Do you know how airline crews work? In an airlines, there must be at least two pilots. All airlines pilot have had intensive training and experience before they can be airline pilot. On an airliner, the pilot in command is called Captain. The captain usually will sit on the left side of the cockpit and responsible for all major command decisions,leading the crew team and managing emergency. The second pilot is called First Officer which is the second in command, sits on the right side of the cockpit. He has the same control with the captain and has the same level of training. The reason for having two pilots is for safety. Obviously if something happen to the captain, the plane will need another pilot who can step in and take control of everyone safety. Additionally, the first officer provides a second opinion to minimize pilot error. Besides the pilots, there are also three flight enginner who helping to monitor the airplane's instruments and calculate figures of landing speed, power setting and fuel management but in newer airlines, most of this work is done by computerized systems.
At most airlines, the career track is based almost completely on length of service. To become a captain, you have to rise through the ranks and wait until it's your turn and a position opens up.
Pilots who are relatively new to the airline will fly reserve, meaning they do not have a set flying schedule. A reserve pilot may have "on call" duty for 12 hours or longer at a stretch. In this time, the pilot has to be packed and ready to fly, because the flight scheduler might page them at any moment. If a pilot is called in, he or she reports to the airport immediately for a flight assignment (for many airlines, the pilot must be ready to go within an hour of being paged). Reserve pilots are called up when the scheduled pilot becomes ill or can't make the flight for some other reason. The life of the reserve pilot is largely unpredictable: Pilots might spend several days on reserve and never get paged, or they might get paged every day. And when they report for duty, they could be flying over to the next state or they might be putting in a three-day trip to another part of the world. With this hectic schedule, it's no wonder flights are occasionally delayed while waiting around for crew members to arrive.
Vivian
