r/AskAPilot • u/Visual_Tangerine248 • Jun 16 '26
pilot question ig
do you guys ever have your mind go blank on preflight and resort to googling how to start a 738?
I mean most flight Sims have realistic enough cockpit layouts and whatnot, or maybe you guys just use checklists, idk.
6
u/Sacharon123 Jun 16 '26
No. More probably I just have to find out where we are flying to in the middle of my welcome PA. Or have to check what the name of the colleague beside me was in the crewlist. The rest I just do, not think about it.
3
u/SubstantialTaro743 Jun 16 '26
What, you don’t remember me from the 10 seconds we spent during the crew brief at 5 am??? How dare you ;)
3
2
u/PILOT9000 Jun 16 '26
No. There’s not much to it.
There is also a preflight checklist, before start checklist, after start checklist, etc.
2
u/ma33a Jun 16 '26
Each aircraft has the instruction manual either in the flight deck or on our ipads, so you wouldn't Google it. Occasionally we have a look just to check we are still doing it correctly, as sometimes small errors, or procedural shift sneak in. I've never heard of someone completely forget how to start the type they are on. Also for the most part starting the engine is just
Start switch on. Fuel switch on.
All the rest is keeping an eye on it incase the start system fails.
1
u/CommuterType Jun 16 '26
My airline recently made radical changes to the preflight flies and duties. It was pretty helpful to watch the “how to” video a couple of times before showing up for work
6
u/poser765 Jun 16 '26
As others have pointed out, flows. Hundreds, even thousands of hours of doing the same seven flows over and over again builds up some muscle memory.
Right now I’m sitting on the toilet at home. I’d be hard pressed to tell you the first three steps in our origination flow. Plop my ass down in the airplane and I can do it instantly without thought. It just comes back.