But this “Coffee, Tea, or Me?” fantasy image overshadowed the real role of the flight attendant: safety. Although most passengers still believe that 80 percent of a flight attendant’s job is providing comfort, the truth is that they’re there primarily in case of an emergency. Far from being cushy, the job requires extensive training (usually six to eight weeks plus a yearly review and updates), often grueling hours, and significant physical stamina (those carts they push around weigh about 250 pounds). And ironically, the one thing they’re best trained to handle is the one thing most of them will never have to deal with: disasters.
Lawsuits brought about some major changes in hiring practices in the 1970s. Airlines in the United States began to hire men and drop some age and weight limits. In the following decades, the changing economics of flying forced fewer flight attendants to oversee more passengers, and their job became increasingly important and difficult. These men and women must constantly juggle their duel roles as both authority figures and reassuring, accommodating attendants. (Even their uniforms are a mix of military and vogue fashions.)
For all the work, a flight attendant’s salary is nothing to write home about, especially in the first few years, and many of them work second jobs when they’re not on duty. Plus, they cannot choose their flights or fellow crew members until they have gained seniority at their airline. That’s one reason the flight attendants are often older on international and transcontinental flights—routes that are usually more desirable—than those on short domestic hops. Nevertheless, the perquisites of the job are great: Flight attendants can fly nearly free to anywhere in the world if there’s an open seat on an airplane, and because they are often on call or on the job for days at a stretch, they often get three- or four-day “weekends.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS REPORTEDLY HEARD ON VARIOUS AIRLINES:
“Your seat cushions can be used for flotation, and in the event of an emergency water landing, please take them with our compliments.”
“We do feature a smoking section on this flight; if you must smoke, contact a member of the flight crew and we will escort you to the wing of the airplane.”
“As you exit the plane, please make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses.”
“Weather at our destination is fifty degrees with some broken clouds, but they’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than [our] airline.”
“Folks, we have reached our cruising altitude now, so I am going to switch the seat belt sign off. Feel free to move about as you wish, but please stay inside the plane till we land…it’s a bit cold outside, and if you walk on the wings it affects the flight pattern.”
In the 1960s, the now-defunct Braniff Airlines called flight attendants hosties and dressed them in eye-popping outfits designed by fashion designer Emilio Pucci. The uniforms were so reminiscent of something a James Bond girl might wear that the stewardesses came to be known as Puccis Galore.
Behind Cockpit Doors
Experienced fliers are always vying to find the best seat on a flight, but unfortunately the very best seats are already reserved: the three or four seats inside the cockpit. If you could sit in the cockpit, not only would you get stupendous views throughout the flight (and particularly during the descent and landing), but you’d find an answer to almost every question about flying you might have. How can the pilots possibly manage all those cockpit instruments? Why is it so important that they know how heavy the airplane is? How do they tell the difference between all the runways at a big airport? And who are those pilots, anyway? The following chapters explore these questions, and more.
What Are Those Pilots Up To?
How many times have you boarded an airplane in a rush, settled yourself into your seat, and then sat and wondered: “Who’s flying this thing?” It’s rare to get more than a quick glimpse at the pilots, and yet we all want some kind of reassurance that they know what they’re doing. That little speech they give about ten minutes after takeoff doesn’t help. Even if it’s not drowned out by airplane noise, the passengers are left thinking: “Was that voice old enough to fly this thing? Did it sound confident enough?” And while you sit, hurtling across the sky, what exactly are those pilots doing behind that closed door?
Although flight attendants are often rushing people to board and sit down as quickly as possible these days, it’s a great idea to take your child up to the cockpit to meet the pilots before takeoff (or borrow someone else’s kid if you don’t have one and you’re embarrassed to go up alone). Even if you just stick your head in and say, “Howdy!” you’ll feel better having seen the pilots in their element. Don’t feel bad if they can’t talk long; they’ve got a lot to do before takeoff.
Who’s in Charge?
Every passenger flight (other than tiny charter or commuter flights) has at least two people in the cockpit, the captain and the first officer. Some folks say “pilot and copilot,” but that’s not really correct, because they’re both qualified pilots. In fact, the first officer might even have more flying experience than the captain, but perhaps not as many years with that particular airline—the positions are based almost entirely on seniority.
Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle. It’s just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
—Captain Rex Kramer,
from the movie AIRPLANE!
You can tell the difference between the two pretty easily: The captain sits in the left seat, has four shoulder stripes, and a laurel insignia on the brim of his or her cap. The first officer has only three stripes and no cap insignia. In older Boeing 727 and 747 aircraft, as well as in the DC-10, there is a third certified pilot in the cockpit: a second officer or flight engineer who monitors the airplane’s hydraulic systems, air-conditioning, and other things that are handled entirely by computers in all newer airplanes.
