Pilots have lifted the lid on the shocking activities they get up to in the cockpit - including playing chess and challenging each other to make dangerous landings.
Taking to the Q&A site Quora, pilots from around the world shared details about their working life that nervous fliers would probably rather not know.
The number one topic brought up during the answers was how captains fill their time when bored during long-haul journeys - and some answers will put you off getting on a plane.
Jan Zumwalt, a former Fire Chief and aircraft pilot from Idaho, US, said: 'Sometimes we got so bored we bet on things or have contests that we really should not have done.
'One common example is, "How far or how long a pilot can descend and/or land without touching the throttles?". The best I saw was a guy make it to the inner marker from about 40 miles out.'
Pilots engage the throttle while landing to maintain control and speed as the aircraft experiences drag after extending its flaps. Not doing so could be fatal.
The pilot went on to explain another two dangerous 'games' that pilots would challenge each other to, including 'How close to a certain point on the field the pilot can touchdown?' and braking 'hard enough to make a certain short turn off'.
Zumwalt added that another shocking bet they used to make with each other included 'who was going to sleep with the new stewardess first'.
He added: 'Ladies, don't get bent out of shape, many stewardesses had their own betting pools!'
Zumwalt concluded: 'The list goes on, there is no shortage of ingenuity when you're bored! None of this should have happened but it did.'
Another pilot - Phil Seely Captain who flies the Boeing 737 NG and 737 Max - claimed some spend more time watching the passengers than the clouds.
He warned: 'International or long haul travellers: Your first class suite (private suite) has a CCTV on all of you from above.
'If you're in an enclosed suite, then there's definitely one on you. The pilots can monitor this for whatever reason, the flight attendants could as well, but only if they’re suspicious of something.'
Another former pilot revealed they sometimes cover up the windscreen to avoid being blinded by the sun - because it's not always necessary to be looking out of it.
Kit Baker, a retired captain for Eastern Air Lines and Aloha Airlines, said: 'Flying west in the afternoon always requires maps… to cover the windshield to keep the sun out of the pilot's eyes (with the ebags nowadays newspapers are used, heard it gets smelly while frying in the sun).
'That could be a little unnerving to passengers used to driving and the need to keep an eye on traffic, but in an airplane, completely unnecessary at altitude.'
He added that the same principle is true at night, with many people asking him how he sees in the dark without landing lights.
Captain Baker wrote: 'At night, the landing lights are turned off as soon as 10,000 feet is passed.
'I once had a passenger ask, "How do you see?" My answer is, "See what?" No lights at night above 10,000 feet is a little difficult for non-aviators to understand (landing lights are left on below 10,000 feet for collision avoidance).'
Another unusual and perhaps unsettling fact to have emerged in the thread is that pilots do not often need to have their hands on the controls - even during turbulence.
Instead they will be reading the radar and talking to other airplanes on the radio to see when the turbulence is likely to end, says Captain Baker.
Meanwhile one pilot on the site admits his friend was known to snooze whilst on the job. William Terry Krueger told how his pal would use the auto pilot function and 'take a short nap'.
'When the plane begin circling the alarm signal the banking of the aircraft would wake him up,' he added. 'Personally, I wouldn't recommend it.'
Pilot Daniel Hickman claimed he knew some pilots 'in the old days' who had sex - which sometimes 'still happens today' - snorted drugs and drank alcohol.
And while it's not as wild as some stories, Ron Wagner, a former USAF pilot in the Presidential Wing and a former airline pilot said they played chess while 'cruising at altitude'.
'I suppose that passengers would prefer that all the pilot's attention was on flying the aircraft every moment,' he wrote.
'But when we played chess at cruising altitude, well, I gotta admit, we weren’t paying much attention to the jet - because we didn't have a chess board!'
This article has been adapted from its original source.
