Do airline pilots get scared?

Question

ok .. i know being an airline pilot takes some serious guts .. like taking off a huge 747 or landing a Boeing 767 in heavy crosswind in the rain... but is there a point where some pilots get afraid and experience fear.. maybe even get the shakes.. Just wondering ... (Professional Airline Pilots answer pls). If you're not a pilot you can still answer also lol. just wondering

Answer 1

I would say yes I mean you have to be unhumanlike to not get scared landing a Boeing in the rain, but you have to remember they do it for a living. Some pilots fly 5 or more airplanes a day, and big ones too. I know I would be freaked out though.

Answer 2

scared?? try SCARED to DEATH!!, man I hold my seat sometimes half the flight until my fingers are sore. Every bump makes me scared, I really........uh......................uh...

oh, ......You asked about airline PILOTS. I'm sorry, I thought you said airline passengers.  never mind.

Answer 3

Taking off and landing to a pilot would seem like another walk in the park because during their flight training (schooling), they will practise landings and take-offs for numbers of times till they feel like it is as easy as walking normally. However Studies have shown that when pilots land, their heartbeat increases a slight bit but the pilots don't realise it themselves. Therefore your 747 or A380 Captain won't start sweating and wondering, "To Take off, or not to take off. That is the question." Crosswind, again, as mentioned above pilots will practise till they call it kids stuff so in the real thing, they won't be worried at all. Well turbulence, with modern technology (the autopilot), The captain doesn't need to worry about this since the computer is dealing with this. Also they will go through this in training as well. Here is one that surprised me. I was onboard a UA 747 flight from PEK-SFO when there was an Engine Fire with Engine #1. When the captain made the announcement about diverting back to Beijing, he sounded calm as if nothing had happened. I later on had a chat with the captain at the terminal when I saw him and he told it was very a piece of cake since he did this numbers of times before in flight training. He told me he was so calm that he even gave the aircraft's command to our co-pilot who landed the plane. The co-pilot told me that the only difference she needed to do was to add some extra thrust on engines 2-3-4 and control the rudder to stabilise the 747. But however, things may scare pilots for example like they are hi-jacked or when the plane goes out of control or any 1 in a billion chance of happening problems which they didn't do in training.

Answer 4

Of course we get scared! When I was learning to fly, it was my second time solo and I forgot the rule about not landing immediately behind a bigger airplane. Yeah...wake turbulence is NOT fun.

Answer 5

Good question!

Yes, we are human just like the guy in the back of the airplane..the only difference is that we have been trained to deal with the "unknown". I will tell you a little story about fear...

When I was 25, I was a young captain flying a Learjet 25 ( little rocket ).

I had just taken the plane on it's maiden flight after a 12 year inspection had been completed. This is a VERY involved inspection that requires the wings to be removed from the fuselage. Well, all went well, althought it seemed to try to dutch roll more than normal....(must have been me, since I had not flown it in a while)

Now, on our way to Aspen for the first passenger flight...we noticed the autopilot was working extra hard to keep the airplane level...it was correcting with right aileron...Fuel Imbalance....NO....engines not in sync?..they were fine...

Actually, the aileron on the right wing disconnected itself from the rest of the controls...now it was just a floating piece of aluminum on the wing....Anyway...the airplane would start rolling uncontrollably below 180 knots....so we kept the speed up...tried to land in the panhandle of the lonestar..(LONG and Wide runway).

Crossed the numbers,,,,pulled the power off....end of game...we rolled...struck the left wing on the runway...continued to semi cart wheel and slide for another 4000 feet off the runway...

Now, to answer your question...there was fear...but the survival instinct takes over way before you will even know you are scared....When it was all said and done...we all managed to walk away with minor scrapes and bruises....

Mostly because we did not panic...we flew the airplane until the thing was stopped  and we got clear of it.....

Once we all got clear..and we saw the bird....then that weak feeling hit us...the fear...the omg!!...anyway,

I hope you all dont jump to judgement on my accident....We made it only because we did not give up on flying the airplane....it was determined to be a mechanical..and believe it or not...the FSDO even praised us for the efforts to keep the airplane upright...anyway...hope this helps...

Jonathan S

ATP-LRJET,HS-125

CFI/AGI

Answer 6

I got one.....

As many of you know FSX gives you bad habit's. When i first starting training, i would fly only with the trim and no force on the yoke. So one day, my flight instructor Put the trim to 6 degree's and when i took off the plane nearly stalled, and i no longer use trim!!

Another time was when i was learning about stalls, and my flight instructor turned the mixture off (we were at a high altitude) and stalled the plane....Yeah i was scared!

