So hardly anyone who has replied to this thread is actually doing “long flights”! I do do long flights in real time because all my flying is on Vatsim, and by long my record thus far is around 11 hours in the air. There is plenty to do (a non exhaustive list of examples):
Monitoring online ATC
Prepping for further ATC down the line
Checking wx
Checking fuel status
Cross checking position
Checking and recalculating for upcoming step climbs vs wx, fuel burn and gw
Rinse and repeat
Obtaining arrival charts & destination wx plus possible alternates/diversions
Descent & arrival planning
Basically following the rule to never put your aircraft where your head hasn’t already been.
Sleeping? No (unless in augmented crew.) Drinking? No.
Reading? Yes. Listening to music? Yes. Watching a movie? Yes. (Folks that go the audio route use a Bluetooth connection to their headset that cuts out to prioritize radio or interphone comm.) All common.
Here’s the thing: there truly are low-workload phases of flight, and there’s only so much to talk about on a 6 hour flight. At some point, conversation wanes and you get to choose between doing something that keeps your mind engaged and therefore awake, or staring out the window until you doze off. One is obviously better than the other.
This is why I say that time accel is vastly under-valued by simmers. Maybe you don’t understand how great it is unless you’ve been there for real.
If you say so.
What about the last 10 minutes of everyones lives, when the plane is crashing? Do we have to wait for the pilot to wake up and have his coffee?
I’d rather the Captain be at the controls at all times. Doesn’t matter what they’re doing. If all they have to do is monitor gauges/instruments, well by all means, carry on with your “Job”.
Maybe you didn’t understand me correctly, though I thought I was pretty explicit that no one sleeps, drinks alcohol, or leaves their duty station (except for lav breaks.) That would be idiotic. And of course we’re only talking about a cruise phase of flight.
Have you ever sat in a seat and done nothing but stare out the window for 6 hours? Give it a shot, let me know how far into it you get before you fall asleep.
Keeping one’s mind engaged and therefore staying alert is a good thing, not a bad one. I don’t know why this would make you seemingly angry.
What do I do during a long cargo flight?
I sneak into the cargo room and search through the freight containers until I can find a 2000€ high end gaming laptop and a 1500€ smartphone with 150 megapixel camera - and try to smuggle it through the airport after landing in my pilot´s suitcase, hidden under random stuff. Secretly hoping it will take several week until some local shops will notice that a piece of their electronics is missing and the disappearance of some ultra-high-end electronics cannot be tracked to me.
Oh the question is probably what do I do during long SIMULATED flights… Hm. Give me a few days to think about that.
On long across the ocean flights I set ai radio communication to on with ai control to on and get in a round of frisbee golf (it’s a good walk or run through)
