AIRLINE PILOTS ARE RIGOROUSLY TRAINED, HIGHLYskilled professionals. During long flights they may pass the time performing complex weight and balance calculations in their heads or quizzing one another on arcane emergency checklists. Generally, though, they do what workers in any profession do when they’re out of earshot of the boss man: They gossip about their coworkers and bitch about management.
In fairness, golf, fishing, and girls are also popular topics, according to Patrick Smith, a pilot and author of Cockpit Confidential, a book about life behind the controls. Airborne gabfests (“nonessential communication,” in the parlance of the trade) are restricted by the Federal Aviation Administration’s “sterile cockpit rule” to certain phases of flight—namely, above 10,000 feet, just like the use of your electronic devices back in the Sardine-o-Riffic Economy section.…
