Joe Public doesnīt have the faintest idea because Joe Public doesnīt care as long as he can save a few quid on his ticket and spend them on a beer at the airport bar instead.
And Joe P. wouldnīt necessarily get any wiser from perusing these pages either.
In the case of this thread starter a captain nodded off for a couple of minutes while the FO was absent. He reports this to his airline and thus by extension also to the local CAA, just like he is supposed to. May we all learn something from it.
What we learn is not to write reports, as the result will inevitably be that some hack will get a hold of it, copy it pretty much verbatim and publish it with a sensational shock/horror headline.
Funny thing is... Sometime last year both pilots of a LoCo based in the same neighborhood fall asleep over Germany and donīt wake up until they are over Sweden (
Incident: Norwegian B738 over Germany, Denmark and Sweden on Jul 13th 2010, loss of communication for 30 minutes). The airline laughs it off and says: "Just a case of a misdialed frequency, ha ha, silly ATC couldnīt figure out an alternate way of contacting them, ha ha, happens all the time."
And the tabloids once again do a copy/paste.
And when yours truly here on pprune questions the "ha-ha, silly mistake" attitude and opines that 30mins sounds more like a nap than a goof, the thread gets removed.
Go figure.