Alonsito ✈️

A good suggestion for a post recently: What do pilots do in cruise? Is it boring? Climbing up to cruise & descending for the approach is fun & active. A lot of it is hand-flown; most I fly with hand-fly the jet up to 18,000’ or more. On descent, it’s a little busier & there can be lots of changes to the plan, so the autopilot stays on longer, but once you are established on the straight-in part of the approach the autopilot gets clicked off, as long as the weather is good. If the weather is bad, we’ll generally leave it on until we can see the runway (but you *mostly* have to turn it off around 150’ above the ground. The rules vary by airline). In cruise, the autopilot has the jet. The flight plan is programmed in before you take off, so if there are no changes, the jet will fly the flight plan exactly as it’s programmed. It knows when to climb or descend, but can’t do it unless you spin the altitude knob to the altitude you want. For example, it knows when it’s time to descend to 6,000’, but it will stay at 32,000’ until you spin the knob down to 6. In this sense, the autopilot is always overridden by the pilots & can’t do certain things unless the pilots approve. There are many things the autopilot doesn’t know. It has no idea about weather, traffic or terrain. Some jets can actually deal with traffic, but not all, and if you program a jet to fly from LA to Denver at 3,000’, at some point it will attempt to tunnel through the earth. It also has no idea what Air Traffic Control (ATC) is asking for. So, there is some involvement from the pilots. We’re always monitoring the jet to make sure nothing goes wrong. If it does, the autopilot doesn’t know that…it can’t handle an engine failure or a fuel leak, and if it’s trying to do something but the jet isn’t responding the way it expects, it just gives up, sounds an alarm & turns itself off. Most of the time, though, none of that happens. So, it can be kind of boring staring at the instruments for 4 or 5 hours. I personally like to look out the windows. We get a pretty spectacular view up there. But that doesn’t hold your attention forever. Cell phone use is banned at most airlines. We’re not scrolling social media. Now, some people ignore that ban, and it’s kind of a battle we’re having internally in the airlines & union. I know of one guy that got fired for pulling his phone out repeatedly during a sim session to text. That’s absolutely a no-go. But, some people do pull out their phones. Maybe they are checking their calendar. It’s hard to make a distinction here, but the rule says no phones. In the not too distant past, magazines, books & newspapers were the norm. They are still acceptable, but I don’t see that a lot. Not sure why, it just is. Conversation is good, and sometimes you get into really good ones. But sometimes it’s the same conversation you had with the last guy, about the contract or the union or the new base rumor or unsolicited financial advice or boats, whatever. After a while, that gets old; I tend to be kind of quiet when flying & hope that doesn’t come across as not liking the First Officer, but I don’t care enough to do small talk just to be liked. We have iPads to use for all our charts & a bunch of other stuff. It’s a fantastic tool, but that’s another post. Anyway, you can review the flight manual on it, studying up. You manage your schedule on the airline app…by far, this is what I see most FOs do. They are looking to trade & improve their schedule. It’s OK to read the news on your iPad, as long as the company approves the app. You can go on the internet, but must be careful. The company knows everything that iPad does, and if they decide to look into it, they’ll have every keystroke. I’ll look into golf & watches, but not much more. Mostly, though, I like to look outside, particularly at night. The iPad screen can wreck night vision, so I’ll turn it off. I’m out of space. Hope that helped! The pics were taken IAW my airline’s policy.