Help with Reader's Digest article?
 

Hi,
So I'm not an airline pilot, but I was hoping you guys could help with something. I'm a writer for Reader's Digest, and I’ve been assigned to do an article called “50 things your pilot won’t tell you.” The article will essentially be a list of things that people ought to know or will find interesting about air travel and pilots: your advice to passengers, the truth about cabin air and autopilot, dispelling the myths people believe about pilots and air travel, the real conditions pilots work under, whether we should be worried when there’s turbulence, etc.

So, this is your chance: what do you wish people knew? The magazine is asking me to talk to at least a dozen pilots. I would not need to use your name. (In other words, you can be anonymous.) The story is due Friday!

Thanks so much! -- Michelle Crouch, freelance writer

1. When you buy a ticket for a one hour flight, the two pilots together get less than $2 of your fare.

2. Your round trip ticket to London works out to about 10 cents per mile. The cab ride to the airport costs at least TWO DOLLARS per mile.

3. The airlines do not control the security personnel working for TSA.

1. My first year I made $20,000 flying real people around.

2. Some nights we only get 8 hours from when we get off the plane until we need to be back for the next flight.

3. My second year I only made $25,000.

4. Some days we have to delay flights so we can get food since the airline on occasion will not give us lunch breaks or time to get food. Oh and they never provide it either.

What is the "non-truth" about these two subjects that we would be trying to turn into a truth?

Cabin air is pressurized, heated or cooled (outside air temperature extremes of 120 in summer time Phoenix to 50 BELOW ZERO at cruise altitude), and then recirculated throughout the cabin.

Very little fresh air is let in because that impacts the efficiency of the aircraft (read that to mean would cost the airlines money) by having to pressurized and heat and cool that additional fresh air.

Pilots and cabin crew get to breath that air every moment of every day that they fly.

Autopilot????? It controls the aircraft automatically, with inputs from the pilots to tell the autopilot what they want it to do. It's used for 99% of any typical airline flight. Take off and most landings (99.99999%) are done by hand.

If it should fail, like most aircraft systems, there is usually a second one. If the autopilot should completely fail, the pilots can fly the plane much like you drive your car... with your hands.

The truth about the autopilot... His name is George, not Otto, and using the manual inflation tube blows!

The pilots have parachutes. We dont tell the passengers.

Thanks so much for the responses, everyone! My editor requires me to actually talk to you or email you in order to use your suggestions, so would you mind contacting me via my previously posted address? As I said before, I won't use your names.

Also, I asked about the cabin air and autopilot because I think a lot of passengers have misperceptions about those things (they think the cabin air is particularly germy and that the planes just fly themselves) and I thought you guys would welcome the opportunity to clarify that.

I'd welcome more responses. Thanks!

I'll tell you everything. My consulting rate is $175 per hour.

Hi Michelle, would you please post your "readers digest.com" email address or a link to the bio page on your freelance website so forum users have a better chance to verify your credential as a professional writer. Absent that, i think responses via this thread are fine.

All the journalists and writers that have asked for assistance via this forum (that have been successful) have offered the basic courtesy of better identifying themselves.

Cockpit air is 100% fresh air. Cabin air is a mixture of fresh and recirculated air. It`s been filtered and is cleaner than air in most office buildings. Don`t believe all of the stories that you hear, both here and other places.It`s prolly cleaner than the air in Nigeria, Tony.