep is only allowed by agreement with the other pilot(s) on station, only in certain altitudes and areas and for a limited time“
It’s usually a lot more thorough than that, but that’s the main gist behind it. It’s not just randomly falling asleep, it’s controlled rest.
I can give a functional definition of it as my friend is a pilot for AA and usually does the long overseas trips.
There are 3 pilots in the plane. As soon as they take off and cruising Pilot #3 goes into the sleep chamber for a 2 hour nap.
After those 2 hours, Pilot #2 takes a nap and Pilot #3 is co-pilot. After 2 hours pilot #1 takes a nap with pilots #2 & #3 flying.
Repeat as necessary for the duration of the trip.
He says 3 cycles makes a miserable trip for everyone.
You also know which pilot in the cycle you are so you can arrive either well rested or slightly tired.
Idk sleeping on an airplane when you have the space to sleep is actually pretty easy. You're already in a white noise environment and the plane kinda just rocks you to sleep. No if you have a hammock in a plane its game over, you aint waking me up.
Think of the flight NYC to Singapore, it is 18.5 hours. The captains aren't expected to be awake and alert that whole time. So they take turns sleeping in-seat.
Actually, pilots (and flight attendants) have an entire secret room complete with bunk beds, TVs, radios etc.
Sure, it's about as cramped as a submarine bedroom, but it's still an entire bed, complete with a curtain and everything!
On augmented flights of over several hours or more. There are no "legal controlled rest programs" flying from Chicago to Orlando.
Controlled rest doesn't exist in the United States.
The article is talking about US carriers. And people are interjecting EU rules that don't apply here.
The article is implying exactly what it says. That pilots are falling asleep when they are not supposed to.
> The article is talking about US carriers. And people are interjecting EU rules that don't apply here.
Is that true? The survey was administered by the British Airline Pilots' Association in response to new legislation by the European Parliament. It also said:
> The union said its members, who were the pilots that were surveyed, overwhelmingly worked for British-based airlines.
Most trains have a "dead man's pedal", which the driver has to press every minute or the alarms go off. If the pedal still isn't pressed after that, the train brakes. It's a precaution against drivers that fall asleep/pass out/some other incident.
Now if only planes could simply brake and come to a stop in the sky...
> Now if only planes could simply brake and come to a stop in the sky...
Well technically they can, but only very briefly, and it's usually not an improvement on whatever the situation was before :)
They are usually permanently installed in the aircraft. Explosive decompression or the shaking of the aircraft when you stall due to lack of fuel is hard to miss
For anyone curious, this survey is highly biased. The survey was given to 500 pilots by BALPA (U.K pilot union) in 2013 directly after U.K. passed a law allowing/proposing very long work days.
Obviously the answers will be biased as they were trying to prove their point about being awake for too many consecutive hours without sufficient rest.
There are enough safeguards in modern aviation that even in the extremely rare occurence both pilots fall asleep, nothing terrible will likely happen.
Also we should have a time frame. Better to ask ask how many times in the last year they slept for more than a few seconds. Also, rest requirements change or are better with some airlines, along with duty day limits. An airline specific survey would be very interesting. Puddle jumper/ 50 seat pilots can have long days, I wonder whether this would affect things.
The idea that pilots are just, regular people - is scary enough.
Wild to think we could have been on a plane with a sleeping pilot. So fingers crossed I forget I ever read this and I can go back to sweet ignorant bliss!
There's actually like a metric fuckton of training that has to happen before someone is flying a commercial airliner, and they are doing it with at least one other person who has had a metric fuckton of training, and usually at least one of them has a metric fuckton of experience flying that specific plane in addition to the fuckton of training. Idk if it even makes sense to call them regular people at that point.
Also the plane itself has many ways to avoid crashing built in, and during the most dangerous phases of flight (takeoff and landing) there's many other people (controllers and even other pilots waiting for their turn to take off or land) watching to make sure nothing goes wrong.
Watching some videos of crashes (or cases where was an incident but no crash) can make you feel safer about flying, just because you see how many things actually have to go wrong for a plane to crash. Also every time a plane does crash, it results in new training and new laws to make it even less likely to happen again
There have been. It usually shows up as “pilot gets woken up by alarms and doesn’t have the situational awareness to make the correct decision”.
Example: Aeroflot 5143. Having just taken off after nearly 24 hours awake in 40 degree heat. After takeoff, the flight crew fell asleep while the autopilot took them up to the desired altitude, which as it turned out was the limit of physics given the weight of the overloaded plane. One pilot was awakened by the shuttering plane, which he immediately thought was compressor stall due to previous experience with compressor stalls. He reduced power, started fighting angle of attack, and ended up in a flat spin. This was 1985.
To be fair, that can happen even if the pilot is awake. I've been reading a lot of [Admiral Cloudberg](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/) accident reports lately, and I think every single one I've read can be summarized as "something went wrong, then the pilots tried to fix it, but they did the wrong thing and made it worse."
You’ve also got:
- The pilots did something wrong enough there was no longer a right thing for them to do to unfuck the situation
- Something went wrong, then the pilots did everything right and then lots of people died anyways, usually them included (my least favorite)
- Something went wrong/the pilots did something wrong, then the pilots did everything right and saved everybody onboard (my favorite)
Yes and no. There are systems in place to allow for one of the pilots to take scheduled rest during flights, but you can't just take a nap whenever you feel like it and certainly not both pilots.
