Co-Pilot's Hardest Day

Video Transcript

"The hardest day for a Pilot is kind of hard to explain. It's really not that bad, as bad as it may seem. Most frustrations or hard days you can deal with is going to be stuff with equipment. Getting into an airplane, getting everything loaded on and getting ready to go and finding out just before you're ready to take off that something isn't working right and you have to cancel the flight. Another frustrating thing that, as far as dealing with day to day operations as a Pilot is going to be maybe uncooperative passengers. Some people get a little scared and it can become frustrating dealing with, dealing with people who aren't used to aviation. Weather's another thing. Can be frustrating. From time to time the weather's bad enough that we actually have to shut down operations or get grounded and that consists of a lot of sitting around which is really about as bad as it gets is sitting around and not having a lot to do. As far as being out on a flight and having something crucial to your flight actually fail, such as maybe the radio's going out, equipment starting to fail in an aircraft. For me probably the most stressful time was a day when I had been out and had an alternator failure where the alternator stopped charging. And that kind of gets you a little worried about losing electrical power. The aircraft's still going to continue to run without electrical power, but you're going to lose things like your radios, and communication, things like that and it puts a little stress on you at times like that when you're trying to come back and beat the airplane or beat the battery from failing and getting into an airport before you actually lose all power and communication. Days like that, equipment failures, things like that are something that kind of stresses you out. Occasionally from time to time, think of worst case scenarios away from the job and how I would deal with them and that's really about as stressful as it can get."