who's really flying your airplane the pilot or the autopilot I'll explain it
all coming up
hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a 747
pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation today I'm here in Anchorage
Alaska I know I've come here a lot but this is
a view from my hotel room it's very common for people to make the assumption
that the autopilot is doing all the work and while the technology for this
continues to improve it's not quite there yet for it to do everything in
this video I'm going to explain when the autopilot is flying the plane and when
the pilot is flying the plane let's get into it as you walk on the aircraft most
people tend to look into the cockpit well at least I do nerd and usually
you'll see the pilots are up there smashing a bunch of buttons and the
computer and what we're actually doing is loading up the route that we're gonna
be flying so that way the autopilot knows exactly where we're going and we
get a picture on our screens which let us know this is the route that air
traffic control is expecting us to fly and you'll notice that the pilots have
their charts out and they may be talking about different things about the flight
and it's actually one of the busiest times for us when you're getting on the
aircraft now once that main cabin doors close
to the aircraft the flight attendants ask us if we need anything and give us any
additional information that we need before we take off and then we'll get
onto our flight and we get to start doing the stuff we actually enjoy which
is flying the plane instead of doing paperwork or putting things in the
computer but how much the pilots are actually flying the plane depends on a
few different things and there's quite a few misconceptions out there I've been
thinking about it recently and I've come up with two reasons why there's this
misconception that the pilots aren't actually doing anything up there first
back in the day when I was a kid we used to get to run up to the flight deck once
the plane was in crews once the plane got into the cruise the captain would
make an announcement and say any children I don't remember what the age
limits were I was probably five but they could come up and look up in the flight
deck and what you would do is jump out and climb over your parents and get into
the aisle and run up to the flight deck and just Pelt questions to the pilots
and then usually after a three or four they'd get annoyed with you and tell you
to go away now during that time the autopilot was obviously on one pilot
would be listening but the reality was as both pilots would be turned and
talking to you even though
one guy was talking on the radio which I wasn't really paying attention
to I was just excited to be up there unfortunately thanks to a few special
someone's that party is over now the only people coming up on the flight deck
are the flight attendants and they're either coming up to bring us food or to
relieve us so we can go into the bathroom so when they come up there all
they're seeing is that one guy has talked it on the radio and the other
guys leaving obviously it's not like we're doing a lot of work up there so
that is the only impression that they have when they come up onto the flight
deck so it's reasons like that that I think
most people think that we're up there doing nothing except telling
inappropriate jokes I would never do that and pounding all the good snacks
that we stole from the flight attendants basket which she had made perfectly and
told us not to touch guilty as charged now I want to tell you a quick story
about the time that we had a flight attendant ride up on the flight deck
with us when we do a certain type called a repo flight which is a repositioning
flight meaning we're moving the aircraft empty without passengers from one city
to another city that could have been because of a maintenance issue it could
have been weather or it could have just been that that was the original plan
that they knew they were gonna drop people off and not pick anybody up from
that city when we do those types of flights often a flight n't will be able
to come up into the flight deck and sit up there during takeoff and landing pick
me pick me now I really enjoyed doing these repo flights because the flight
attendants get it really see what it is that we're doing up there because what
they only see is when we're on the ground and filling out paperwork or
typing stuff into our computer or when were up in crews and we're not really
doing very much so I think it's very cool that they get to see what actually
goes on for takeoff and landing and I always love as we line up to the runway
before we actually take off I always look at them make sure they're ready to
go and I always love that look on their face it's that ear to ear smile they are
so excited to be up there and it reminds me just how cool my job is so in this
story a couple years back we take off we get through 10,000 feet we finish all of
our checklist I look back and I said pretty cool huh and she said to me this
is maybe one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my entire life I think she
was under the impression that all we did is sit up there and do things like
pressing takeoff then autopilot then land she said something else to me I'll
never forget she said I had no idea how much
work you guys were actually doing and now I understand why it's important that
we don't call you below 10,000 feet next time you're on a flight I want you to
listen through about 10,000 feet you're gonna hear a bell or a ding or a noise
and that's a way for the flight attendants to know from the pilots we're
through 10,000 feet and out of sterile sterile is a term that we use in
aviation which means everything below 10,000 feet is business only there's no
unnecessary chatter up on the flight deck or from the flight attendants so
how much the pilots are actually flying the plane depends on a few different
things one of those things is the airport there are some departures that
the aircraft has to fly specific routes on and during that that autopilot will
usually get turned on around 400 feet or different altitudes pretty low below a
thousand feet depending on the plane that you're flying and for us honestly
it's really boring to have to turn on the autopilot at 250 feet when you know
that you're gonna be flying the next 12 hours but rules are rules
now that specific airport or departure doesn't require us to do that then the
pilots will have the option to actually fly the aircraft every pilot is
different some pilots will choose to fly it through 10,000 feet some will fly it
all the way up to the initial cruise altitude it really depends you're making
the other pilot do all the radio communication and turn the knobs and do
everything else while you're just enjoying flying the plane it's a little
bit of a rude thing so usually if the air traffic control radio traffic is
really heavy I'll have them engage the autopilot so I
can assist with them and we can both be paying attention to everything that's
going on if we're looking for other planes or trying to avoid weather things
like that now landing is the exact same thing it depends on the pilot in my
experience in the smaller aircraft the pilots are actually pan flying the
aircraft a lot more and in my case some of the earlier plates that I flew did
even have autopilot so I had to hand fly all flight the whole cruise takeoff
landing everything I had to do all of it but those smaller aircrafts are a little
bit more like hot rods so air traffic control knows that they can swing them
in and make them into tighter turns than what we use normally see from a larger
aircraft the thing is is with the autopilot it's not always very fast to
react so a lot of times if they're gonna put you on a tight turn or things like
that to get you into land you have to turn the autopilot off to get the plane
to do what you wanted to do because it's
gonna be moving a lot slower than if you were actually hand flying the aircraft
on landing the aircraft I would say the average is usually three to five minutes
that the pilots actually disconnect and hand fly the aircraft and even more
common than that is probably below 2,000 or 3,000 feet I typically don't see
pilot disconnect the autopilot before that especially on longer flights so if
you're sitting in the back how do you know when the pilots have disconnected
the autopilot so there's two real ways to know when the pilots have
disconnected the autopilot is you're coming in to land the first is if you're
sitting towards the front of the plane you're gonna hear a bell or a whistle or
something learning the pilot that the autopilot has been taken off the other
way to know is if the plane starts doing this then you know in most cases who's
flying now it's no surprise with all the time that pilots are spending with
flight attendants we tend to marry them but what are the other two professions
that pilots usually marry I talk about it right here I look forward to hearing
from you until then keep the blue side up