What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Over 50% of pilots surveyed in the U.K., Norway, and Sweden admitted to having fallen asleep while flying a passenger plane. A third of them stated that when they woke up, they discovered that their co-pilots had also fallen asleep.

On a modern passenger aircraft,  the safest part of any flight is no doubt when both pilots are asleep and thus incapable of interfering with the autopilot.


When you take a look at how save passenger flight statistically already is and much effort continues to be invested into making passenger flight ever safer, you have to conclude is safety fear of flying is as irrational as it gets, and further investment in making it even safer is not only irrational but obscene in the face of other threats unaddressed by any serious investment.   The statistical chance of any passenger dying on commercial flight is lower than the chance of that passenger dying due to a large asteroid impact.    How much do we spend making passengers ever safer on flights, compare to how much we spend to avert and asteroid strike?

You make a good point about the autopilot. It seems that the most important feature of a modern human pilot's job is to wake up the passengers periodically to impart the vital information that, if they look out the left side of the plane, they will see nothing of interest.

Boru