Ever wondered what pilots do between take off and landing on long-haul flights? Well, according to some jet jockeys, they are mainly trying to stave off boredom.
A contributor to the Quora forum who identifies himself as Redza Jamil writes: “I’m a 777 driver and constantly have to battle boredom in flight. Whilst I try to fill my time with the necessary tasks like monitoring fuel and making some sort of plan B if things start to get exciting, that usually takes very little time … So there’s a lot of chatting with the other guy in the other seat.”
He also says he likes to take a book to read, although some airlines don’t allow this.
Other forum members said they are kept busy talking to air traffic control, monitoring the weather, checking the instruments and so on, but they occupy what spare time they have with such things as:
+ “Chat with the other crew. There’s almost always something to talk about.”
+ “Music is great. If you’re alone then it doesn’t matter how badly you sing along… just make sure you don’t have a stuck mic and broadcast your debut to the world.”
+ “I’ll pull out the NYT [New York Times] crossword app on my iPad. Or I’ll read a book on the iPad, or catch up on my magazine reading.
+ “Eat snacks, drink coffee or have a meal.”
+ “Watch in front of you, though the likely hood [sic] of anything being in flight path is very small.”
Related story: What you can do on a long flight
