What do pilots actually do during Cruise Flight, on a long flight in the cockpit (Part 3B) Reality check!

(just motoring along……..)

Part 1: Background and a quick lesson on Cruise Flight.

Part 2: What procedurally, is happening in the cockpit during the Cruise portion of the flight?

Part 3A & 3B: What’s the reality of what’s happening in the cockpit during Cruise Flight?

Part 4: Do pilots fall asleep in the cockpit?

(Part 3B, The reality)

As mentioned in Part 3A, the mood and morale of the cockpit crew, is generally set by the Captain or who else is in the cockpit with you during the flight. Obviously, if you’re flying with an FAA checker/inspector, the Chief Pilot or another management “cronies”, you’re going to try to be on your best behavior and do things “by the book” per the standard operating procedures. It’s going to be pretty dry, boring and mentally taxing. You’re just waiting for the flight to hurry up and end.

Generally, if you’re the First Officer flying with the Captain for the very first time, you’re “sizing” up the person. Though many times, pilots already knows who the “Frank Burns Captain” are in the company. Every Captain has their own methods, particular personalities (good or bad) and quirks. This also holds true for the First Officer and/or Second Officer if applicable. But by the time you get up to cruise flight, you pretty much have an idea about your fellow crewmember that you might be spending the next several hours with (or longer).

The grey suits at the FAA and Company Management will scoff and get an “oozing rash” in unseen places to what’s going to be written now, but what’s going to be written is in fact the reality. Not unsafe, but safe and again the reality. As written in Part 3A, it’s an impossible task to do what’s officially mandated by the FAA and what the company policy dictates. If you take what they say totally in context of “black and white”, you’re asking for problems, leading to an unsafe flying environment and a potential disaster. Our best guest is that in the vast “majority” of flights over several hours long, pilots are violating company policy in one capacity or another. Now, we’re saying per company policy or even FAA policy, but again we’re trying to make “sense” out of “non-sense” and trying to apply “Common Sense”.

If both pilots are on the same page and get along with each other, after reaching cruise and you finish the cockpit “housekeeping”, it’s pretty much “boring and mundane”. There’s really not much to do except monitor the instruments and countdown the clock. Most pilots have similar backgrounds, interests, hobbies and “gripes”.  So there’s always thing to talk about.

During cruise, hardly anyone brings out the company manuals and read it for our personal enjoyment. Most pilots will bring out the flights and operation manuals if your behind in putting in the endless revisions into you’re flight and operation manuals, upgrading to Captain, transitioning to another aircraft or you have a PC (Pilot Check) coming up and have to study and “rememorize” a lot of the aircraft limitation numbers and procedures. Sad but true, many times, as soon as you’re “paroled” from the flight training center (Free at last, Free at last….. you can’t wait to get the hell out of there soon enough), you flush a lot of the stuff they crammed into your brain. It probably like cramming for Advanced Calculus in college, for most, once Finals are over, everything goes to the “flush” section.

For most pilots, the newspaper of choice comes out of the flight bag …. “USA Today”, since it’s always available at the hotels we stay at. I never read our local newspaper on my flight day, and take it with me for later reading during cruise. Pilots will bring out various magazines and books. And some will bring out the Wall Street Journal wondering where they lost all their money. Now, you do have to be careful about which magazines you bring out with both males and females members of the cockpit crew. Now would I bring out the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition like my First Officer did a couple of weeks ago, if there was a “female” pilot in the cockpit, probably not. Though a few months ago, a female First Officer asked me if it was OK for her to read her Cosmo magazine (Hell, I don’t care what my First Officer reads, if that’s her thing, more power to you).  I thought it was pretty funny that she asked, and I appreciated that she asked me, but I understand her apprehension with the “Political Correctness HR Police” all around. Try asking that to a Frank Burns Captain and see what happens…. holy crap! Straight to a sensitivities rehabilitation camp and an extra PC!

Now you do have to be somewhat careful with “certain” Flight Attendants when they enter the cockpit to bring your meals to you, sitting in the cockpit when the other pilot goes to the lavatory or when they “just want to hang out”. When you get the Frank Burns – Major Houlihan syndrome Flight Attendant, they’ll rat you out to the company and management if they see any “unauthorized” materials out in the cockpit. Their names are known (We know who you are!), so when you fly with them and they need to come into the cockpit, everything gets put away and we just stare out the window (they have to let us know that they want to come up into the cockpit, so we have time to “clean up” the flight deck). It’s really stupid, as soon as they leave, everything get pulled out again. Again, it’s the “ridiculous policy” and not reality. To them, they think that they’re doing their jobs by “ratting out” the pilots. Little do they know, that the official “policy” actually makes it more unsafe by keeping us “staring” and fixated at the aircraft instruments, waiting for something to go wrong for 8 BORING mind numbing hours!

