about "pilots" and "co-pilots"

"oh... as a pilot you have a copilot who helps you finding the way, right?" this is what I often hear. Let me explain what the actual difference between the so-called "co-pilot" and "pilot" is.

First, there is no term like "co-pilot". In cockpit most of the time we have a Captain and a First Officer. Both of them are pilots. Means both of them are fully able to fly and operate the aircraft safely. In fact the Captain is the "boss" on board. He is the one who is responsible. So he is the final-decision maker. But the so-often as "co-pilot" wrong called First Officer is not only there to help the boss finding the way. He is steering and operating the aircraft as well... So on a normal day with domestic and short-haul sectors both pilots will decide who is going to fly (in sense of steering) which leg.

Example: KL-Penang-KL-Kuantan-KL

They decide that the Captain will fly all flights out of KL (KL-Penang and KL-Kuantan) and the First Officer will fly all flights to KL (so. Penang-KL and Kuantan-KL)...

So what the heck is the second pilot on board doing... ???

let's take the flight Penang-KL as our example. We just decided that the First-Officer will FLY the airplane. So from now on we call him PILOT-FLYING (PF, sometimes PIC=PilotInCommand). Then the captain is the PILOT-NON-FLYING (PNF). But now it's not that the Captain will just relax the whole flight. Being in the specific role (PF or PNF) they have special tasks. Now as the Captain being the PNF he will assist the First Officer. Yes, right, the Boss (the captain) will assist the junior First-Officer. So how is he assisting him. It's not just "finding the way". But his tasks actually consists of doing the communication with the AirTrafficControl, doing Calculations, crosscheck whatever the PF is doing, simply assisting him flying the metal-tube and provide him with all the necessary information he needs...

Interesting eh? Now all of you who thought that a "co-pilot" will never steer the aircraft until he gets promoted to be a "pilot" know that this is simply wrong... Both of them are flying. The captain is just the more experienced one. The one who has the final word. But also the one who is fully responsible for all the souls on board.

the passion

Finally I did it! I created a new blog. So welcome everyone here at takeoffthrust.blogspot.com
this blog will be basically about one thing! about my unbelieveable strong passion. We all do have certain passions, don't we? A lot of them we share for sure. Even this passion I am talking about a lot of people share with me...

Let's imagine, it's 6AM in the morning your alarm is ringing and you have to get off your bed to go to work. You take a look out of the window, it seems to be a rainy and foggy morning. Damn it, back to bed, right? ... Well, you have your duty and so you will be a good employee and proceed to your work place... Now comes the difference... For usual once the day started like that and if you are a kind of moody person during this typical autumn weather you would stay "depressed" the whole day.

Let's now imagine your working place is a very small room with two seats and lots of computers at the very front of a long tube. Imagine this tube is moveable. And yeah it will move, it will even move very fast and after some minutes of moving you will look out of your window and you will observe that you just passed the thick layer of fog and clouds. What you can see now is a wonderful sun-rise and all the bad mood caused by the bad and could autumn weather and your alarm clock will have turned into just one thing. A very bright smile on your face...

That's the passion I am talking about. That's my passion and my dream. The PASSION OF FLYING!...