View Poll Results: What is the hygene state of your flight deck?
I am a professional pilot and my flight deck is filthy
470
43.56%
I am a professional pilot and my flight deck is clean
287
26.60%
I am NOT a professional pilot but I felt like taking part in this poll anyway
322
29.84%
Voters: 1079. This poll is closed
'Filthy' flight decks
Join Date: Aug 2005
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Yes discipline ... and company policy!!
Besides, if you are forced to work in a pigsty (or if it doesn't bother you), then your work will reflect that. Garbage in, garbage out. Your working environment is just as important to overall performance, as is state-of-the-art technology. And old doesn't have to mean dirty.
Besides, if you are forced to work in a pigsty (or if it doesn't bother you), then your work will reflect that. Garbage in, garbage out. Your working environment is just as important to overall performance, as is state-of-the-art technology. And old doesn't have to mean dirty.
Join Date: Jan 2000
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A Number of points come to mind after reading this Topic
1. Flight Deck crew Need to Clean up after themselves, ( I once entered the FD after the Training Capt had left, to find Rubbish, Papers and Food in the Flight Deck, so I did my After Fight Inspection Picked up all Offending Mess Went up to his Office and placed it upon his desk. He asked me what the**** I was doing to which I replied I was returning his mess and next time I found it like that I would do the same, Luckely we were friends and he apologised for the mess and next day sent a memo to all Air Crew asking them to tidy up behind themselves after each Flight)
2. Please if you do spill drink or liquids in the Flight Deck Report it in the Tech Log (Nothing worse than all the Lights and Communications going out Mid-Fight, Over the sea in the Dark, very very scarey)
3. Flight Decks need a proper deep clean every 'C' Check, but that doesn't get done due to Management and Bean Counters not wanting Aircraft in the hangar longer than it needs to be or giving the Maintenace to Third party Outfits who will only do as they are tasked.
I do think BALPA should raise this issue of Flight Deck Cleanliness with the Managment of Airlines and also the CAA, because it does have Health and Safety issues, and with less and less Crew on shift rosters if a pilot does go off sick due to something that he or she picked up on the Flight Deck that also raise's cost issues with the Airlines which will in turn have an affect on Profits.
As you can guess I'm an Engineer I dont like Cleaning up after some of the Pigs that sit up front nor do I like not being able to do anything about it, due to time restraints placed upon me by Short Turnaround Times on the Line or in the hangar Inputs, I want to hand over the Aircraft to the next Crew Servicable and Clean and with luck the Crew will bring it back to me in the same condition, and in that way I dont get as stressed, and have more time to talk to the lovely Cabin Crew.
1. Flight Deck crew Need to Clean up after themselves, ( I once entered the FD after the Training Capt had left, to find Rubbish, Papers and Food in the Flight Deck, so I did my After Fight Inspection Picked up all Offending Mess Went up to his Office and placed it upon his desk. He asked me what the**** I was doing to which I replied I was returning his mess and next time I found it like that I would do the same, Luckely we were friends and he apologised for the mess and next day sent a memo to all Air Crew asking them to tidy up behind themselves after each Flight)
2. Please if you do spill drink or liquids in the Flight Deck Report it in the Tech Log (Nothing worse than all the Lights and Communications going out Mid-Fight, Over the sea in the Dark, very very scarey)
3. Flight Decks need a proper deep clean every 'C' Check, but that doesn't get done due to Management and Bean Counters not wanting Aircraft in the hangar longer than it needs to be or giving the Maintenace to Third party Outfits who will only do as they are tasked.
I do think BALPA should raise this issue of Flight Deck Cleanliness with the Managment of Airlines and also the CAA, because it does have Health and Safety issues, and with less and less Crew on shift rosters if a pilot does go off sick due to something that he or she picked up on the Flight Deck that also raise's cost issues with the Airlines which will in turn have an affect on Profits.
