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.

I just want to know if your article will be printed in the Reader's Digest Large Print edition. You know, for all of us old folks sitting in Coach.

Sorry for not being more clear about my credentials. I'm a freelance writer, and I've done a lot of work for Reader's Digest. Here's my home page: Michelle Crouch. To see some of my work, click on "Michelle's clips." Since the administrators removed my e-mail address from my previous posts, please contact me through the link on my site. Thanks.

1. Pilots are smarter than your average bear.

2. The airplanes we fly are not bricks. If the engines stop, it doesn't mean we are going to fall out of the sky. It just means we are landing sooner than scheduled.

3. About passenger's fear of flying (and dying whilst flying): If it's your time to go, it's your time to go. It doesn't matter if you are driving to work, sitting at home, or traveling in an airplane. So, fear not, we are going to do our very best to keep you alive.

4. Unfortunately for #3, if it's our time to go, it's your time to go too. ;)

Hey everyone,
I love the suggestions from Capt. Carl, FlyJSH and Puckhead (the rest of you had me LOL) and I'd like to use some of them verbatim, but my editor requires me to actually communicate with you. Can you guys please use the link on my home page to email me a phone number so I can be in touch? As I said before, I don't need to use your name in the story, just confirm your existence and/or experience. My deadline is tomorrow! Thanks.

Fifty things you pilot does not tell you...

1. We have a rope we can use to climb out our windows if things get bad. Unfortunately at 39,000 feet, it does not reach all the way to the ground.
2. Flying at about 500 miles an hour, if we were to stop suddenly, the dentures of the old man sitting behind you would fly out of his mouth and probably hit you.
3. The only people more unhappy than the people crowded in the airplanes are the flight attendants and pilots.
4. Pilots have very high opinions of themselves, usually higher than they fly.
5. Pilots keep the cockpit door locked and no one is allowed in because sometimes they fly around without their clothes.
6. When the pilot makes anouncements, he thinks he sounds like James Earl Jones, when he actually sounds like Don Knotts.
7. Pilots love flying, they just would rather fly by themselves.
8. Pilots are more concerned about an ontime arrival if they have a flight to catch to go home.
9. Sometimes pilots look at each other and at the same time say "what was that?"
10. If you think the cabin air is bad, you should be up in the cockpit with a captain who ate the hard boiled eggs and beef-n-bean burrito for lunch.

Obviously a little play here. It is hard to be serious because we are taught to tell all. Obviously, the technical and boring stuff is left out, but most people like to know what is going on. There is not a lot of obfuscating going on, at least to my knowledge. Good luck with your article...

Sadly, I think most of us would love to help, but we also have trust issues. There is no doubt in my mind that you are who you say you are which is exactly why we are suspicious. After incidents like Colgan 3407 it's become even more important what we say or don't say. Believe me I want to scream at the top of my lungs so the world can hear how messed up our industry is and our passengers perception of it. You wouldn't believe some of the comments I used to get on a daily basis. With that said, most of the companies we work for very specifically prohibit us from talking to any media of any kind with the consequences of losing our jobs or worse, not getting another. Would you hire a whistle blower? They wouldn't. Again would love to help, but won't.

Most of what you mentioned are myths and hoaxes anyway.

As for the autopilot, the best analogy I can think of for a non-pilot is this: When you engage the cruise control on your car does it drive your car? Yes and no. It controls your speed and does what YOU tell it to do. No more, no less. Exactly like an autopilot. Garbage in, garbage out.

Edit: ^^And what ToeJam said ;-)^^
8 is especially true. Hey if you commuted from San Francisco to New York a couple times a week than you would understand too. Just remember, every HELL you go though whenever you travel, we go through on a daily basis to an extreme. How our flight attendants find the courage to smile every day, I don't know, but I admire them for it. In the mean time I'll admire the view!

Amen!!!

......

Or... "sometimes it does that".

Not all of those folks are sitting in the back, dear. :)

No competition...

Trust issues or not, you guys crack me up! At the very least, thanks for the entertainment! And thanks to those of you who responded to my e-mail. I'm still holding onto hope that Puckhead will come around...

"What's it doing now ...?' :eek:

I think the biggest misconception that needs to be cleared up is we don't make tons of money. This calendar year, flying for a regional airline, I will make about $21,000 BEFORE taxes. Most of us are dirt poor. A few get lucky and make it to that 6-figure dream job... but don't let the uniform fool you into thinking we are all well off. MOST of us are just struggling to pay the bills, going without a meal because we can't afford it or sleeping on the crew room couch because we can't afford a crash pad/hotel room.

Hope you passed that to her in person so she can use it.

Or, if you're in a Bus - "It's doing it again"...

or..... "I'm sure it's just the indicator"

The finished product.

Plus, advice from flight attendants.

And who's really flying your airplane.

Whatever you do, don't read the comments

RD Humor in Uniform
 

This was in the Humor in Uniform section from the same copy of the '50 things" Readers Digest Issue

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/...18_634x482.jpg