CONFESSIONS OF AN AIRLINE PILOT

How do you know if the airline you are planning to fly with is safe? What should you be worried about? Is it, Turbulence, lightning or that the pilots might be asleep while the aircraft flies on, on autopilot?

Does a pilot’s life conform to the cliché; a life of foreign adventure with off duty hours spent by the pool in some tropical paradise surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex?

Or is it a life of commercial pressure to cut corners to keep the show on the road irrespective of the rules?

Surely it can’t be true that the pilots have to jack up a 70 ton aircraft themselves and change a wheel when they get a puncture.

Find out what really happened with the expert investigation into the only crash that Concorde had. This and other detective stories that puzzled investigators are analyzed by the author and presented in a highly readable form.

Your questions are answered by providing the reader with a fly in the cockpit view of a series of real flights. Some result in accidents and incidents that demonstrate what the priorities for good safety are. Others are experiences from the author’s own flying career in both passenger airline flying to long haul cargo, with its hidden world of global commerce, military operations and more. Finally, the author offers a suggestion that would offer the passenger an easy way of choosing safe airlines; it could be the answer to equate choosing a flight with choosing other life altering purchases that are already in place.

Terry Tozer has contributed to The Independent and wrote Op Ed pieces for the Western Morning News under his own name and the nom de plume of Mike Shapland on non aviation subjects. He is now an established media commentator and a regular speaker on the BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 and 5 news as well as BBC radio, Talk Radio, LBC Radio and Times Radio stations, where he is the go-to commentator on aviation matters primarily aviation safety. For details of his media appearances and examples of his journalism see www.terrytozer.co.uk

Terry began earning his living flying aeroplanes, in the 1980s as a flying instructor, then coastguard/shipping patrol pilot, an air taxi and air ambulance pilot in the UK and Europe, and since 1988, as an airline pilot. He is uniquely informed and connected in the world of aviation, with access to some of important players in the industry. That said he is no longer involved in union affairs and does not promote union, or any other, interests.