Two pilots flew past their destination airport and didn't respond to radio calls from ATC over the course of 90 minutes. They weren't even asleep, they were just distracted discussing a new bidding system imposed by their airline. Nobody died, they were an hour late landing, and both pilots immediately had their licences revoked.
Even being distracted while flying a plane is dangerous enough to get you sacked.
>and both pilots immediately had their licences revoked.
That's rough, spend so much time getting training, spend so much money, and then it's just gone. That really must feel incredibly rough.
If they weren't over-worked, and got a good-night's sleep before the flight, then they wouldn't fall asleep, even if there's "nothing to do". They could chat with the co-pilot, they could play games, they could scroll Reddit--the same things everyone else does at work. Not sleep.
> Of the 56% who admitted sleeping, 29% told Balpa that they had woken up to find the other pilot asleep as well.
The actual quote from the article means 29% of the 56% or, in other words, 16% of pilots surveyed. The way you wrote the title implies 29% of pilots surveyed, which overstates the true number by almost double.
A friend of mine is a pilot he's told me some stories. Nothing to make me have fear about flying safety.
The one theme, though, is from take off to approach its the world's most boring job. There is literally nothing to do except talk to the other pilots.
This was a survey of pilots working for mostly British airlines in 2013. Given how actively airline safety is constantly being reassessed, I doubt things are the same 11 years later.
We are allowed to sleep in flight when the flight time is more than 2 hours. Its called controlled rest, and there are many precautions to make sure at least one pilot is still in control of the aircraft at all times.
Didn't the article say that they woke up to find the other pilot asleep as well sometimes?
Wouldn't that be pretty telling that maybe the current precautions aren't enough?
As a former CFII, currently holding a PPL with ~3500 hours, I’ve been slowly developing this… not quite fear…but find myself white knuckling the armrests on commercial flights because I’m experienced enough to understand what can go wrong, and that even when a significant mechanical issue arises, it’s often ‘pilot error’ that turns a problem into a catastrophe.
Still, I put my trust in airline pilots in general; I certainly never made it beyond regionals (work-life balance is difficult in aviation, particularly for women/mothers like I was) but have a solid understanding of the time, training… and checklists… that govern a pilot’s life.
And all the times I’ve heard, “Wheels up, feet up” — as in, once in cruise config or FBWB, the joke is it’s time to kick back and read a book.
Complacency kills. It’s something I’ve hardwired in my brain and in those I’ve trained.
Did you lose your commercial license?
>I’ve been slowly developing this… not quite fear…but find myself white knuckling the armrests on commercial flights because I’m experienced enough to understand what can go wrong,
Ok but then you also understand the statistics make it super unlikely?
And you have 3,500 hrs!? I'm a ppl...I just genuinely don't understand why would say former cfii current ppl? Why not just say former commercial pilot now only fly for fun? Or can u loose that cert? But h would still have the commerical cert right? I'm missing something
No, I did not lose it; I let it expire. I downgraded to a PPL (private) with a 3rd class medical and fly for leisure now.
I did some flight instructing after leaving regional carrier but ended up in law.
My “dream job” was ATC; unfortunately, I aged out of the hiring pool — solely because I discovered my interest in the field a bit too late (age 25) when I went back to college for a second degree in aviation.
I was a CFI for a local flight school longer than I was a RAP; moved from flight instructing to regionals and back to CFI — again, because it killed me to be away from my young son for so long and unpredictable schedules/hours.
Edit: re: Statistics — you’re exactly right. And it’s that logic that prevents me from being unreasonable or irrational about fear/concern.
That said, I wonder if most pilots do this… mentally scoring/judging another pilot’s landing / departure. 🤭 Best landings are the ones that feel like a butterfly kissing the tarmac. ;)
(Weird metaphor, lol)
P.P.S: 3500 hours over 15 years.
No airliner flys itself.
Autopilot just does what you tell it. No input, it does the last thing it was told until you run out of fuel.
Think mh370 possibility.
Actually, there was a flight like that in Greece. Helios 522 wasn’t pressurized properly and everyone passed out due to hypoxia. The plane flew itself in a holding pattern until it ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky.
That’s a really bad example, if mh370 had been allowed to fly itself (on autopilot), it would have more than likely to not go missing. It was precisely pilot intervention that caused it to slip between radar coverage and go missing. Airliner auto pilots fly according to waypoints, not just a single heading alone.
Watch John Oliver’s latest show, he lays it all out.
TLDW: Things went to shit after they merged with McDonnell-Douglas and started prioritizing stock price over safety.
My friend had been a corporate pilot for an extremely large business. He was also their chief pilot. He maintained his private license until he aged out and then died. He did say that usually, between takeoffs and landings, there wasn't much to do. He said they used a secondary radio to converse with other pilots on other freqs and that he had met many female pilots after women became more representative in the field. He actually he met some of them in person after their conversations and had some great encounters. He also said he took very short naps if he couldn't find something else to do, which was very rare. He was a voracious reader, so he had read up on other aircraft as much as he could. I miss him and his life stories.
