airline pilots have a drinking and flying competition and a pilot has
a code brown situation in flight in this episode of cockpit confessionals
coming up 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 I've had a lot of people requesting to do more cockpit confessional
so obviously, you all like them if you have a story that is a crew member that you can send
to me the easiest way to do it is either send it via Instagram or you can send it through the free
form I created for you guys there is a section there for suggested videos and suggestions on
things that we can do to improve everything so you can leave it in both places and who knows maybe
it ends up here I tell a lot of these stories in the first person but for obvious reasons I
have not involved in any of these stories I've not participated or done any of them let's get into it
every time we show up to set up a flight the captain and the first officer are usually
kind of making some small talk where have you been flying how long have you been here things
like that they're kind of filling out each other to establish some rapport and i can't
stress this enough for this particular story this person that told me this story it's not
something that i can stress enough just how stupid it is so please please please
do not do it you can ruin your career you can kill yourself or you could kill other people
don't do this story basically what this captain said is when we were talking about what have they
been doing in the last couple days off he said yeah i just had my annual landing competition
with a couple of buddies from the military that we went through flight school together
and now with the airlines i was like oh that's pretty cool where do you guys do that he goes
oh i got this big ranch and i got this private runway so we go out there and we just kind of
have a landing competition once a year and we put a couple thousand dollars each into this
pot and then whoever has the best landing gets to keep the money i said oh that sounds pretty
cool how does it work i'm kind of interested and that's where it started to get a little
bit dark and scary for me these guys in their 20s basically started this tradition and they
every year would go meet up have some drinks get drunk and then have this landing competition
they'd mark off a section on this private strip and whoever was the first to land on that and
the number of tries whoever was the first to land on there was able to win the pot of money
now I've heard of guys getting into the flight simulators that we do training for I've heard
and those are very realistic by the way I've heard of guys getting in those drunk
which you can't really hurt anybody or yourself I mean I guess you could fall over or something but
that's not really a huge thing but doing it in a plane seems so so stupid to me but that's what
these guys did and this is cockpit confessionals once again I can't stress this enough do not
ever do that you'll be risking your life your friends lives your careers everything
in the u.s we have this airline that flies into texas a lot and they do a lot of flights they
have some really great pilots but they are able to sometimes bend the rules there are rumors that
they use to bribe air traffic control by sending food and pizzas i asked an air drive controller
about that they said they're not allowed to accept those types of things from different
airlines but i don't know this is just a story that i was told back in the day when i was a
regional pilot i used to have to jumpsuit a lot to get to work or get home so i was riding on the
flight deck with these guys on this particular airline which is known for flying and taxing
rather quickly as i was on my way home to texas we were descending in and we were going through about
13 000 and the pilot was doing about 280 knots it was the captain that was flying on this leg
so we're doing about 280 knots and i thought okay nope that's pretty normal that's about what we do
and then at 11 he was still doing 280 knots as he was approaching 10 000 feet he was still doing 280
knots and there's a rule in the us that below 10 000 feet you can't be doing more than 250 knots
now when you're a jump seater you typically don't want to speak up you have two pilots that are
trained in what they're doing and you're catching a ride so you don't want to speak up unless it's
something that's very obvious that there's going to be death or there's going to be a major problem
or something like that you usually try to maybe hint something or throw something out so as we
approach 10 000 i go speed just kind of casual like that to see if they were going to catch on
and they just both ignored me and they were both looking at everything they weren't talking or
doing other things they were just focused on what was happening and as we hit through 10 000 they
ended up about ninety five hundred and i said um cap you kept you're doing 280. the captain and the
fo kind of start chuckling a little bit and then the captain does this son this is the texas 250
once we get through about 9000 feet air traffic control calls up and says hey guys what is your
speed and the captain says hold on I'll do the call he goes yeah we're doing 250. we got a
really strong tailwind up here but it looks like it's about to shear off as he says that he yanks
the speed brakes all the way back and they end up slowing up the 250 and getting in and landing now
how much time did they save I don't know maybe 30 seconds to a minute now the way it is with the way
the reporting is that's coming off the aircraft you can't lie because they can see your speed
this was at a time when that stuff wasn't getting transmitted to air traffic control so you could
say hey I have a really strong tailwind and they wouldn't know any better they can see your ground
speed they can see how fast you're moving and they know how fast the other planes that have
gone through that space have gone so they have kind of have an idea but if you said hey I got a
really strong 30-knot tailwind they have no way to really know back then now they do so don't do it
