Hello, my dear friends!
I’m very happy to see you, I hope you had a nice weekend and I wish your upcoming week will be also really great!If you watch my Youtube videos, you may have noticed, that I often call my videos dull. Today I want to tell you the reason, the underground why I do so.
The history of my ‘dull videos’ goes back to several years, when I only began writing my Russian blog, http://www.denokan.livejournal.ru . I watched a video of a b737 approach in Sochi – the pilots filmed it in a very nice weather, they were very relaxed and enthusiastic, and this video brought its viewers lots of emotions. Really, when you fly to Sochi and the weather is great, you receive lots of positive emotions – this Russian airport is located on a shore of the Black Sea, so the sea is on the western side of the field, and high nice mountains are to the west.
So, the pilots put the camera on a glare shield, the autoflight was on and the airplane flew the ILS approach. The autopilot was doing its job very good, as it is doing in most of times. and an interesting discussion was held in the cockpit. Approaching the decision altitude, they got busy discussing a military ship, and after passing this height they switched their eyes towards the people, lying on the beach and discussed this fact with voices full of humor. And finally they switched off the autopilot at a rather low altitude and successfully landed.
Yeah, it was a very nice and positive video, so it received lots of likes from the viewers. But not from me – I looked at this video from the position of rules and procedures. And these guys, rules and procedures, wouldn’t be happy with what was happening during that approach.
Landing is the most critical stage of flight. Even if you’re flying with the automation on, even if the weather is very good – you must monitor what’s happening in the cockpit but not on the beaches. You should be ready if something goes wrong – for example, a bird strike which can immediately turn all whites to blacks and revert your emotions to very negative state. The autopilot works great in 99.9% of time, but it also can do harm. If it all happens rather high from the ground you have a lot of time to handle the situation, but if you’re flying low and continue descending, you have to be prepared for a quick response. Most incidents and accidents happened when the airplane was taking off or landing.
Do you think that these pilots were happy with my reply? Maybe, you think that their viewers who had put likes on the video were happy? No, you’re mistaken.
I was called as a ‘dull pedant’, as ‘robot’. I was told that nothing could happen because the autopilot was switched on. I was rather disappointed by the fact that people do not think about the risks of being so unserious while being doing this very serious and demanding work.
And then I uploaded a couple of my inflight videos. They showed our routine procedures during takeoff and landing. And with an intention to include a piece of humor, I named them as ‘dull cockpit videos’. The idea was to show, that even if a pilot follows procedures and rules, flying is not dull really, so, you may do your work as it is required to be done and still get fun and pleasure from this routine.
So, several years has gone since that days, and I see, that it works. It really works! Flying is never dull, even if you’re doing your best to follow all that rules and procedures. Moreover, if you know what to do in every moment of the flight, and what to be aware of, if you then do it and if you aware it, if your colleague is working the same way, then you cope easily with most of routine flight situations, even when the weather is not at the best, and the airport is not the easiest.
So, the fact is - doing your work correctly may bring you even more fun and pleasure, than when you’re playing a macho role, looking at girls who are 300 feet below you instead of flying the airplane. If you want to be a macho pilot, then just buy your own airplane and do everything you want, but not very close to normal people. If you decided to be an airline pilot, you have to leave your machism somewhere outside of the airplane.
This was my little secret. Now you know why I call my inflight videos dull, though, of’course, flying is never dull, even if you’re an airline pilot whose work is restricted by narrow borders of rules, procedures and limitations.
That’s all, my friends! Enjoy your lives, enjoy your flights and
Fly Safe!