While some pilots may look young, remember that they have typically flown for ten or twelve years, accumulating over 2,000 hours of flying time for cargo companies, the military, or small commuter airlines—before a major airline will even consider hiring them. Then, in order to get their type rating, the pilots must undergo intensive training on the particular type of aircraft they’re going to fly, including practicing every sort of imaginable emergency situation in a flight simulator. Imagine if you had the chance to practice skidding your car in a snowstorm or handling it when the brakes go out…over and over until you mastered it. Pilots who have experienced potentially disastrous problems in flight report that they didn’t panic—they just did what they had already practiced dozens of times in the simulator.
Some other interesting pilot facts:
Pilots are typically certified to fly only one kind of aircraft at a time. A Boeing 747 pilot isn’t allowed to fly a 727, even if she used to fly one. Of course, there are a few exceptions, such as several Airbus models that have almost identical cockpits.
Pilots have to retire at age sixty (or even fifty-five in some countries). It’s not really a safety issue, and many older pilots want to change this rule, but without forced retirement younger pilots would advance much slower.
Captains must get a medical exam every six months, and first officers are required to have at least one each year. They both have an EKG at age thirty-five, and then annually after they turn forty. Also, both must have twenty-twenty vision, but they can wear contact lenses or glasses to achieve it.
A pilot’s domicile is the place from which his or her flights usually originate. However, the domicile isn’t necessarily where the pilot lives. A pilot might live in California and be domiciled 1,000 miles away in Washington state. That pilot would have to commute to work by jump-seating on other flights (taking an available seat in the cabin or one of the extra seats in the cockpit).
Airlines require their pilots to take additional training and testing each year. Often, these
training sessions are designed to advance a 737 first officer to a 737 captain, or a 737 captain to a 757 first officer, and so on. Again, imagine how safe a driver you would be if you were required to take driver’s education and testing every year!
Although there’s a public perception that pilots can be daredevils (think of the movie Top Gun), commercial pilots tend to be very conservative and cautious. Airlines don’t want pilots who will take risks with their passengers and $200-million airplanes.
Pilots typically aren’t allowed to have beards. It’s not a style issue; a beard would stop the oxygen mask from fitting tightly enough if the cabin pressure dropped suddenly. By the way, if one pilot gets up to use the toilet in the middle of the flight, the other pilot must put his oxygen mask on, just in case the pressure drops while he or she is alone in the cockpit.
Pilots almost always have someone looking over their shoulder—literally! They watch each other in the cockpit, and airlines and regulatory organizations (like the Federal Aviation Administration) randomly perform line checks in which an inspector sits in the cockpit to review how well the pilots maintain proper procedures. Plus, cockpit computers and air traffic control are constantly monitoring what pilots do. Some pilots say it’s like driving with a police car behind you all the time. There is also a surprising amount of paperwork they are required to file.
While the FAA says that pilots cannot drink alcohol within eight hours of takeoff, many airlines have even stricter rules and won’t let pilots drink a full twenty-four hours before a flight.
You may have noticed that pilots carry or wheel around large black bags between flights. These aren’t their carry-on luggage; they contain hefty airline and aircraft operations manuals, as well as maps of airports and the various landing approaches the aircraft can take.
One of the great misperceptions about pilots is that they get paid a lot for working very little. First of all, pay is usually based on seniority at an airline, so it may take many years until a pilot can fly the largest jets and achieve a higher pay scale. Some pilots are paid hardly more than school-teachers.
The pilots’ headsets are always tuned to the air traffic control radio frequencies, but the pilots also communicate with their airline’s offices via private radio channels. Before takeoff, the airline’s dispatcher confirms the number of passengers on board, the amount of fuel loaded, the weight of the aircraft, the takeoff speed, whether there are animals on board or in the cargo hold, and the airport’s general security status.
It’s true that pilots typically only fly seventy or eighty hours each month (the maximum is set by federal regulations and union contracts), but that only includes the time from block to block—pushing back from the departure gate to parking at the arrival gate. Those hours don’t include checking the aircraft, figuring fuel loads, and confirming flight plans. They also don’t include the time between flights that the crew must spend away from their family and home.
The captain and the first officer always eat different meals during a flight, just in case one of them gets sick.
All told, pilots usually spend at least 160 hours per month “at work.” However, these hours are spread out. Some pilots end up working four ten-hour days a week (though they won’t actually be flying for more than eight of those in each twenty-four-hour period). Other pilots are away from home for up to two weeks at a time and then may have two weeks off.
What Do the Pilots Do?
A pilot’s job involves strictly following routines while constantly preparing for anything nonroutine. The two pilots on any given flight usually show up at the airport about one or two hours before takeoff and immediately start flight preparations. These include reviewing the flight plan, programming it into the autopilot system, double-checking the calculations for the fuel load, and meeting the rest of the crew (in many cases pilots at large airlines have never met each other or the flight attendants until the day of a flight).