when you go through flight school usually you have one or two different examiners that are assigned
to different regions and they do the exams on student pilots as they go through flight
school usually these pilots are airline pilots or ex-airline pilots possibly ex-military pilots
but they usually what they're doing is doing these exams on students and they make a little
extra money this is a story that i heard from an airline pilot who was also doing these types of
exams on the side it's kind of their side hustle that i always talk about getting a side hustle
when you're an airline pilot his side hustle was doing these types of exams so he shows up
and this student is working on their private pilot license it's the first big exam that you do as you
go through flight school and what they do is they go through your logbook and they look to make sure
you've done all the necessary flights and you have all the necessary flight time and all that
types of stuff they go through all that with you to make sure that you've done everything correctly
so as he's going through the logbook he says i see you've got some time here on five five zero
five five zero alpha kilo and the student's like yeah absolutely i i got a few flights
on that he goes wow that's a pretty cool plane that's a pretty cool plane so the
examiner spends about 20 minutes talking about this plane oh what do you like about
it where have you flown and they're talking talking talking about this particular plane
now sometimes there's a strategy that pilots use when they go through these exams and try to get
on the good side of the examiner is to kind of just be friendly with them and talk about
whatever they want to talk about so they don't have to get deep into the systems of the aircraft
usually the examiners obviously know what's going on but the student pilot thinking oh i'm going
to get away with a bunch of wasted time talking about this aircraft so they're talking about it
more and more and he says well man i've always wanted to fly in one of those types of planes
let's do the exam in that plane the student pilot says oh no no no no i don't have the keys for that
plan i don't have the keys i can't i can't do it in that i i prepared on another plane he goes
oh you don't have the keys if you had the keys could we do it in that he goes i mean yeah if i
if i had the keys we could do it but i don't have the keys it's my friend's plane so the examiner
reaches into his pocket and he pulls out the keys he goes yeah it's my plane you've never flown my
plane oh snap that was the end of that student pilot's aviation career because you get caught
lying to the faa about the flight time that you have again your career is over don't do it
at the regional airlines the flight attendants and pilots sometimes work together and they'll do four
days together so the flight attendants will bid onto your schedule and you'll have three or four
people to hang out with for four days and they're usually your friends and so it can be a lot of fun
if you have a crew that you work together a lot of times what i would do is i would put
the flight attendants bags up in the overhead or take them out over the overhead because sometimes
these girls would pack a lot of stuff at the end of a flight when we're getting off the aircraft
the flight attendants sometimes have more to do to clean up everything than we have so i'll usually
go and grab their bags and bring them outside as i was walking with both their bags through the aisle
i ended up accidentally banging one of the bags against the seat i didn't think anything of it but
i could immediately feel the bag start vibrating as i was walking off the plane and i set the bag
down the flight attendants finished up their stuff and then they came off the plane and me and the
other pilot were standing there and as they came off i said hey uh sarah your bag is vibrating
sarah reached into her bag not opening but just reached in there and was like rummaging around and
trying to find whatever it was that was vibrating i carry an electric razor with me and i've had it
vibrate before where it hits so i thought maybe some type of a shave or something like that
but she seemed a little bit panicked as she was reaching around and trying to find it after about
30 seconds i said sarah just open the bag it's not a big deal she says no no no i got i got all
kinds of stuff in here no it's fine why don't you guys just wait for us at the top of the jet bridge
now typically at this airline that i was at we would always go together all flight attendants all
the pilots we would go together we were friends so we would always hang out and walk off the plane
together we'd go eat together we'd do our layovers together we'd usually hang out all the time
so i said no no it's not a big deal we can wait for you take your time after another 30 or 40
seconds the other flight attendant walked up to me and she said please go upstairs and wait
about two minutes later sarah and this other flight attendant end up coming up top and she
is beat red i later found out that what happened is when i was carrying her bag off the plane and
i bumped it into the seat i somehow activated her vibrator and so she was just so embarrassed about
it which personally wouldn't really bother me but i understand not wanting to open that up in
front of a couple people you're just about to spend four days with obviously i tried to play
it really cool with her we never brought it up again and so sarah if you're watching i'm sorry
as some of you know that i've been on the channel for a while you know back in the day i used to fly
private jets some private jets have bathrooms some don't and this one on this particular day didn't
have a bathroom they figure you're an adult you know that you're gonna go fly for two or three
hours so that you can go to the bathroom before you get on the plane and then they save some
money on the aircraft and not having to build a separate bathroom area one evening i was flying
into houston because as you know back in the day i was based in texas and all i did is fly around
texas we were flying into texas and we were having to hold because there was a storm that was holding