As you can guess I'm an Engineer I dont like Cleaning up after some of the Pigs that sit up front nor do I like not being able to do anything about it, due to time restraints placed upon me by Short Turnaround Times on the Line or in the hangar Inputs, I want to hand over the Aircraft to the next Crew Servicable and Clean and with luck the Crew will bring it back to me in the same condition, and in that way I dont get as stressed, and have more time to talk to the lovely Cabin Crew.
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Just to throw in my thoughts.....
When I first started my airline job, when getting home before doing anything I would go and wash my hands. After one wash with soap, the water would run away black, after the second, a more translucent grey, and finally after the third wash, it would run clear again.
After a couple of months of constant sniffles and partially-blocked nostrils, I wondered if I was picking up germs from work. So I decided to invest in a couple of microphone muffs and ear-pad sock things, as well as stocking up on Dettol anti-bacterial wipes from my local supermarket.
My pre-flight routine now is to use the wipes on any surface in the flight-deck where I'm likely to be toucing. EG, control column, thrust levers, flap selector, etc. And the checklist gets a wipe over too! I also use it on the headset before putting on my mic and ear-seal covers.
Result now is less sniffles and less blocked nostrils, and the water runs clean after only two washes..... Oh, and several strange looks from Captains questioning me on whether I have Compulsive Obsessive Disorder. To which my response is, "Well take a look at the filth down your side then!"
I don't know if my routine makes a difference, but at least it gives a slight peace of mind!
Cheers,
Shortcut
When I first started my airline job, when getting home before doing anything I would go and wash my hands. After one wash with soap, the water would run away black, after the second, a more translucent grey, and finally after the third wash, it would run clear again.
After a couple of months of constant sniffles and partially-blocked nostrils, I wondered if I was picking up germs from work. So I decided to invest in a couple of microphone muffs and ear-pad sock things, as well as stocking up on Dettol anti-bacterial wipes from my local supermarket.
My pre-flight routine now is to use the wipes on any surface in the flight-deck where I'm likely to be toucing. EG, control column, thrust levers, flap selector, etc. And the checklist gets a wipe over too! I also use it on the headset before putting on my mic and ear-seal covers.
Result now is less sniffles and less blocked nostrils, and the water runs clean after only two washes..... Oh, and several strange looks from Captains questioning me on whether I have Compulsive Obsessive Disorder. To which my response is, "Well take a look at the filth down your side then!"
I don't know if my routine makes a difference, but at least it gives a slight peace of mind!
Cheers,
Shortcut
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In response to HKG Phooeys' original post:
Mr Phooey you are I presume living in that former far-flung outpost of the United Kingdom known as Hong Kong?
I also presume you travel to your place of work on Hong Kongs extremely efficient public transport. And on your G-Days you are travelling round town possibly with your family on the same public transport?
Or is it that when you went to work you were obviously wearing latex gloves to hold that handrail and ring the bell to get off the bus? Wearing a full bio-protective suit perhaps, with a filtered airsource? Or you didn't go out on your G-Days, you lived inside a hermetically sealed oxygen tent. Travelled to and from work like the crew of the Space Shuttle in a decontaminated Winnebago.
Now, maybe you could cast your mind back a couple of years to a time when there was a thing called SARS going around. And how everybody in the Hong Kong community, all 7 million of us, sat up and realised what a dirty bunch of what-nots we were. And all of a sudden, overnight, in response to the brilliant govermnment adverts, people were washing their hands after blowing their noses, after wiping their behinds and taking a whizz. So as to be considerate to their fellow city dwellers. NOT.
So if your fellow crew member has got the chart in his/her gob, what do you do? Well, you come in here and have a moan of course!
Maybe, and I'm not suggesting anything painful here, you could politely ask him/her to remove it from their chops? Or report it to your superior as unprofessional behaviour? You'll probably find they are also the person that cut's their nails on the MTR, spits on the pavement, pisses all over the public toilet seat, before forgetting to wash his hands and get on the bus, MTR, taxi etc etc etc. If you feel you can't do it because of the face culture. Well I wouldn't like to begin to tell you how many holes in the ground have been caused by pandering to face in our industry.