Answer 7

I've never been an airline pilot, but there is a funny saying in the business: Flying is hours of boredom interspursed by moments of sheer terror.  There have been several times in my flying career that I have been scared.  One was a simulated engine out with a student, another was nearly running out of fuel, and the first time I got carburater ice.  There has been more but I don't have any "heavy" incidents to share since I have no heavy time.

Answer 8

first we must  answer, are they human?

once that is determined, we also have determined that they experience the entire range of human emotions and that includes fear.

so yeah, they get scared

--------------maybe that was a little too philosophical so here's the easy everyday version:

PILOTS GET THE c**p SCARED OUT OF THEM OFTEN

Answer 9

I been scared sometimes, the only thing that we don't do is panic, during an emergency its the thing that can save you.

I am also scared of spiders!

Answer 10

Scared is a misnomer..

Fear is a good thing at time, as fear is a reaction to stress, and stress can be a good thing.. All pilots feel stress, to get in on time, to avoid wx, Scared is the reaciton after the fact. Airline pilots have extensive training and dont usually show much emotion during high stress loads, as during high stress times, the natural reaction is to go to what you were trained. If you listen to any cockpit recorders of crashes, you will not hear any screaming of fear or being scared, you hear the pilots doing everything that they were taught..

But there is scary situations, but professional pilots are trained to deal with these situations, yes fear is present, but more of an after thought after the fact.

Ive walked away from some flights shaking, but didnt even feel much emotion during the scary times, as i was just doing what i was taught..

Answer 11

Yes, every time I leave home or the airport and get on the freeway. That is always the most dangerous part of my flying day.

Answer 12

yup, i think they do too because we went to a heavy cloud and we've gone almost 20 miles to deviate due weather yet everything was still red on the radar so the captain pick the thinnest cloud and enter it, we were slammed, thought we couldn't recover. the passenger were all crying even the crews were crying and the purser begged the captain to turn back while crying. After the ordeal, the captain is a non-smoking pilot but I ask his permission to smoke cause he made me nervous and he says "give me one." I have to light him up cause his hands are still shaking.  He says in all his "Air Force"  career this tops his fears.

Answer 13

Sure.  The scariest times for us are going to the doctor, going in the simulator for our proficiency checks, and whenever the cost of oil goes up.  Most of the other stuff is pretty routine.  And, the size of the airplane sometimes makes it easier, not harder to takeoff and land.  Smaller planes can be scary, too.

Answer 14

I think scared is not the best explanation of what we are feeling when things go bad or wrong. The few problems I have had for eg; cabin smoke, duel alternator failure while IMC in the winter, windshield delamination etc. I was not "scared" I was concerned about how to get out of the situation without having to talk to the Fed's. To me scared is riding with a new driver or almost falling off the barn. Scared I just don think is it, its concerned, annoyed, mad, pissed off, its just not scared. Scared is consuming you or somewhat incapacitates you. You best not be incapacitated up there.

Anybody agree with me?

Answer 15

When I was first learning to fly in 1964, my instructor told me, "Never ride with a pilot who claims never to have been scared while at the controls of an airplane."

We have all had our moments.  Actually, things like crosswind landings and heavy precipitation are less scary in the big wagons than they are in light airplanes.  The Boeing 747, which was my favorite kite ride as a mature professional, is so heavy and so powerful that it was fairly easy to put it where you wanted it, regardless of the arbitrary slings and arrows of outrageous weather.

My other favorite tin angel was the C-116 (cargo version of a DC-6) four engine prop liner.  Lots of fun to fly, but much trickier than the Boeing 727 or 747.  There was some adventure to flying those things.

One day on a flight from Lagos, Nigeria to Athens, in the C-118, we were on 2-mile final into Athens.  I felt a funny little tickle, and looked down to see a HUGE black scorpion crawling up my arm; I about took a dump.  That was the most terrorized moment of my flying career, despite the fact that it was a beautiful clear day with light winds.

My First Officer had a massive copy of _The Oxford Companion to the Bible_ in his flight bag, which he pulled out and reached over and snapped it shut--HARD--on the bad bug.  When we got off duty, I went downtown and bought him a brand new copy of the book.

All my other scary moments have been in small airplanes.  Airliners are pretty solid and safe, and they make you feel that way.

Let's see if some others have some good stories to tell.

Answer 16

Sure we get scared. You ever see Alien? Yikes. Sygorney Weaver was hot though huh. Driving scares me too. If I could just be up in an airplane all the time I think all my fears would just go away.

Answer 17

Under certain circumstances sure we get scared.  If we have instrument failure or engine failure our hearts are in our mouths but we are trained not to display our fear when on the intercom talking to the passengers.  Can you imagine an engine failure upon crossing the threshold in a 30 knot crosswind with lighting strikes all around and going into a microburst.  I would be more than scared.