I don't believe that women earn 75% less than men at a certain airline.

[Gromance02]

I just don't. Unless they are talking about completely different roles. Eg, pilots (generally men) compared to air stewards (generally women). I'm not defending the airline but I don't think they deserve this utterly misleading headline.

Obviously if a female pilot with exactly the same length of career with the same number of sabbatical/maternity/paternity leave as a man is on less than her male counterpart, that is wrong.

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Absolutely

And the pilots outnumber the flight staff

Its the 'flight crew aren't capable' bit im annoyed by

(I know you and others haven't said this...its just what i inferred from the original comment )

And i know that maths and physics at A level is required

In fact...might have a chat with ds2

He wants to do those A levels

And mummy fancies cheap flights

Wait no

I obviously want him to have an interesting career

Thats the really important thing

(And cheap flights)

You'll want to steer him towards an airline that gives a set number of free flights for whoever they want to give them to then. My airline gives cheap/free flights only to the employee and 2 nominees. 'All my kids' can be one nominee, and the other is my OH. In order to get my mum on I would have to take one of the others off. My mother obviously feels my husband is not a worthy recipient of staff travel and she should have his place! OH disagrees.

I'm really intrigued to learn why pilots need to be able to do trigonometry, or understand basic fluid mechanics etc.

I understand you would need these in order to pass an exam on them...but when did you last use this information in your day job?

I mean we have the same issue in my line of work...I had to pass all sorts of exams from special relativity to nearly free electron models. Absolutely NONE of this is valuable or even passingly useful in my day to day job as a professional physicist.

This has become so obviously the case in recent years that we are totally restructuring the degree program to focus on skills instead of knowledge...

So why do pilots still need A-level maths?

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I may return to pick your brains

morphene

When dh applied 20 odd years ago you didnt need A level physics

But that was a loooooooooong time ago

Presumably when you’re flying an expensive object through the sky with a couple of hundred passengers, it’s reasonable to expect that someone on board has some idea of how it all works?

Well I expect they want someone who is capable of recognising when the autopilot has had a brain fart and can correct whatever fuck up it has just made?

To avoid a large scale version of that driverless google car that ran over and killed a pedestrian a few weeks ago.

Would you fly on a plane with no human pilot?

Rufus

Point your DS towards

www.jet2careers.com/career-search/?id=1139459

I don't know how they compare to the other airlines but I know someone who's DW worked for Jet2 in the offices and they got 2 sets of free flights per year.

Thank you barbara

He doesn't look keen at the moment...but ive a few years to persuade him

Plus the optician said he had the eyes of a fighter pilot (he needs to give those back...) so the seeds have been sown

So why do pilots still need A-level maths?

I know it was some time ago, but this is an example of where basic maths ability caused a plane to crash:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#Refueling

Believe me - A level physics and maths isn't going to give a solid idea how a plane works...

Knowing what to do in a certain situation is crucial certainly...I just don't know that A-level maths helps with that.

The refueling error type incident doesn't require A-level maths to solve, and could possibly best be dealt with using a sign that says 'this aircraft needs X amount of fuel'.

With the autopilot going on the fritz type situation, I would be expecting the pilots to be able to identify the issue and fix it...not sure how a levels would help with that....training yes...A level maths...nope.

I mean working out exactly how to maximise profits when overbooking a flight requires A-level maths...

working out what to do when a sudden gust hits you just before take off velocity is achieved requires training, experience and muscle memory. Thinking about the physics of the situation would be an active disadvantage under those circumstances!

A Ph D. in physics doesn't make me a better car driver...in fact it probably made me more distracted than the average driver when my DD let loose a helium balloon while we were driving back from a party. I spent most of journey marvelling that, in accordance with the laws of physics, a helium balloon really does move move forward on acceleration, backward on braking and to the inner side of the car when you go around a sharp bend.

But A levels show an aptitude to be able to work and study at the right level. Like requiring A levels to go to university.

Training to be a pilot is probably degree/post graduate level study in all aspects of flying a plane including the engineering side of how it works, which is the reason for the requirement for maths/physics A level.

They don't just sit you down and show you which buttons to press in which order. You have to know why. Also, I think trignometry is the basis of navigation.

The refueling error type incident doesn't require A-level maths to solve, and could possibly best be dealt with using a sign that says 'this aircraft needs X amount of fuel

With X being dependent on all manner of things including how many people are on board, how much luggage they have, what the weather is like and probably a whole load of other things.

hmm..training hard to do something would be better evidence of ability to train than A-levels would be...

I bet ballerinas would be bloody awesome pilots...

You need engineering skill to build a plane...probably not to fly it.

Of course the trig is for navigation...but in what sense are pilots doing trig based navigation in their day jobs?

I mean you have to navigate when driving a car too - doesn't mean you are using trig...mostly means you are using a satnav...

I'm sure box will be back to tell me I'm talking shit again, but surely you get directed around the airport, sent your directions and height info from ATC and then land again. Surely none of that involves any sort of time on task with protractors and SOHCAHTOA.

Needs a look up table...or if you really want people calculating it by hand...because computers are too suspicious...or whatever... then you need basic multiplication...nothing involving A-level maths.

When it comes down to it, the complexity of maths required to calculated the fuel load is identical to that needed to calculate the price of a mini bottle of wine in three different currencies.

I doubt the crew are doing the maths in their heads...and I'm sure the pilots aren't either.

A level physics and maths isn't going to give a solid idea how a plane works...

No, obviously. But if pilot school is going to give you a solid idea of how a plane works (and I hope it does) then you’re going to need to be good at maths and physics.

noble no, pilot school is not going to give you a solid idea how a plane works....

just as learning to drive gives you very little more than the basics about how a car works.

You don't need to know exactly how an internal combustion engine works to know when to press the accelerator peddle.

You don't understand (and probably never would entirely understand - given that the Navier Stokes equation governing fluid dynamics is still an area of active research across the world) exactly how the flaps on a plane change the vortex dynamics and hence influence lift and drag, but you do learn exactly when and how to use them.

Muscle memory and experience is what gets both planes and cars driven safely ...physics and maths...not so much.

It is often (incorrectly) said that scientists don't know how bumble bees stay aloft....even when this was still true, it didn't in any sense stop the bumble bees from actually flying, did it?

Morphene, why, exactly, are you so determined to do one particular career down? There's not a lot of point in me divulging all the intricacies of the job as you'll come back with a retort saying a trained monkey could do it.

FWIW, at flying school we do get our protractors and compasses out. We learn about the physics of flight because it surely goes without saying that a pilot ought to know why they are up in the air. We learn about engines (piston and jet,) we learn morse code (it might surprise you to learn that there are still navigation beacons out there merrily transmitting away their names in Morse and we are required to check we have the right one.) The computer that I program each time I fly has all the brain power of a 1980s calculator - it still has a green screen interface. We need to be able to understand flight and work fast with numbers that we understand for when everything stops working. And every now and again it does all stop working - Air France lost an aircraft in the Atlantic several years ago when various instruments stopped working. I have a work colleague who was the captain of the Beijing Glider who's quick actions (based on a very firm understanding of lift, the knowledge of what each bit of his aircraft did, and some fast recalculating of flight path) saved everyone on board an aircraft (and everyone underneath it on the approach path) that everything had stopped working on in the last 800ft of a flight into Heathrow.

Another way of putting it: If it was so easy to push a button and watch a plane fly me to the Maldives twice and month and get paid the amount I do for my paltry efforts, why aren't so many more people doing it?