THE girlfriend of a pilot has shown what it’s like to fly with the aviation expert as a passenger.
TikToker Lily Brothwood (@lilybrothwood) filmed her wingman partner as he got on board a plane with the public, instead of sitting behind the controls.
From keeping an eye on the cockpit, rating the take off and landing and using his phone to check weather on the route, the pilot’s experience of the flight is very different to others’.
In the video he is seen using a special app that other pilots use to determine how bumpy their flight is going to be.
The app he is seen checking is Avia Weather, an aviation weather app for pilots and aviation enthusiasts.
It displays the information from more than 9,500 airports around the globe in a coded form that pilots understand.
Runway crosswinds are automatically calculated by the app as well, so pilots know how much wind to expect when they take off and come into land.
One pilot, who gave the app a five star review, said: “It’s an undoubtedly great app.
“Being a pilot I have always used this app. I have crosschecked the data always with my company weather packages and found that the data has always been reliable.”
Lily’s video has been viewed more than three million times, with people saying they would feel reassured flying alongside a pilot.
One wrote: “At least if the pilot falls asleep, you’ve got him to save you.”
A second said: “This would make me feel so comfortable as I hate flying!”
A third added: “The best thing about them being a pilot is seeing how excited they get, so sweet.”
Pilot Eser Aksan E said that even with weather apps, they can’t always predict how much turbulence will be on a flight.
She told Sun Online Travel: “There’s clear air turbulence and that’s the most difficult one. We cannot see it. We don’t know where it is, and there’s no way we can fly around it.
“That’s the dangerous one because we cannot anticipate it, it just happens.
“That’s the reason why we always tell the passengers they have to have your seatbelt on, even if the seatbelt sign is off, you still need to wear your seatbelt.
“Then you have other kinds of turbulence, like mechanical turbulence and turbulence around thunderstorms.
“If you have a huge thunderstorm, it’s obviously going to be turbulent weather, like big bumps.
“In mountain destinations, or mountainous arrivals, and summer weather, that gives us mechanical turbulence, but that’s something we know is in front of us, so that we can anticipate.”
Meanwhile, this pilot used jelly to explain why turbulence isn’t that scary.
And this is how to use a pen and paper to keep calm during a bumpy flight.