During cruise, a lot of pilots plucks out our their laptops and “do your thing”.  Some international carriers can get the internet in the cockpit….. cool! Many times we’re looking at bidding and planning our future flying schedules. Some are looking at their investments or “lack of”, and other business their into (you’ll be surprised how many pilots have other things going on besides flying airplanes). We’re also looking at company bulletins and union literature. Some are working on their “resumes” …. I’m completely serious, when the company is “tanking”, you’ve got to lookout for number one. I had a really funny Captain at another airline I was flying with, I was a First Officer at that time and that when that particular airline was going down the toilet…. everyone was scrambling to get another job. This Captain’s logbook was so screwed up that none of the numbers (hours of flight etc.) came out correct. It was a total and utter mess…. and here he had an interview with a “major” freight carrier in 3 days (you have to take your logbooks with you). So for the next two days I was flying with him during cruise flight, we had the Post-its all over the cockpit window and calculators out, trying to clean up and redo part of his logbook. IT TOOK HOURS and HOURS!!!  The flight attendant who came into the cockpit to bring us our crew meal just shook her head, wondering what’s with all the Post-its all over the place. It was pretty funny. At the end of the day, he got hired on… “Way to go Mike!” When you get along with the other pilot, it’s enjoyable and you do what you can to help your flying comrades out.

(Continuing on…) Depending on who you’re flying with, some risqué material might be brought out. “No”…. not hardcore porn! In all my career, I’ve never seen another pilot watch a porn flick on duty. Though I’ve seen some hidden porn pictures and hidden “rubber dildos” in the cockpit in years past, but that’s another blog and story for the future. Stay tuned in the future for the true story of the “Rubber Penis that flew around the world”….. twice!

But a lot of the times, we’re just conversing with each other. Football season is always a good topic of discussion or what’s happening now, the NCAA Basketball tournament. Whether it’s the NFL, college football, baseball, basketball etc., when you’re flying with another pilot who’s interested in sports, it’s pretty fun. Talking about airplanes is always a common base and what we flew in our previous “life”. When you’re a “newbie” pilot and get a really cool Captain, they’ll usually brief you on the “in’s and out’s” of the company, head’s up on issues and more times than not, “who to avoid or to be careful of”. I saved myself a lot of grief by listening to my seniors when I first entered the company and progressed up the seniority ranks.

There’s one personality trait about pilots, we’re “generally” a Type A personality, driven individuals, competitive, “wants it a certain way” and “hate to lose”. We tend to “gripe and complain” a lot because of our personality trait. But when the crap hits the fan in an emergency onboard our airplanes, it’s our personality traits that gives the pilot the competitive edge to hopefully get out of the situation. Sometimes we really do complain a lot about both trivial and serious on goings in the company, sometimes too much. But somehow, that also brings the comradely between the pilots in an “Us against them” brotherhood (sorry to all the female pilots, couldn’t think up a good word!). Sometimes the “bitching” sessions during cruise makes the time “fly” by quicker.

But on the flip side, discussion in the cockpit during cruise, can also get pretty “contentious” when pilots disagree with each other. Again, this reverts back to the Type A personality. As I posted by Joe’s Podcast (I hope you had a chance to listen to his Podcast….. again Thanks Joe!) pilots can be very, very hard headed and opinionated. Over the years, I’ve learned that there are several topics that I rarely, if at all talk about in the cockpit, namely “Politics” at the top of the short list of “taboo” topics. Though you would think that pilots come from the same “cookie cutter” mold regarding politics, it’s very surprising how opinions vary widely. You can get the “Bill O’Reilly pilot” on one flight and then the “Keith Olbermann pilot” on the next. Sometimes you can tell something about the person by looking at their flight bags with stickers on it. Does it have an NRA sticker? Does it have Obama 08 sticker? You can also tell by what literature they read in the cockpit. I know that there are Captains that are edging and drooling for a debate and I see the First Officers getting “suckered” into one (like the flight to Honolulu). One thing about political debates in the cockpit, it festers like a cancer, respect for your fellow crewmember goes right out the cockpit window and it goes on and on and on. As we were getting into our crew van in Honolulu, I could tell how “frustrated and miffed” the First Officer was, and to think they’re probably going to go at it all over again the following day.

Nowadays, when another pilot asks me about my opinion regarding politics or a political issue, I just tell them that I have no opinion, and just move on to the next topic. If they persist to ask me during the flight, I just “politely” ask them that it’s not a good subject to bring up in the cockpit whether I completely agree or disagree with them. Most if not all, get it, when I ask them that. It’s not because I outrank them, but it’s the way I “ask and request”, not “tell” them. It’s not worth having bad feelings or making another crewmember feel that way, because one person’s political viewpoint may differ from another. I personally feel that a contentious, heated political debate in the cockpit between two highly opinionated pilots are much “more dangerous” than falling asleep in the cockpit.

Now remember when all this is going on, we’re still monitoring the aircraft instrument and trends. It’s like what I’m doing now, I’m writing this blog while watching the NCAA Basketball tournament. You can even write blogs during cruise! Now, if it was “so dangerous” for pilots to read newspaper, pull out their laptops and to do other activities like doing a crossword puzzle during cruise flight, airplanes will be falling out of the skies at alarming rates….. but they don’t.

Cruise flight, is what it is, “boring and mundane”. However, if the Master Caution or Master Warning light ever comes on, you’re ready for action. You’re not going to say, “Hmmmmm…..Master Warning/Caution Light came on, hold on now, I’ve got to finish reading this article in the newspaper or finish my Sudoku puzzle, you’re going to drop everything you’re doing in a split second, and battle the problem at hand. That’s what we’re trained for, that’s what all our years of experience are for. What we wrote is just some of the things that we do during cruise flight, in any case, you’re in safe hands and statistics will prove that out.

(Part 4, Do pilots fall asleep in the cockpit?)