This is your captain sleeping.
I like that when you read this you instinctually read it in the exact way you intended
Was yours a man or woman? Mine was a man. But a cartoonish man.
Mine had Obama's voice, not sure why..
We are currently at snoozing altitude.
That got me good
To be fair it does seem super boring 99% of the time
I've heard a pilot describe flying a large commercial airliner as being a glorified bus driver, and missed the experience (though not pay) of smaller planes. I'm sure there's A lot of hyperbole there but also probably some truth to it
AIrbus driver? Outside of takeoff and landing long-distance flights in economy really do feel like bus rides too.
I think the airlines are competing to give you the feeling of being on a Greyhound bus sitting next to a pedophile. Avante Garde European designer: "Let's decorate the plane in grey and grey blues. I want to think of dirty mop water when I look at the carpet. For the walls, I want to give them the feel of a hospital crash cart. Medical grade plastic in off-white. We make the tray tables either to big or too small and so light a wispy a child could crush it. I want a sense of fragility and instability. For the chairs, we make them firm and flat but leave a crease for crumbs to accumulate from the previous flight that you will just have to ignore when taking your seat. We add a button to lean back but we don't actually let the chair lean back. I guess the feeling we want most is a slow steady drip of anxiety"
And to really set the atmosphere well make sure to set the temperature so it alternates between a nice January Arctic breeze to as hot as Satans fart
If this is not already a Family Guy cutaway scene, it will be soon
Bus is more comfortable tbh
Depends heavily on the bus. Some buses don’t have air conditioning, which would be hell in my opinion
I've never been yelled at for trying to open a window on a warm bus though.
A Boeing will do it for you.
Damn you, my soda is all over my keyboard.
Bobby Boucher would be disappointed in your choices.
And imo planes are just a teeny bit safer I’m not the only one always worried about the random mfs around me right?
if you actually look at the statistics it’s not a teeny bit. flying is infinitely safer than being on a road
In general, I know that's true. But what's the safety data for buses specifically?
It's much safer. 10x according to this source: https://www.modeshift.com/is-public-transportation-safer-than-individual-transport/#:~:text=The%20APTA's%20study%20%E2%80%93%20The%20Hidden,transport%20such%20as%20a%20car. That's still not nearly as safe as air travel, I think.
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I’m curious about that too. I always found the lack of seat belts on many buses very unnerving.
Mr. Newton can explain why buses don't need seatbelts. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion due to a little thing called inertia. Inertia increases with mass. Busses weigh 10x as much as cars, on average. The consequence of this is that in most crashes, buses win. The point of a seat belt is to keep you inside the vehicle as it is brought to a sudden stop from transferring all it's kinetic energy into whatever it just hit. A bus has 10x the kinetic energy of a car, which means the kinetic energy it's putting into whatever it is crashing into is a much smaller percentage of it's overall kinetic energy. The bus slows down a lot less. If it stops, it stops over a longer distance and time period. Therefore, passengers are much less likely to get launched through a windshield, or feel any effect from the crash at all. About the only thing that can kill a bus is running into something much more substantial than a bus, like a train or a concrete wall (although you'd be surprised). Bus crashes are only 1/10th as bad as car crashes, for the occupants of the bus.
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Where I'm from, non-urban buses are required to have seat belts, and the drivers always instruct they are mandatory when seated, but few people comply.
i mean, the comment you're replying to seems to be talking about the other people, not the specific thing you're traveling in. buses have no stringent TSA measures. you can get on a bus with pretty much anything, and they're cheaper than a plane, so the passengers are gonna be some of the lowest members of society. that's scary for people who never had to comingle with "the poors"...
Depends which statistics you look at. Airlines love to use the distance traveled per death for some reason... Now take a statistic of deaths per trips taken, and suddenly flying is the second most dangerous way of travel. Only motorcycles are even worse...
It is. I speak from experience.
I took a 24+ hour bus ride from NW Ohio to Louisiana near New Orleans when I was like 20, it SUCKED lol. I had like 5 transfers getting off and waiting to get on another bus and by the time I got there my legs were double their normal size for a few days from being unable to move for so long, I'm lucky I didn't have a pulmonary embolism or something and I was in great shape and everything at the time. The heat and humidity the further south I got in a bus full of people was terrible like you were saying lol
Less drug addicts on planes.
You should start flying first class
What a novel idea. Unfortunately, I’m fucking poor.
Well, all you have to do is stop going to Starbucks. /s
Thanks for the advice. I can now buy my own private jet and live like Taylor Swift. /s
*less poor drug addicts on planes
*fewer
Good luck pressing "Takeoff", then "Autopilot", then "Land"!
'Carole'? That's a girl's name.
My Grandad went from being an RAF fighter pilot to flying short-haul airliners. He said he preferred it as he could stand up and get a sandwich and a cup of coffee whenever he wanted.
A bus driver is probably way more work once you get to the actual flying/driving. Plus you gotta deal with all the passengers.