Rant over.
PS Welcome to Hong Kong!!
Mr Phooey you are I presume living in that former far-flung outpost of the United Kingdom known as Hong Kong?
I also presume you travel to your place of work on Hong Kongs extremely efficient public transport. And on your G-Days you are travelling round town possibly with your family on the same public transport?
Or is it that when you went to work you were obviously wearing latex gloves to hold that handrail and ring the bell to get off the bus? Wearing a full bio-protective suit perhaps, with a filtered airsource? Or you didn't go out on your G-Days, you lived inside a hermetically sealed oxygen tent. Travelled to and from work like the crew of the Space Shuttle in a decontaminated Winnebago.
Now, maybe you could cast your mind back a couple of years to a time when there was a thing called SARS going around. And how everybody in the Hong Kong community, all 7 million of us, sat up and realised what a dirty bunch of what-nots we were. And all of a sudden, overnight, in response to the brilliant govermnment adverts, people were washing their hands after blowing their noses, after wiping their behinds and taking a whizz. So as to be considerate to their fellow city dwellers. NOT.
So if your fellow crew member has got the chart in his/her gob, what do you do? Well, you come in here and have a moan of course!
Maybe, and I'm not suggesting anything painful here, you could politely ask him/her to remove it from their chops? Or report it to your superior as unprofessional behaviour? You'll probably find they are also the person that cut's their nails on the MTR, spits on the pavement, pisses all over the public toilet seat, before forgetting to wash his hands and get on the bus, MTR, taxi etc etc etc. If you feel you can't do it because of the face culture. Well I wouldn't like to begin to tell you how many holes in the ground have been caused by pandering to face in our industry.
Rant over.
PS Welcome to Hong Kong!!
Join Date: Aug 2005
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One word or rather acronym springs to mind.....FOD.
Crap on the flight deck represents a major flight safety issue. If your aircraft has mechanical linkages your in double trouble. It's all to easy for something to slip under the control coloumn gator into the bell crank...well you see where I'm going and it has happend !
When I was a lad I was taught religously to EMPTY your pockets before entering a flight deck or cockpit.
Even if your in a Scarebus, it runs on wigglies and metal objects in particular represent a high risk when loose in the cockpit. Gum wrappers are perfect for shorting out electrical connections, as are coins.
Gentlemen in the interests of flight safety please keep your work area not just clean but immaculate.
As an aside
Standard practice for fastjet crew to do
FOD checks usually a period of inverted fligth does the trick, the length of which is governed by how much stuff the crew pick off the canopy.
Crap on the flight deck represents a major flight safety issue. If your aircraft has mechanical linkages your in double trouble. It's all to easy for something to slip under the control coloumn gator into the bell crank...well you see where I'm going and it has happend !
When I was a lad I was taught religously to EMPTY your pockets before entering a flight deck or cockpit.
Even if your in a Scarebus, it runs on wigglies and metal objects in particular represent a high risk when loose in the cockpit. Gum wrappers are perfect for shorting out electrical connections, as are coins.
Gentlemen in the interests of flight safety please keep your work area not just clean but immaculate.
As an aside
Standard practice for fastjet crew to do
FOD checks usually a period of inverted fligth does the trick, the length of which is governed by how much stuff the crew pick off the canopy.
Join Date: Sep 2005
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Filthy Cockpits
You should see our ambulances. At shift change at our city-centre station it's
1) pick a germ lab that's been out all the previous shift,
2) get your first call at three minutes after sign-on time,
3) try to grab any chance you get to slosh some water and disinfectant over it (giving the germs a nice warm soapy bath).
4) get the next call - etc etc ad nauseam.
I imagine it has lots to do with 24/7 usage, rarely having a regular assigned crew per van, and snatching meals between calls etc.
