Originally Posted by
jayray2
Give it a while and see how much you and the pilots you fly with use the AP. Give it 3 months and make me a list of the decisions you make as an airline First Officer (and deciding to do your walk around now or later doesn't count as a decision, neither does deciding between coke or 7 up). Then go rent a 172, plan a flight from San Diego to Sacramento, fly it and then make a list of all the decisions you had to make. Your GA list will be 5 times as long. Airline flying is cake, pure and simple. How can being in an airliner with 10 minutes of extra gas and a sick passenger be harder than being in a 172 and how is speed relevant? You can't have a low fuel situation with a sick passenger in a 172? At least in an airliner I know how much gas I have, in a 172 I am always just guessing while looking at gas gauges that are constantly changing. In an airline there are two engines, at least 3 crew members, all of ATC and all of dispatch at your disposal. You are not only drastically over exaggerating airline flying you are also over glorifying it.
Dude, jay...in case you're confused, you're on an
Airline Pilot Forum...it's safe to assume we all know how much the autopilot is used, and that sometimes it gets boring. You don't need to educate anyone here about the differences between flying 121 vs. a 172. It's also safe to assume the majority of us were CFI's at some point in our careers, and we're all aware of just how
easy it is to put together a VFR or IFR flight plan. In fact, I'm willing to bet most of us could do it under 2 minutes flat...if not on the roll. Don't even try to make it sound like planning a flight is hard, especially in a piston-single aircraft
You must be the luckiest airline pilot alive. I've been in a few sticky situations as a result of mistakes made by the very people that you assume are doing their job correctly (dispatchers, mechanics, ATC, GSA's, schedulers, etc.). They are human, just like us, and are bound to make mistakes just as we do sometimes. I guess it just makes your job easier to simply assume they did it right.