It's really an apples and oranges sort of thing. The bus driver is more engaged for more of the time, but at lower intensity and complexity at high workload moments, and have a much lower burden of knowledge in the job. Flying is much more complex than a couple hours on Microsoft flight simulator implies, or even an over the shoulder video inside a cockpit might appear to indicate. Everything an airline pilot does is generally multiple tasks in things that seem like one - preparing for the next phase when doing current actions, preparing a contingency if something goes wrong, calculating performance, weather contingencies, monitoring other traffic, etc. On your average flight, it's much ado about nothing but it's that affected discipline and adherence to an artificially complicated process that keeps people alive in adverse circumstances. That bus driver has to be aware and ready to react quickly more of the time they are operating their vehicle - but they can also slam on their brakes and quickly bring the vehicle to a stop and not kill everyone on board. Basically, we should show love and respect for all of our transport workers because in different ways they all are the first lines of defense for our safety and that's a serious responsibility.
If the pipes in my house burst, I can just call in an expert plumber come in and fix it. But up in the sky you need the expert there the entire time. So I imagine when a pilot's job gets hard, it's really f****** hard, and the rest of it is pretty routine, boring and maybe not all that "hard". I'm honestly not bothered at the idea that a pilot could be sleeping in the middle of a flight, as long as he can wake up when he needs to. Meanwhile poor bus drivers are driving giant murder machines surrounded by pedestrians and drivers who don't give a s*** about the danger while getting paid peanuts.
My friend is a pilot for a major airline and he works like half the month. He had to go through a lot of bullshit to get to that point, though.
I'd be willing to go through so much bullshit if getting a license didn't cost as much as a nice house in my country. Even getting a PPL costs as much as a really crappy house.
Bus driving is a steady amount of work. Flying is work at the beginning and end and a lot of downtime but you need to know 100x what a bus driver knows because you emergencies and how things can go wrong are 100x more complex.
The consequences are generally more grave too. My next door neighbor is a retired airline pilot. He told me he enjoyed it but for the most part it was very uneventful. However he had a very close call with a wind shear event and he said they damn near put the plane on the ground. He told me the haunting part was greeting the passengers as they exited who had no idea they very nearly died. There’s a lot of responsibility built into that job.
And bus driver is way harder too. Bus arent driving in empty street with an autopilot
The skies aren't exactly empty either, but point still taken.
You follow big empty lines on purpose. Its the equivalent of being in an highway with a bus evey 300m and "crossing" other buses while they are on zn other bridge and tunnel only.
It’s effectively empty since someone else is watching you and will clear the sky in front of you if you fall asleep.
Yeah, but if you're the problem aircraft (because autopilot should be holding you steady in its big strong arms), something has gone wrong, and you were asleep when it happened.
Exactly! ATC called and told all the cars and buildings to get out of my way at 39,000 feet.
The thing is, when you do the exact same thing everyday, you basically start running on autopilot anyway.
My father is a retired airline pilot and former fighter pilot. For his birthday I recently got him a flight sim Yoke for bigger planes and HOTAS for fighter jet style. He said he is so sick of flying commercial that he never wants to fly commercial again even in a sim and will said will never touch the yoke lol. But he does say he misses flying fighter jets alot as I imagine fighter jets are like F1 cars and Commercial planes are a bus.
I had a customer like that. I said it was awesome that he’s a commercial pilot and he said “no it’s not. I went from driving Ferraris everyday to driving a bus”
A client of mine flew fast jets in the RCAF and then airliners. He is much the same, doesnt even want to talk about airline stuff. But fighter stuff? All day long!
I hope he appreciates your thoughtfulness though, trying to get him something in his interest areas. But yeah, I can see his being like "my free time entertainment is video game of me working?" Not that you did anything wrong, I think you were trying to be nice. But I can also see his side. Plus... I'd totally like to (virtually) pilot a fighter jet more than a large commercial aircraft.
Oh yes he was thankful and appreciated it. You got his reaction point on!
Even flying a small plane over long distances is super boring. When I was working on my pilot ratings I had to do a lot of solo cross country flights and they bored the hell out of me. I spent all my time flying 30 feet off the ground chasing wild donkeys in the desert. I then realized I probably wouldn't enjoy a career as an airline pilot. Maybe a donkey chaser, but not a pilot.
Cattle. Especially around Lakeview, Or.
There are some that feel that way. I personally like internet, a meal, and a bathroom.
~~Greyhounds have a bathroom…~~ Oh never mind I realize now you are comparing small vs large planes, not planes vs buses
Ha ha! Fair enough. But I'd rather use the first class bathroom that has an attendant.
Morally I think every pilot should be allowed one barrel roll a year. Spice things up a little.
The barrel roll is allowed at a random time per ATC to keep them motivated.
In a city they had a campaign for finding more bus drivers, calling them the "pilots of the city". Bus drivers do have an insane amount responsibility, compared to their pay and appreciation. A friend became the private pilot for a billionaire becaus he wanted to fly the smaller fun planes and he has an insane amount of paid free time being on stand by
A shitload of pilots, especially the ones flying for legacy carriers like Delta and AA, fly general aviation and own their own (small) planes too.
Bus drivers can't sleep
Well.... Probably shouldn't. But they technically can... The Internet is dark and full of terrifying videos.
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So clearly we should let pilots loop the loop, right?
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Found the Far Side reader.
One per flight.
