A 777 cockpit can be a crowded place if you fill all of the seats. Along with the relief-pilot seat there is a fairly uncomfortable jump seat. With the back of the airplane full of returning Americans and potential British ex-pats, I found myself a sort-of cockpit captive for the eight and a half hour westbound ride from England back to her former colonies in the New World.We were flying in bright sunshine at an altitude in the mid-30s at Mach .84 somewhere around 30 West. Not a bad ride, and we were trailing a Lufthansa 747 that was one thousand feet above our aircraft and about a hundred yards ahead of us on the track. Our speeds were compatible so we'd be pretty close together for the whole crossing until we broke formation somewhere over Nova Scotia.With all of the automation ... well ... automating, and with the relief pilot in the back "dozing for dollars," we were relieved of the boredom somewhat when Lars, the business-class flight attendant and native child of Germany, came up and sat in the relief seat to eat a sandwich and read a magazine.On domestic flights it is more-or-less against the rules to have "non-essential reading material" in the cockpit. The theory behind that is that pilots are so abysmally stupid that they would probably fly right into a mountain if they had a USA Today on their lap. Many of us, this captain included, weren't beyond keeping up on current events in the cockpit as long as we were in cruise with nothing going on and the other guy wasn't napping.International flying is a different animal. Theoretically, the pilot in the rest seat can read because he or she is officially off duty. Because of this, every 777 cockpit in our fleet was a sort-of airborne lending library. I made sure that our cockpit today was stocked with six or seven different newspapers and an equal number of magazines. It was the least I could do in exchange for the free ride home.Lars picked up a London Times and spent about 10 minutes reading an op/ed piece about intelligent design. Apparently, like most newspapers, the Times was against the idea of a Creator, which is more than a little ironic when you consider that the op/ed writer probably thought that he was a creative guy but wouldn't give god the benefit of the doubt.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/ceo-of-the-cockpit-51-cockpit-of-the-apes