Passenger's perceptions

Passenger [noun] A traveler on a public or private conveyance other than the driver, pilot or crew.

Adapted to air transportation, the passenger's role is to my opinion one of the best occupation we can find. Admiring clouds, cities or fields for hours with a false feeling of slowness and forgetting we are 30'000 feet above ground at a speed that is not that far from the speed of sound. That is a pleasant activity!

As a passenger, reality is so far away that the movement is hardly perceptible. The static window giving us a sensation of immobility, the world seems to be moving behind it. These few laminated glass layers are finally much more than a classical window...

This day, relaxed and having an infinite blue as wallpaper, I almost forgot there were a complete crew of pilots and flight attendants working in this Qantas Boeing 767. There are ingrate jobs!

Melbourne - Sydney, 1h05.

The jet engine's complexity

Why is it so complicated to become an air transport pilot?

A glance to the right side gives us some clues.

That complex thing is an aircraft's jet engine. Unfortunately, before being able to use one, we must have fully understood its principles of working. This implies looking in details at some technical points. And between the pneumatic, electrical, fuel or hydraulic circuits the ATPL (Air Transport Pilot License, the public transportation pilot's traffic code) is a really well stocked course. Especially for the "Aircraft General Knowledge" part.

A jet engine simply accelerates some air in order to produce a force that will push our aircraft really fast, allowing it to do its aircraft job: flying. However, it inflicts a cycle of operations to the ingested air that are not easy to understand, at all. On the menu we find some compression, combustion, adiabatic expansion and some theorems named after great scientists to explain all of this.

That is why the piston engine, propeller-driven aircraft suits me totally. It is easy to use and the working principle is just a bit more complex than for a moped.

But let's face it; I won't cross the Atlantic with a moped. This justifies the ATPL!

More details:

Wikipedia - Jet engine

Time considerations

This picture shows more than a sunset. It somehow figures the differences of limits between a private and a line pilot.

The private pilot can generally only fly by day and he considers that once the night has arrived, he can go to sleep.

A line pilot has a different point of view. In our case, he left Paris after sunset, but the shortest way on earth to join New-York City (heading slightly to the North and then head South-West) allows us to catch extra rays of light in the shape of what would be a rising sunset.

A few thousand feet lower, ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean have already litten their candles, but we can still enjoy some last sunrays before lighting ours.

Unfortunately, the race is already lost. The sun always wins and once arrived at JFK airport, it will be night again.

Paris - New-York, 8h10 and two sunsets.