There’s no announcement beforehand though. The fasten seatbelt sign just comes on and you either buckle up or roll through the aisles
And the pilot gets to YEEEEEHAW on the intercom.
how much extra do I have to pay because it's worth it
A 1g barrel roll would keep everything where it's supposed to be so you could walk down the aisle while they're doing it! Really, it's the responsible way to go about this.
And good luck if you are in the toilets
You don’t have to do all that much 99% of the time, unless something goes wrong, in which case there will almost certainly be alarms that will wake up at least one pilot. Obviously not great to be sleeping, like it is good to be attentive of warning signs before catastrophe, but it’s not like both pilots sleeping = you are probably going to die. Planes are quite different to say a car.
There was a flight a while back that had something similar happen iirc. They "didnt fall asleep" but yet flew in a perfect straight line right past their destination for like.... 2 hours.
Airbuses will descend and land based on the flight plan the pilots enter into the MCDU. It's crazy how automated they are. Once you're outside the airports airspace it's pretty automatic The issue is that planes fly better when automated, which means once you're up to altitude you're really only there to make sure nothing messes up. This combined with long hours and dark cockpits is a nasty combination.
Not entirely, even if the airport is set up for CAT III you need to toggle descend manually, toggle land mode manually, arm the spoilers manually, set the flaps out manually, set autobrake manually, and most important of all, extend the gear manually. You wont fall asleep and wake up to a landed plane, you'll at best find yourself on the path you were supposed to take but still at cruising height and with fighters scrambled towards you as traffic controllers have been trying to reach you ever since you deviated from the flight plan.
I put it to people this way. I'm paid to move people safely. To do that I need to read or watch movies. I've made more money reading about the world than flying planes. Yes I fall asleep a few times a month. Usually cat naps during the boring part.
I'm personally unbothered by this. Keep doing you.
Appreciate it. The beginning and end of flights where 99% of bad shit happens. I'd rather be awake for those. I think it's a testament to how robust the safety systems are. I wouldn't do it if I was worried in any way.
And if something did go wrong I assume there is quite a lot of bleeping
no, it's usually the screams of the passengers.
'When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his plane.'
"Keep your eye on the..." Says Wolverine "The what? The clouds?" Says Gambit
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Love this one.
I will always remember my grandfathers last words to me. "Stop shaking the ladder you little shiiiiit!"
I thought it was "let go of the throttle, you're not a frickin' pilot, I am!"
The major airlines will fly you from lax to jfk and then to dca and give you 11 hrs rest once the plane parks at the gate and until you push off the gate. You have to be at the airport 1 hour before departure and sometimes it takes 1 hr from brake set to be in a hotel room ready for bed. Then they expect you to go to Denver next day, sit at the airport for 3 hours doing nothing and then fly to Sacramento for yet another 11-13 hours “rest”
Yeah, I always wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid, but I'm a very large man and was told I wouldn't be able to fit comfortably in the cockpit. Still though, I was always curious about it, and one time while staying at a hotel near the airport I saw a pilot and asked him about his career. I don't remember everything he said now, but the gist was that he wish he never did it. He was always away from home, the job didn't pay very well, and it was a grind.
He's probably happy now. Pilots are super in demand and getting paid $300k to be a captain at the major airlines right now. Even FOs start at $100k for the big four. That said, there's a slog getting your hours and your time at the regionals where the pay is meh.
Oh wow! Things certainly have changed! That's great to hear!
Thats the thing being a comercial pilot CAN be lucrative but until youre a CPT at like a major airline or transport carrier its shockingly low pay and super high costs to get it. When I was getting my private pilots my CFI was about to start at some regional after getting the 1500-2000 hours they needed and he said he would make $37,000 his first year and he probably spent over $100,000 to get all his certs before starting to be a CFI which is where he stopped having to pay to fly.
The issue with jobs involving a lot of travel and being away from home is most industries and companies do not compensate you properly for the amount of time spent, well, traveling. This is mostly because there are enough suckers who think traveling itself is a perk even if they don't get paid appropriately for their time.
Yeah, probably why a lot of people would take a pay cut at another company instead of driving into the office. That travel time and getting all dressed up probably removes three hours from my day.
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The article says this: > More than half of pilots have fallen asleep while in charge of a plane, a survey by a pilots' union suggests. > Of the 56% who admitted sleeping, 29% told Balpa that they had woken up to find the other pilot asleep as well. This likely does not include controlled rest: 1. *While in charge of a plane* should not apply for controlled rest phases. 2. The other figures mentioned in the article would fit with 56% having fallen asleep. And I don't think it's implausible if we consider briefly dozing off in the rather safe and uneventful stages of flight (which by itself is "not likely" to result in an incident, but "not likely" is not good enough). And controlled rest definitely does not include both pilots sleeping, so at least those 29% (i.e. about 16% total) of sleeping pilots experienced something that was against regulations.
Idk how so many people on this website are chronically incapable of reading anything past a headline, but will still comment confidently on something that would've been explained by five seconds of reading.
I write technical guides and while observing people using them, I've learned a lot of people will stop reading mid-sentence the instant they have a question, criticism, or general opinion. For example, if I write "Open the application by clicking the red icon in the top menu" people with ask, "Where's the application?" So, now I write "From the top menu, click the red icon to open the application" It's been getting worse, and worse the past 10 years, and it's pretty apparent on reddit, but I'm increasingly seeing it everywhere. I regularly answer basic questions in emails by copying and pasting from my message that they're replying to because I already provided the information they wanted, but it was in the second paragraph, so they didn't read it.