over the airport usually what happens with these storms is they blow over in 20 or 30 minutes so
it's not a big deal and as they move off the field you can come in and land you don't want
to land in the middle of a thunderstorm because you have all kinds of shifting winds it's very
dangerous it's not worth the risk as most of you know pilots are getting paid when they're flying
or the engines are running so with the engines running i was thinking great this is some extra
money not a big deal and so let's just sit out here and hold for another 20 minutes or
an hour i don't care we had like three hours of gas on the plane so it didn't really bother
me i noticed the other pilot was getting a little bit anxious and uncomfortable and he was like man
we should look at other airports that we can divert to and i said bro we got
three hours of fuel this isn't a big deal let's just wait after about 10 or 15 minutes i could
see the other pilot and we'll just call him chuck was getting very uncomfortable and starting to
talk about no we should just go to this other airport and deviate and go here and do that and
we need to get on the ground immediately and and i said man what's the deal what's wrong
you seem like something's really bothering you is there something i'm not seeing he said man
my stomach doesn't feel good whatever i ate for lunch i it's not feeling i don't feel very good
i don't feel very good i don't i don't know what's going on me thinking on my feet i said oh i have a
solution and i reached back into the first class the area i ran back there grabbed a bag which is
used for throwing up those little vomit bags and i handed that to him chuck looked at me like what
do you want me to do with this i said bro don't be embarrassed if you feel like you're going to
throw up just throw up in the bag it's not a big deal don't be embarrassed at all it's fine it's
not a problem he looks over at me dead in the eyes and he says my sick tummy is south of the equator
now realizing what the situation was i was trying to come up with a plan to allow him to crap in a
bag before we landed i i didn't really know i was looking for a trash bag or something like that i
didn't know what to do as we started brainstorming an idea of what to do air traffic control calls
and says hey get ready you're going to be the next plane to come in to land i look over and i
said what do you want to do we can go to another airport he said no no i can definitely make it i
said all right do this you focus on not crapping your pants i'll do all the radios and i'll fly the
plane i'll do everything just sit there just sit tight man i'm going to fly this thing as fast as i
can so i'm flying this plane as fast as i can and as we're getting in i get down i'm doing about 250
to about the final approach fix i'm doing about 250 which is as fast as we're allowed to legally
go and then i just start dumping everything out to get ready to land we come in and we land and
just as we touch down it's not a smooth landing but it's not hard at all just as we touch down
he's like oh no within seconds the entire flight deck smells of crap i look over at him and he's
like don't look at me don't look at me so what i did is i opened up one of the windows which was
extremely loud we had these little side windows that once we were on the ground we could open up
but with the engines out there it was extremely extremely loud now the passengers obviously
couldn't hear our conversation of what was going on up there and they i'm sure were confused of
why that window got opened so quickly and why it smelled so terrible because this plane wasn't very
big but as soon as we pulled into the gate and i taxied really fast got into the gate as soon as we
got into the gate there i ran back opened the door to let the passengers off i got their bags off and
they were like why is why'd you open the window i said well you smell that terrible smell as soon
as we landed there was a sewer line that busted towards that end of the runway and i was trying
to get some of that smell out did you smell that smell right as we just as we touched down how bad
it smelled they're like yeah and i said yeah so i opened the window to try to flush some of that
smell out but it it's on the other side of the airport so we probably aren't gonna smell it over
here but i was trying to get some fresh air into the plane they seem to believe it as they came
back onto the plane he turns around he didn't even let me get really on the plane he turns around and
yells back to me and he says give me two t-shirts a new pair of pants and a trash bag i said okay
yeah no problem man i ran back inside i got him two t-shirts a trash bag and a new pair of pants
well they were kind of sweat pants but whatever as i came back into the plane he opened up the window
that we had opened up to flush out the smell of the sewer tank and i threw them in the window
and i went back into the terminal we were gonna have like a three hour sit there so i thought
i'll just give him his space a few hours later i was thinking man i haven't heard from him
we better get something worked out here if people are going to board this aircraft again
i send them a text hey man has everything cool and i got this picture that he sent me
he ordered an air cart these air carts are what you use to get an aircraft cool you put these
on the aircraft if you're not running the one of the engines that will help keep the aircraft cool
you'll plug this into the bottom of the plane and it will just pump cold air into the aircraft
well he got them to bring one of those out and then drug it and then pumped it on full blast
opened up all the windows and the emergency exits and just pumped this thing full of air
and cleared out the smell after i walked onto the plane we never even mentioned it we both knew what
had happened but i never mentioned it well until today speaking about being very uncomfortable in
a plane if you haven't seen the video that i did with stella where i let her fly a plane i'll put
a link to that video right here i look forward to hearing from you until then keep the blue side up