What is a pilots schedule?

Answer 1

Before I go into this you need to know that every Pilots schedule is different, I do around 1-3 flights a week depending on the time of year, however some crews might do up to 5 countries a day ( but these would be short haul flights) where as mine are usually mundane 10 hour stretches of hell and boredum..

My basic schedule (although times will vary dramatically) is..

arrive at airport at about 6am and report to crew office and meet up with crew

At about 7am i'd be finding out latest weather information and studying out flightplan and arranging my charts.

At around 8am the first passengers are arriving at the airport and the crew are on the aircraft, At this point the first officer (poor guy) is walking around the aircraft in the freezing cold checking for any damage or cause for concern on the parts of the aircraft he can see and reach ( the walkaround inspection)- Which is utterly pointless on an aircraft this big as you can only see about 30% of it on the ground. While im sitting in the cockpit trying to think of a way to avoid talking to the mechanic about his latest round of Golf and actually getting him to explain to me any work the aircraft's had done on it.

At this stage the First officer is back where he belongs in the right hand seat and is begging ATC for a decent departure slot for our flight While I Calculate our stats such as our V-Speeds and the parameters for the flight using usually wrong data from the fuel truck guy and the luggage ground crew.

After this is done the passengers are usually boarding and while Im getting our IFR and pre taxi clearence's from ATC the first officer is programming the flight management system with the beacons and NDB's that we'll be using for the flight and usually also sets the autopilot if I havnt already done that By 10am we should have departed..........9 Boring hours staring at clouds and trying to make out the figures on dirty LCD displays from the mechanics grubby fingers, At around 8 or 9 PM non local (zulu) time we touch down and the aircraft is de-boarding while myself and the first officer discuss anything from in flight experience's to football teams to stop ourselfs from falling asleep. Around 20 mins after all the passengers are off the aircraft and the cabin crew have dealed with the mess the passengers leave behind the APU is turned off and the power to the aircraft cut shortly before we leave it at the gate for the American mechanics to fiddle with (break). We are picked up by the late bus and taken to our hotel where we say goodnight to each other....eat a pot noodle and immediatly collapse onto the bed and instantly fall asleep.

The whole day is repeated again the next day until I get home to my paranoid wife and where I usually receive 2 days off before repeating the process again and again.....people say....oh Gee that looks like an amazing lifestyle.......trust me....its stressfull.....tiring.....puts stress on the familly and freinds. But for some reason....I love it.