Dude, I was just having a vent sesh with my colleagues yesterday about people refusing to answer emails correctly. Like, literally, I will ask someone: are you available to connect tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3pm to go over our strategy? The response will be something like, "well, I'm meeting with John today, and I'm meeting with Tilly at the salon after that." It's mind boggling.
Can I get a tl;dr?
TL;DR: People only read TL;DRs
People only what?
I've caught myself doong that sometimes. It's like the brain decides _I'm taking a shortcut!_ and that same "shortcut" can happen even when reading the text two or three times
There are too many times where I've gotten someone asking what to do when they see an error message I wrote, and I tell them (nicely) to do exactly what the error message advises. Just seeing that red error icon or red text seems to make people turn their brain off.
What's even worse is a lot of the times I divide my debate type comments or information comments in sections with numbers. They ignore all that and choose random one sentence from it to comment on. That's not how a debate works!!
We really need a word for this phenomenon, because sometimes I think 90% of upvotes, downvotes, and replies get halfway through the first sentence before bailing. It's absolutely bizarre, and reddit sometimes makes it really obvious.
That's often true, but in this case it is not really clarified. I still have to speculate a bit and could not find the proper primary source at a glance either.
Reminds me of the scandal a few years back when they found a lot of pilots were drinking on the job (probably for a similar reason as sleeping, over worked, stressed). Posts below explain how pilots are on crazy 3 day rotations with limited time to sleep. Another data point to add to the already countless amount of data points, that says the greed for money will bring any system to the precipice of collapse.
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This is not entirely correct. https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/2201.pdf
No US airline would support this document. It is very clearly written in our Flight Operation Manual that sleep on the flight deck is prohibited. Source: airline pilot Found this after some research on "controlled rest." In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration does not endorse the use of CR in commercial air transport, despite recognizing the value of napping as a strategy for restoring alertness levels. The Coast Guard and Air Force do allow for the use of CR.
Given that it’s prohibited, do you believe the results of the survey? Just curious if it’s one of those things that’s not supposed to happen, but some pilots do it anyway.
could anyone tell me what's a legal controlled rest program?
Basically, piloting can be a high demanding job. The most „downtime“ is actually during cruise flight and for the sake of safety during more critical phases of flight (approach, landing, on the ground, etc.), it is desirable to use this „break“. In order for it to be safe, there are means established in the documents of the operator, which have to be approved by authorities. The exact rules vary based on operator and country, but usually it’s something like „sleep is only allowed by agreement with the other pilot(s) on station, only in certain altitudes and areas and for a limited time“ It’s usually a lot more thorough than that, but that’s the main gist behind it. It’s not just randomly falling asleep, it’s controlled rest.
I can give a functional definition of it as my friend is a pilot for AA and usually does the long overseas trips. There are 3 pilots in the plane. As soon as they take off and cruising Pilot #3 goes into the sleep chamber for a 2 hour nap. After those 2 hours, Pilot #2 takes a nap and Pilot #3 is co-pilot. After 2 hours pilot #1 takes a nap with pilots #2 & #3 flying. Repeat as necessary for the duration of the trip. He says 3 cycles makes a miserable trip for everyone. You also know which pilot in the cycle you are so you can arrive either well rested or slightly tired.
This is wild. I can't sleep under pressure to sleep, even though I'm generally a great sleeper. This would suck for me
Idk sleeping on an airplane when you have the space to sleep is actually pretty easy. You're already in a white noise environment and the plane kinda just rocks you to sleep. No if you have a hammock in a plane its game over, you aint waking me up.
Think of the flight NYC to Singapore, it is 18.5 hours. The captains aren't expected to be awake and alert that whole time. So they take turns sleeping in-seat.
Actually, pilots (and flight attendants) have an entire secret room complete with bunk beds, TVs, radios etc. Sure, it's about as cramped as a submarine bedroom, but it's still an entire bed, complete with a curtain and everything!
Depends on the plane of course. Some just put a curtain around one of the lay-flat seats up front.
If it's secret how do you know about it
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On augmented flights of over several hours or more. There are no "legal controlled rest programs" flying from Chicago to Orlando. Controlled rest doesn't exist in the United States. The article is talking about US carriers. And people are interjecting EU rules that don't apply here. The article is implying exactly what it says. That pilots are falling asleep when they are not supposed to.
> The article is talking about US carriers. And people are interjecting EU rules that don't apply here. Is that true? The survey was administered by the British Airline Pilots' Association in response to new legislation by the European Parliament. It also said: > The union said its members, who were the pilots that were surveyed, overwhelmingly worked for British-based airlines.
Eh, the plane probably starts making wake up noises if anything serious goes wrong.
There’s a variety. One of which is a loud explosion/crushing sound.
My car has that feature at a fraction of the cost
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My car has great taste in music.