Odd thing is we all keep going back for more ... duty? desperation? masochism? a weirdly magnetic love/hate relationship with our respective sources of income? ... who knows?
Keep up the good work, guys and girls. Every time we fly we owe our lives to your hard work, determined professionalism and consistently high standards. I usually face each flight with a heady mix of 
and 
- the applies to those in the management/finance/hr offices, not the "front office". The
applies to seeing the upper side of the clouds at sunset, circling Zakynthos for half an hour, whisper quiet at 4am with a full moon silvering the sea below, being the only one sober enough to watch the eye-aching gold of a June sunrise over Elba from a 757, surviving a pax flight on an IL18. Sorry if this is naive, romantic 
to any tired professionals among you. I love that side of flight, hate the politics and what its doing to you.
1) pick a germ lab that's been out all the previous shift,
2) get your first call at three minutes after sign-on time,
3) try to grab any chance you get to slosh some water and disinfectant over it (giving the germs a nice warm soapy bath).
4) get the next call - etc etc ad nauseam.
I imagine it has lots to do with 24/7 usage, rarely having a regular assigned crew per van, and snatching meals between calls etc.
Odd thing is we all keep going back for more ... duty? desperation? masochism? a weirdly magnetic love/hate relationship with our respective sources of income? ... who knows?
Keep up the good work, guys and girls. Every time we fly we owe our lives to your hard work, determined professionalism and consistently high standards.
I usually face each flight with a heady mix of and - the applies to those in the management/finance/hr offices, not the "front office". The applies to seeing the upper side of the clouds at sunset, circling Zakynthos for half an hour, whisper quiet at 4am with a full moon silvering the sea below, being the only one sober enough to watch the eye-aching gold of a June sunrise over Elba from a 757, surviving a pax flight on an IL18. Sorry if this is naive, romantic to any tired professionals among you. I love that side of flight, hate the politics and what its doing to you.
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Until recently, I was with a european airline were it was common practice that the only complaint at the end of the flight, either written or verbal, was the flight deck requires cleaning. Not being flight crew, sitting there for several hours, being served trays of food and drink. I always wondered who actually made the mess that was so frequently complained about. In fact one afternoon there was an obstruction to the coloumn, a small empty, damaged coke can was jammed behind.
Breakfast cereal, biscuits, dinner on the floor and in the seat tracks, wet deposits on the pedastal, instruments.
Several times we disscused this subject and wondered what would happen during a decompression incident with this stuff lying around, whether this debris would lift and fly around adding to the problem....
Breakfast cereal, biscuits, dinner on the floor and in the seat tracks, wet deposits on the pedastal, instruments.
Several times we disscused this subject and wondered what would happen during a decompression incident with this stuff lying around, whether this debris would lift and fly around adding to the problem....
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I'm all for "leaving a place better than you found it", and there's no excuse for not picking up trash after yourself when you leave the cockpit. But reading this thread has me wondering just how many hypochondriacs living in hermitically-sealed bubbles are out there masquerading as airline pilots. I mean really...
Legislating away dust in the cockpit?
Cookie crumbs in the seat rail constituting a workplace environmental health hazard?
Involve the government and BALPA?
Dettol-wiping every surface or switch you might touch in the cockpit before a flight instead of keeping your hands out of your mouth like your mother told you?
And most of these comments coming from people who take national pride in the close-quarters, macro petri dish known as public mass-transport and the invention of the queue, both of which seem to be tailor-made for the puprose of germ-swapping with strangers?
Y'all are beginning to worry me. Makes me wonder what kind of diseases you're carrying around.
Btw, I think it was on the Discovery Channel where I saw that the "dust" you encounter indoors (yes, even workplaces that vacumn and wipe off desks every night have dust) consists mainly of minute flakes of human skin.
Just think, even as you read this, you're sucking thousands of them into your lungs with every breath! And don't even get me started about what lives inside the hotel mattresses and pillows you sleep on, mouth agape, where thousands have slept before.
