A group of anonymous pilots divulged their deepest and darkest secrets in a series of online posts, with one pilot claiming he crash landed his plane after falling asleep at the ‘yoke’.
If you’ve ever wanted to know what goes on inside the cockpit, then you may just want to keep reading.
(And if you’re wondering just what a “yoke” is, no it’s not a typo. It’s the control column used for piloting some fixed-wing aircraft.)
In a revealing confession submitted to Callback, the official newsletter of the Aviation Safety Reporting System in the US, one pilot claimed to have nearly started a fire in the cockpit with his bottle of water.
Yes, that’s right: a bottle of water.
The suspected culprit.
According to the anonymous pilot, after smelling smoke in the cockpit and feeling a burning pain in his left leg, he realised that his water bottle was actually magnifying direct sunlight onto his pants and burning a whole right through them!
Ouch!
Following the incident the pilot now thinks twice about bringing plastic and glass objects into the cockpit – and especially about leaving them on his seat while the aircraft is unattended.
Another pilot revealed that he was once shocked to realise that nobody was flying the plane on a passenger flight on a Boeing 757. The pilot had left his seat to use the toilet, and left the plane in the hands of his co-pilot.
However, upon returning to the cockpit the pilot was shocked to see his co-pilot passing him – seems like he had to use the toilet himself, leaving the plane temporally without a pilot (don’t worry, they set it on auto pilot).
Other confessions include ink pens causing emergencies, a stowaway in the toilet, and nearly hitting a crop duster on landing.