Either the captain or the first officer performs a walkaround before each flight—often while a mechanic does a similar but separate check—looking for obvious problems or damage to the exterior of the airplane, including loose rivets, dents in the engine fan blades, or fluid dripping from unusual places. (Some fluid is okay; for example, water often drips from the air-conditioning ducts under the airplane.) It’s not just a cursory check; they can be penalized if they overlook even something as “minor” as a burned-out wing lightbulb.
Back in the cockpit, the pilots also check more than 100 switches, instruments, warning lights, and circuit breakers. Can you imagine inspecting every aspect of your car (turn signals, fuses, warning lights, amount of fuel, and so on), not just once each morning but every time you wanted to drive somewhere? And even though the pilots have done this same cockpit review hundreds of times before, they don’t rely on memory. One pilot reads out an item from a printed checklist, and the other pilot performs the check.
In fact, there’s much more discussion between the pilots than you might expect. Besides this preflight checklist, they carefully review printed checklists while taxiing to the runway, before takeoff, after takeoff, before landing, and after landing. This somewhat obsessive routine is always the same, but that’s one reason flying is so safe.
Even on a short commuter flight, pilots discuss the takeoff and flight in great detail, including calculating three important speeds:
The “go/no go” velocity, called V 1. Before V 1, the pilots can stop the aircraft in an emergency; after V 1, they’re committed to flying, and any emergency’s more safely handled in the air.
The speed at which the tail of the airplane will be rotated down, called V r. (The tail is rotated to raise the nose and increase the angle at which the airplane is “attacking” the oncoming wind. The higher angle lets the airplane take off.)
The velocity at which the aircraft will actually leave the runway, called V 2. To accommodate wind changes or other unexpected events, this is almost 30 percent faster than the aircraft actually requires to take off.
These numbers change depending on the weight of the aircraft, the amount of fuel in the tanks, the ambient temperature that day, and other factors. Then the pilots talk out the contingencies, such as who will do what if they need to abort the takeoff, and what runway they’ll land on if they need to land in a hurry. This is like deciding not only the route you’re going to drive to work but exactly how fast you’ll enter the freeway and what you’ll do if you get a flat tire during the drive.
Taking Flight
Most passengers think the captain does the flying and the first officer helps out. Actually, either one of them might be the “flying pilot” at any given time. If the two are flying multiple legs of a trip together, they might alternate flying the airplane. Sometimes both pilots work simultaneously; for instance, on takeoff, it’s standard practice for both pilots to have a hand on the throttle, though only the flying pilot is really pushing. If anything happened to one pilot, the other pilot would be ready to take over instantaneously. However, while both pilots monitor the cockpit instruments and airspace, the ultimate responsibility of the flight always rests with the captain.
Pilots are typically busiest during takeoff and landing, when there’s a lot going on. These are such critical times that pilots (at least those under American federal regulations) are subject to a “sterile cockpit” rule: There are to be no interruptions or discussions about anything other than the operation and safety of the flight from takeoff until 10,000-feet altitude, and again from 10,000 feet down until landing.
During the flight, though, the pilots tend to be more relaxed, joking and enjoying the scenery. Pilots develop an uncanny ability to carry on a conversation while still listening to every air traffic control instruction and monitoring the cockpit instruments and radar. Of course, they can sit back partly because they’re letting the autopilot do most of the work. The idea of an autopilot seems to make some passengers nervous, but computers can actually fly airplanes more smoothly than humans, mak
ing dozens of flight-path corrections each second. However, the autopilot isn’t usually a completely hands-off affair; each time air traffic control tells the pilots to turn or change altitude, the flying pilot reaches over and dials the new setting into the autopilot, which then gently makes the correction.
Autopilots in many of today’s jets have the ability to take off, fly, and land an airplane; some can even taxi to the gate and park (the airport also has to have special equipment for this). But pilots almost always perform takeoffs and landings themselves, as well as hand-fly the airplane up to 10,000 or 15,000 feet. After all, they became pilots because they love to fly airplanes.
Each airline’s flight operations center calculates the proper amount of fuel for an aircraft based on total weight and the distance the airplane has to travel. At takeoff, airplanes must have enough fuel to get to where they’re heading, then fly to an alternate airport if necessary, and then circle in a holding pattern for a while.
Once the airplane has landed, be sure to say “thanks” to the pilots on your way out the door. Also, if you have any questions or concerns about something that happened on your flight, take a moment to ask one of the pilots about it. These folks have spent many years on their craft, and though they’re often busy preparing for another flight, they really do want you to feel comfortable.
There are five basic methods of navigating an airplane (or boat, or any other vehicle).
PILOTAGE: Comparing what you see on the ground with a map.
The Flying Book Page 9