Yes lads, you might go crazy thinking about it.
Legislating away dust in the cockpit?
Cookie crumbs in the seat rail constituting a workplace environmental health hazard?
Involve the government and BALPA?
Dettol-wiping every surface or switch you might touch in the cockpit before a flight instead of keeping your hands out of your mouth like your mother told you?
And most of these comments coming from people who take national pride in the close-quarters, macro petri dish known as public mass-transport and the invention of the queue, both of which seem to be tailor-made for the puprose of germ-swapping with strangers?
Y'all are beginning to worry me. Makes me wonder what kind of diseases you're carrying around.
Btw, I think it was on the Discovery Channel where I saw that the "dust" you encounter indoors (yes, even workplaces that vacumn and wipe off desks every night have dust) consists mainly of minute flakes of human skin.
Just think, even as you read this, you're sucking thousands of them into your lungs with every breath! And don't even get me started about what lives inside the hotel mattresses and pillows you sleep on, mouth agape, where thousands have slept before.
Yes lads, you might go crazy thinking about it.
Last edited by AMF; 18th Sep 2005 at 15:20.
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Our flightdeck is spotless, to the extent that we use specs cleaning cloths on the instrument glass during quiet moments in flight.
and clean the A/C after every flight.
and clean the A/C after every flight.
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It is the nature and culture of the airline that leads to filthy cockpits. Some yeras back starting with one airline I found that the cockpit crew could throw their rubbish on the floor and would then summon the flight attendants to the cockpit to clean up. The first thing I said to my copilot who having just cleaned his headset with his cleaning/disinfectant towel and put the offending towel on the central pedestal was "Put that somewhere else such as the ash tray or wherever you wish, but not in our common space." -(that is until it ready to be cleared away). He was offended but I made my point. As a Captain one of the roles I have to take is to tell copilots that at the end of each flight they must ensure that the cockpit is clean and all rubbish put in a plastic or sick bag for the cabib or cleaning crew to clear away. Instructors and all cockpict occupants have a role to play in this. Life is not just about PTS it is the way we interact with other people as well (CRM) that make for a great flying career. If I get into an aeroplane after maintenance and the cockpit is dirty because of maintenance work then who ever the crew chief is, must arrange for the cockpit to be cleaned. The same goes for a crew change only.
By the way in any outfit, fit to be called an airline a professional Cabin crew will clear all waste within reason as it a hazard in case of of a fire. Basic logic.
By the way in any outfit, fit to be called an airline a professional Cabin crew will clear all waste within reason as it a hazard in case of of a fire. Basic logic.
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Um....yeah.....sounds like a wonderful example of good CRM where a cockpit atmosphere that promotes communication is established by the Captain.
My co-pilots always respond positively to nitpicking, especially when it comes just after we meet or when I tell them what they must do after each flight.
My co-pilots always respond positively to nitpicking, especially when it comes just after we meet or when I tell them what they must do after each flight.
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Lots of posts on Prune today (including one above) that make references to "my copilot" ...
These are the same old timers that make PAs that say I am "your captain" and this is "my airplane" ...
I thought CRM and Mr Darwin had removed most of the dinosaurs from this industry ?
These are the same old timers that make PAs that say I am "your captain" and this is "my airplane" ...
I thought CRM and Mr Darwin had removed most of the dinosaurs from this industry ?
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>>These are the same old timers that make PAs that say I am "your captain" and this is "my airplane" ...
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Aw - go on let them believe that they are in charge and not just the driver. I don't suppose it does any real harm.
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Aw - go on let them believe that they are in charge and not just the driver. I don't suppose it does any real harm.
After reading this discussion I went to work armed with the determination to clean the FD of all the dust and grime I could. I get to work and find I am flying a 737 fresh out of a C check with not only a fresh coat of paint on the outside but a sparkling looking flight deck on the inside with almost all the avionic pannels repainted and clean, new seat covers with fresh sheepskins! Next time then
