Flight deck Etiquette when eating rice and biscuits
From a recent Notice to Pilots - identification removed for obvious reasons.
"Dear Colleagues,
Feed back has been received from our peers that some pilots are eating their meals (comprising of rice and curry or sauce) with their hands while manipuating the controls including the FCU panel. We respect your decision to consume your meals without using utensils but urge that you respect the equipment you use including the crew members who will subseqently share your workplace. In addition, please ensure you wash your hands thoroughly and not just by cleaning it with dry tissue paper beforeyou are back in control. Please do not attempt to clean the instrument screens with commercially available alcoholic wipes. This can and will damage the screens. If you require the screens to be cleaned and are unsure how to do so, please ask one of the engineers or technicians or even log it. Please keep the cockpit as clean as possible. Rice and biscuit crumbs are often found in the area around the flight deck seat. A quick scan of the area and your assistance in cleaning up after yourself goes a long way in self reflection.
A report was recently received of a captain who takes off his shoes in-flight and scrapes off dead skin from his foot onto the floor. Behaviour like this is revolting at best. If you are doing anything similar, please refrain from doing so and confine your actions to areas out of our workplace. Thank you for your cooperation."
Full marks to a polite well written Notice to Pilots with no political correctness there. It does suggest that interview questions asked of future airline pilot candidates should include their knowledge of eating etiquette - commonly known in the old days as a knife and fork course
interview questions asked of future airline pilot candidates should include their knowledge of eating etiquette - commonly known in the old days as a knife and fork course
I suspect this is more prevelant in areas of the world that knives and forks are NOT the traditional eating implement!
Hmmm, so pilots do not need a knife and fork to eat. Well take them away from everyone to make things fair and prevent access to potential dangerous impliments such as cutlery during the flight.
A slippery slope for you guys at the front.........
A company I worked for had a large office in a very hot and humid part of the USA. The local employees took great care over personal hygiene, but many of the European employees were soap-dodgers of note, to the extent that you could find them by simply 'following your nose'.
A memo was sent round, and I don't remember the exact wording, but it was more or less :
Unfortunately it has become necessary to draw the attention of some of our colleagues to matters of personal hygiene. In parts of Europe it may not be strictly necessary or customary to shower daily but in this part of the USA for the comfort of your fellow employees it is. We therefore request that all employees come to work showered and wearing clean clothes every day. This means using soap, water, deodorants, and not wearing the same inner and outer clothing more than once without washing them. If you think this may apply to to you, it does.
To extend this flight deck etiquette one step further, I would ask ALL flight crew to see if there is anyone on the end of a headset outside before you try your emergency O2 mask. The 96db white noise, often twice in rapid succession is both damaging and thoughtless. A quick 'any one there ?' would go a long way and in my station there is only one airline that will always ask first, press the test second. Thanks on behalf of all engineering staff for your understanding and consideration. Sorry for the thread creep . . Terry
can only get worse by first clipping all 20 nails and then eating the curry with your fingers, then handling all the controls and knobs with the unwashed but well licked fingers. and yes I've seen it. all of it whilst newspaper was covering the front windows due to sunlight.
Spent years having to wash my clipboard after every flight because the clown in the other seat insisted on filling in the comm log (despite being the PF), after spending the rest of his time digging in any and all of his numerous orifices.
We had a lot of foreign students at my school, and there was a huge discussion regarding the toilets. Seems that some had never seen the sit down kind, and so they were squatting on the seats. They probably thought it was the stupidest design they had seen(!) they also thought that the toilet paper was nicely supplied and took it home, leaving the loos paper-less......so, that led the European male students to use the ladies, which quite upset them. There was much hand-wringing in the teachers lounge as to what to do with the problem. I was incredulous and just volunteered to hold a male student only meeting and WC etiquette class of 30 minutes. Ended "abuse" of the gents, permitting the Europeans to return to theirs, no more problem with the ladies and end of story. Really.....just pointing these things out, should solve them and the memo is a perfect example.
Cultural differences make for some unfortunate experiences. During my time on tristars we had several instances of urination in the underfloor galley lift. Footprints on the toilet seats another common sight. My most memorable was actually being peed on by a gentleman in the aft galley on a 707. I learnt a valuable lesson that day-when a man is peeing, do not address him (as in "what the hell do you think you are doing?) as he will instinctively turn towards the speaker. Lesson learnt
Is this an argument in favour of removing EFIS panels and automation, and installing manual flying controls to a modern flight deck? That way the hands of those who eschew modern eating implements would be confined to the controls for the duration of the flight whilst PF. PNF(PM) would be able to eat, but his mess would be confined to his clipboard, pen, plog and the hosties (although I would hope that they would prefer to stay out of arms reach of such a man, and women pilots would never exhibit such squalid manners).
They say the chines are the oldest and most advanced civilisation, but in matters of eating implements the forks have only got one prong, and the knives are blunt.