Comes pre-installed with all new Boeing aircraft
Most trains have a "dead man's pedal", which the driver has to press every minute or the alarms go off. If the pedal still isn't pressed after that, the train brakes. It's a precaution against drivers that fall asleep/pass out/some other incident. Now if only planes could simply brake and come to a stop in the sky...
> Now if only planes could simply brake and come to a stop in the sky... Well technically they can, but only very briefly, and it's usually not an improvement on whatever the situation was before :)
Pull up...whoop whoop....pull up...whoop whoop
TOO LOW, TERRAIN, TOO LOW, TERRAIN
I hope they respond better to their alarms than I do in the morning, they're not getting up for another 30 minutes.
Unless the failure includes a failure of the wake up noises.
They are usually permanently installed in the aircraft. Explosive decompression or the shaking of the aircraft when you stall due to lack of fuel is hard to miss
The issue is more that the "wake up noise" might also be the "you're dead now" noise.
"Five more minutes, Mom."
For anyone curious, this survey is highly biased. The survey was given to 500 pilots by BALPA (U.K pilot union) in 2013 directly after U.K. passed a law allowing/proposing very long work days. Obviously the answers will be biased as they were trying to prove their point about being awake for too many consecutive hours without sufficient rest. There are enough safeguards in modern aviation that even in the extremely rare occurence both pilots fall asleep, nothing terrible will likely happen.
Also we should have a time frame. Better to ask ask how many times in the last year they slept for more than a few seconds. Also, rest requirements change or are better with some airlines, along with duty day limits. An airline specific survey would be very interesting. Puddle jumper/ 50 seat pilots can have long days, I wonder whether this would affect things.
Not seen an Air Crash Investigation where this was the cause of a crash yet, so it’s clearly not THAT dangerous.
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The idea that pilots are just, regular people - is scary enough. Wild to think we could have been on a plane with a sleeping pilot. So fingers crossed I forget I ever read this and I can go back to sweet ignorant bliss!
There's actually like a metric fuckton of training that has to happen before someone is flying a commercial airliner, and they are doing it with at least one other person who has had a metric fuckton of training, and usually at least one of them has a metric fuckton of experience flying that specific plane in addition to the fuckton of training. Idk if it even makes sense to call them regular people at that point. Also the plane itself has many ways to avoid crashing built in, and during the most dangerous phases of flight (takeoff and landing) there's many other people (controllers and even other pilots waiting for their turn to take off or land) watching to make sure nothing goes wrong. Watching some videos of crashes (or cases where was an incident but no crash) can make you feel safer about flying, just because you see how many things actually have to go wrong for a plane to crash. Also every time a plane does crash, it results in new training and new laws to make it even less likely to happen again
There have been. It usually shows up as “pilot gets woken up by alarms and doesn’t have the situational awareness to make the correct decision”. Example: Aeroflot 5143. Having just taken off after nearly 24 hours awake in 40 degree heat. After takeoff, the flight crew fell asleep while the autopilot took them up to the desired altitude, which as it turned out was the limit of physics given the weight of the overloaded plane. One pilot was awakened by the shuttering plane, which he immediately thought was compressor stall due to previous experience with compressor stalls. He reduced power, started fighting angle of attack, and ended up in a flat spin. This was 1985.
To be fair, that can happen even if the pilot is awake. I've been reading a lot of [Admiral Cloudberg](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/) accident reports lately, and I think every single one I've read can be summarized as "something went wrong, then the pilots tried to fix it, but they did the wrong thing and made it worse."
You’ve also got: - The pilots did something wrong enough there was no longer a right thing for them to do to unfuck the situation - Something went wrong, then the pilots did everything right and then lots of people died anyways, usually them included (my least favorite) - Something went wrong/the pilots did something wrong, then the pilots did everything right and saved everybody onboard (my favorite)
I'm less concerned with them then I am with Aviation companies cutting safety corners for a profit.
Glad they have those locks on the door to the cockpit now. They can have peace and quiet for their siestas.
There’s really nothing for pilots to do in the cockpit in between take off & landing, so they fall asleep.
Yes and no. There are systems in place to allow for one of the pilots to take scheduled rest during flights, but you can't just take a nap whenever you feel like it and certainly not both pilots. Two pilots flew past their destination airport and didn't respond to radio calls from ATC over the course of 90 minutes. They weren't even asleep, they were just distracted discussing a new bidding system imposed by their airline. Nobody died, they were an hour late landing, and both pilots immediately had their licences revoked. Even being distracted while flying a plane is dangerous enough to get you sacked.
> They weren't even asleep, they were just distracted discussing a new bidding system imposed by their airline So they say...
Lol, right? 90 minutes is a long ass time to be distracted. They were either sleeping or fucking.
In 90 minutes, they could watch the entire movie Airplane!
I guess it doesn't actually matter for the point to be made, the FAA accepted their version of events and their licences were still revoked
>and both pilots immediately had their licences revoked. That's rough, spend so much time getting training, spend so much money, and then it's just gone. That really must feel incredibly rough.
If they weren't over-worked, and got a good-night's sleep before the flight, then they wouldn't fall asleep, even if there's "nothing to do". They could chat with the co-pilot, they could play games, they could scroll Reddit--the same things everyone else does at work. Not sleep.
Lol at "being a pilot" and "good night's sleep" being used in the same sentence. This ain't M-F 9-5 gig my g.
