| I've had just one definite emergency experience and it's only 1 data point to draw on, and it's definitely not going to be the same for everyone flying.. You drill for emergency situations during training, and you should drill repeatedly afterwards. Any ATP rated pilots do so regularly whether in actual flight or in simulators. But one flight very early, before I had my pilot's license, flying on a student's permit.. I ran out of fuel during cruise flight.. It was dumb, it was a case of me being a poor just-out-of-college student, and trying to do some very risky calculus with the flight planning and fuel required.
There were extenuating factors including the (small) plane's fuel gauges malfunctioning sporadically .. having to 'stick the tank' on the ground (measure the fuel in the plane's wings by using a ruler and chart for how many inches equaled gallons). .. excuses aside. I ran out of gas at 8000 feet above Columbus Georgia .. What I remember happening is the engine abruptly lurching, then stopping, sending a massive amount of adrenaline through me. But almost immediately I started looking for a runway to land at. I knew I had at least 1, maybe 2 airports in range of a glide, and one was relatively in front of me, so I decided on it, and called ATC in Atlanta who were following my flight at that time & declared a 'pan-pan' (step below a mayday .. meaning you have a serious situation on board & require priority attention if available, but you are still in control of the aircraft). They confirmed the vector to the (abandoned, but still in decent condition) airport a few miles in front of me. Now.. Your original question is probably answered at this point... Basically as long as you can continue to have things to do .. As long as you can envision and work toward a goal (landing the f'n plane safely) .. The stress of the situation tends to just fuel the focus on getting to that goal. I can't say its going to be the same for every pilot, and maybe it isn't . I did grow up obsessed with flying (after being absolutely horrified by it as a child), and so I had kind of gone over in my mind and in training over and over again this potential type of situation occurring and I wasn't about to let the moment get to big. This kind of thing does worry me a little bit with our recent explosive need for pilots as commercial aviation expands rapidly. A lot of pilots are going through "0 to ATP" courses to get a good paying job, rather than because they're actually obsessed with flying itself.. Because in those cases, I'm not sure what is going to happen psychologically for those pilots. Again though, this is why you are constantly drilled and trained on these situations, so that you have almost muscle-memory of things to be doing in an emergency situation so that there is no time for you to sit passively and become a victim of circumstance. |
Are those "0 to ATP" graduates landing quality jobs? Has pay at the smaller regionals actually moved up into "good paying" ranges (used to be $20-$40k/year starting, and that's usually after $50k+ in tuition/fees to get first set of pilot credentials)?
Last time I checked (10+ years ago), landing a job at a major airline still required years of experience at a regional OR some special combination of degree/networking/military service. And the regionals didn't pay well and had pretty crap working conditions (getting better post-Colgan Air crash, but still not great).
I see United has an in-house "0 to ATP" program now, but it's still more than $70k and a few years to graduate, and then the pilot still spends time at a regional United-affiliate before having the chance to move to United itself.
Really just curious what conditions are like for new pilots today (vs roughly the Colgan Air disaster era). And what the pipeline looks like post-COVID.