Rob the Pilot

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Aviation expert attempts to answer nine questions

By Rob Potochnik

February 20, 2006

Commercial airline pilot and Vyuz aviation expert Rob Potochnik answered reader questions between songs at a solo karaoke booth in Narita, Japan.

1.   Are Muslim passengers allowed to pray midflight?

Yep. They ask us which way East is, and we help ‘em out by flying in circles to cover every angle in the spectrum.

2.   How often do pilots hook up with flight attendants?

It depends on whether you’re dating one. If you are, then the answer is all the time.

However, pilots and flight attendants take their respective jobs for different reasons, so many times the romance thing doesn’t work out. As a result, pilots and flight attendants are often on the same flight, but different wave lengths.

For example, a buddy once spoke to a new flight attendant and asked her how many weeks of training she had left. “Three,” she said and asked him the same question. “Six,” he answered.

“I should have asked to be a pilot,” she said with frustration. “I’d only have to train for three extra weeks.” He then advised her to contact her manager and ask for three more weeks of training, so she could move up to pilot.

“Okay!” she replied, with a big smile. What he didn’t tell her was the four year degree, years of flying lessons, regulatory tests, medical exams and experience she’d need to get before reaching those remaining six hours of training.

3.   Have any San Diego passengers called you "dude" or "bro" as they were exiting the plane?

Yeah! One dude called me “man” and another called me “sir man.” Others call me “pilot man” or just “piloto.” I did have a one passenger say,”Hey, that was a gnarly landing with a smooth deceleration and cool gate hookup.” I replied, “Way, dude! Thanks for the comment. How did you like the wake-me-up turbulence in the middle?”

4.   Is it illegal to have sex in the plane bathroom?

Well, I’ve got a dichotomous answer here. It depends on whether: (a) you can fit two people into the bathroom, and (b) you get caught.

Okay, if you can get two people in, you have to give each other access on the quick—never a problem for men. But women? Well,…

Second, getting caught makes you red in the face, but shouldn’t be a problem if you are both quick and don’t inconvenience other passengers. As far as legal, who cares? Is a flight attendant a peace officer? By the way, they’re not just going to open the door and peek in, unless they really, really want to!

5.   Have you ever seen anyone wearing a Vyuz t-shirt on one of your flights?

Yes. He looked like a geek, with glasses on his ass and pants around his head. His underwear had the name, “[unpublishable] editor.” However, as long as Rob writes good articles and gets his [unpublishable] editor out of linguistic complacency, everything will turn out okay for this odd man.

6.   What are the real reasons that flights are delayed, and what excuses do you tell passengers?

Hey, I never tell anything but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me, Lindsay Lohan.

When flights are delayed, it could be for many reasons. Maybe Santa had a wreck, the snowman lost his arm, or that Valentine’s Day fairy did a wing over and crashed and burned. But some things, such as weather (WX), can’t be helped. Airlines are not responsible for wx delays, so they tend to use weather as an excuse quite zealously. This is an old Fedex trick, so watch your packages, boys!

7.   What happens if a flight is running late and approaches SAN after the 11:30 deadline?

Usually, the company will call the tower to notify of a late arrival. But if not, we just circle until we run out of gas, then declare an emergency and land where we want. Sometimes we do crazy things, like show off right at the end by reaching out and grabbing our landing gear. But that’s only if we’re one flight ahead.

8.   How soon after you land do you guys get to go home?

Pilots get paid up to 15 minutes after we set the brakes. So, if it takes 20 minutes to get the jet bridge to the aircraft and another 15 minutes for the passengers to get off, pilots are working 20 minutes for free. Management treats pilots like regular employees, meaning they get from us what they want.

Think of it as foreplay. After 15 minutes, we’re looking to get off any way we can.

9.   Who are the most respectful passengers on SAN flights?

Definitely the Asian passengers. Asians are very respectful to everyone around—except the one who yelled on a flight to Japan, “Remember Nanking!” This is, of course, a reference to the 14,000 citizens in Nanking, China that the Japanese rounded up, murdered, and refuse to apologize for.

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Rob Potochnik is a pilot for that airline that codeshares with TajikistanAir. If you have any questions about aviation or the airline industry, e-mail Rob at aviation@vyuz.com. He’ll try to provide honest answers to difficult questions, or at least pretend the questions were difficult.