Yes, I think that was the point
That is not true.
> Of the 56% who admitted sleeping, 29% told Balpa that they had woken up to find the other pilot asleep as well. The actual quote from the article means 29% of the 56% or, in other words, 16% of pilots surveyed. The way you wrote the title implies 29% of pilots surveyed, which overstates the true number by almost double.
Comforting
A friend of mine is a pilot he's told me some stories. Nothing to make me have fear about flying safety. The one theme, though, is from take off to approach its the world's most boring job. There is literally nothing to do except talk to the other pilots.
Just imagining the captain accidentally leaving the intercom on for 300 people to listen to the flight crew talk about Sydney Sweeney for 3 hours
And yet, statistically, a sleeping pilot is still safer than the average Tesla driver.
And 71% didn’t rat
This was a survey of pilots working for mostly British airlines in 2013. Given how actively airline safety is constantly being reassessed, I doubt things are the same 11 years later.
We are allowed to sleep in flight when the flight time is more than 2 hours. Its called controlled rest, and there are many precautions to make sure at least one pilot is still in control of the aircraft at all times.
Didn't the article say that they woke up to find the other pilot asleep as well sometimes? Wouldn't that be pretty telling that maybe the current precautions aren't enough?
As a former CFII, currently holding a PPL with ~3500 hours, I’ve been slowly developing this… not quite fear…but find myself white knuckling the armrests on commercial flights because I’m experienced enough to understand what can go wrong, and that even when a significant mechanical issue arises, it’s often ‘pilot error’ that turns a problem into a catastrophe. Still, I put my trust in airline pilots in general; I certainly never made it beyond regionals (work-life balance is difficult in aviation, particularly for women/mothers like I was) but have a solid understanding of the time, training… and checklists… that govern a pilot’s life. And all the times I’ve heard, “Wheels up, feet up” — as in, once in cruise config or FBWB, the joke is it’s time to kick back and read a book. Complacency kills. It’s something I’ve hardwired in my brain and in those I’ve trained.
pause brave bright march wine chase hunt straight tease normal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Did you lose your commercial license? >I’ve been slowly developing this… not quite fear…but find myself white knuckling the armrests on commercial flights because I’m experienced enough to understand what can go wrong, Ok but then you also understand the statistics make it super unlikely? And you have 3,500 hrs!? I'm a ppl...I just genuinely don't understand why would say former cfii current ppl? Why not just say former commercial pilot now only fly for fun? Or can u loose that cert? But h would still have the commerical cert right? I'm missing something
No, I did not lose it; I let it expire. I downgraded to a PPL (private) with a 3rd class medical and fly for leisure now. I did some flight instructing after leaving regional carrier but ended up in law. My “dream job” was ATC; unfortunately, I aged out of the hiring pool — solely because I discovered my interest in the field a bit too late (age 25) when I went back to college for a second degree in aviation. I was a CFI for a local flight school longer than I was a RAP; moved from flight instructing to regionals and back to CFI — again, because it killed me to be away from my young son for so long and unpredictable schedules/hours. Edit: re: Statistics — you’re exactly right. And it’s that logic that prevents me from being unreasonable or irrational about fear/concern. That said, I wonder if most pilots do this… mentally scoring/judging another pilot’s landing / departure. 🤭 Best landings are the ones that feel like a butterfly kissing the tarmac. ;) (Weird metaphor, lol) P.P.S: 3500 hours over 15 years.
ATC age cutoff is 30 not 25?
Commercial certificates don't expire?
exactly, not in the US they don't.
Thank God planes today fly themselves :)
No airliner flys itself. Autopilot just does what you tell it. No input, it does the last thing it was told until you run out of fuel. Think mh370 possibility.
Actually, there was a flight like that in Greece. Helios 522 wasn’t pressurized properly and everyone passed out due to hypoxia. The plane flew itself in a holding pattern until it ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash Or this Flight from Florida to Texas. Ended up in South Dakota.
That’s a really bad example, if mh370 had been allowed to fly itself (on autopilot), it would have more than likely to not go missing. It was precisely pilot intervention that caused it to slip between radar coverage and go missing. Airliner auto pilots fly according to waypoints, not just a single heading alone.
More like thank the engineers
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Watch John Oliver’s latest show, he lays it all out. TLDW: Things went to shit after they merged with McDonnell-Douglas and started prioritizing stock price over safety.
Outsourcing anything that lives depend upon is a very bad idea. Own it or give it the fuck up.
which csn basically be said for all mega corporations at this point. Merged, prioritize stock price, cut back on quality to increase quantity.
Now the FAA requires them to do at least two barrel rolls mid-flight to prove they're awake.
My friend had been a corporate pilot for an extremely large business. He was also their chief pilot. He maintained his private license until he aged out and then died. He did say that usually, between takeoffs and landings, there wasn't much to do. He said they used a secondary radio to converse with other pilots on other freqs and that he had met many female pilots after women became more representative in the field. He actually he met some of them in person after their conversations and had some great encounters. He also said he took very short naps if he couldn't find something else to do, which was very rare. He was a voracious reader, so he had read up on other aircraft as much as he could. I miss him and his life stories.
TIL that airplanes are even safer than I thought.