[azalemeth]

This rings very true. My dad is a retired commercial pilot and has a whole evening's worth of rant about this, albeit mostly in the 1970s-80s, before pilot hours were regulated to quite the same extent they are now (and with less automation). He said that his absolute worst was a "double washington" (i.e. London to Washington twice in "a day"), and that on the return leg either him or a co-pilot would really be operating at their physiological limits, at the stressful approach to Heathrow. Turnaround time and load factors are basically the thing that airlines compete on, with the net result that they were strongly encouraged to "man up" and "power on through".

After falling asleep for 10 minutes over the mid-atlantic at some point before I was born, apparently all the pilots in the airline agreed to sleep in shifts for safety reasons, and never told management about it...

He also has a story about a frozen Canada goose coming through the windscreen at FL300 above a dark cloud, but that's a story for another day...

[jacquesm]

The interesting thing about that flight is that I don't think the pilot knew how close to crashing we came whereas I had a 'front row seat' to what would have been a wingtip ground strike if we had been just a tiny little bit lower. I've flown 100's of times per year for a decade and I've never had a landing that bad. This was a short hop from Berlin to Amsterdam on Lufthansa.

I'd love to hear your dad's stories, there isn't a pilot that I know that doesn't have an evening's worth of material, so if you have the time to write that one up that would be great.

[hunter321]

Out of curiosity what job did you have that required you to fly 100s of times a year for a decade (assuming you're not in the aviation industry).

Edit; never mind, I looked at your profile.

[GekkePrutser]

Wow that Canada goose thing must have been some story. With the decompression and -60C air coming in at 700 knots. Wow