- Airline pilots on Instagram look like they have the best job in the world.
- But there are stresses that come from the profession too.
The Instagram account The Third Culture Pilot shows off the beauty of flying planes around the globe as a commercial pilot. The man behind the account keeps his name and face private — going only by his username — but documents his journeys with stunning photos from the flight deck and videos of landing on runways all around the world.
Thirdculturepilot, who asked Insider to withhold his name because of concerns around professional boundaries, started flying planes as a first officer in November 2019, and was able to complete the last of his training and get his license just a few months before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He was one of the lucky ones, he told Insider, because shortly after getting all the qualifications to become a fully fledged pilot, the travel industry ground to a halt.
While pilot influencers accounts like Thirdculturepilot gain hundreds of thousands of followers for the idyllic picture they paint, there is chaos behind the images of sunny skies they post online. Flight delays, cancellations, and luggage disarray at airports have plagued the headlines for months. Pilots spoke to Insider about what they wish vacationers understood about the travel industry right now, and what it's like for the people working in it who bear the brunt of travelers' disappointment and frustration.
"All of the complaints mostly hit the crew rather than the airline," Thirdculturepilot said. "I wish people were aware that our job is just as much as a normal job as the job of a nurse or a doctor, who find themselves with the same struggle each day."
Pilots found themselves on the ground for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic
Thirdculturepilot started posting images from his flight training in 2017, and has gained around 117,000 Instagram followers in the years since. His username is a reference to having parents from Sri Lanka and Austria, but being raised in Germany — hence having a "third culture" or mixed cultural identity.
When the pandemic hit, he was working on one of the major airlines in Europe, which kept on most of their staff throughout. But he switched internally in March 2020 to a role in Prague which required him to sign a self-employment contract. The airline promised to pay him a guaranteed 30 hours every month, even if they were assigned fewer flights, but this suddenly changed when it was no longer financially beneficial.
"As the crisis hit, I was very much impacted as I still had a job technically on paper," he said. "But I also was self-employed where I wasn't being paid because I couldn't do any flights."
The shift saved his job but meant the airline didn't have to pay him a regular wage and he received no income. The Czech Government also didn't recognize the job of a pilot to be a self-employed one, and so he was only offered three rounds of €1,000 in financial support. "Clearly not enough to survive 1 — 1.5 years," he said.
Thirdculturepilot managed to keep his license up to date throughout the pandemic because the airline needed its planes flown every few months to maintain their certification. Sometimes pilots would get in the cockpit only to fly an airplane in a circle around the airport, but it allowed the plane to maintain its certificate and pilots to keep their licenses.
Having time to fly also ensured he "stayed connected with the aircraft" more than other pilots who were laid off and couldn't fly at all for two years. This is a massive problem right now, Thirdculturepilot said, because even after two weeks, pilots can be rusty. It's like riding a bicycle, he said — you'll never forget how to ride it, but there are "certain confidence levels that you definitely lose."
In October 2021, Fortune reported that around 100,000 airline pilots across the globe had been laid off or working significantly reduced hours over the pandemic, and when they returned to the cockpit, some were making mistakes.
Pilot Anas Amireh, who has 523,000 followers on Instagram PilotAmireh, has been flying as an airline pilot for the last 19 years. He told Insider he doesn't blame any airlines for how they handled the pandemic, because they wanted to survive.
"What matters is at the end of the day, what did you do to move forward and stand up again," he said.
Flying is a hard job, he said, and pilots have found themselves moving further and further away from aviation due to the pandemic. Some, who are in their 50s, have decided to take early retirement rather than wait indefinitely for another stable job.
"Somebody is flying, then suddenly, they are sitting in front of Netflix 24/7," Amireh said. "So a lot of pilots get depression — you were worth something, doing something, then you feel you are useless."
Things have a long way to go until they are back to normal
Further issues have arisen from the world opening up again. There are only a handful of flight simulators per airline, Thirdculturepilot said, which meant when pilots started coming back to work, there was a backlog of people needing refresher training.
"What most airlines desperately need are pilots, but pilots who are ready to fly," he said. "And this is something that is just not there."
Airlines have found themselves understaffed this year, struggling to keep up with the renewed demand for flights and experiencing shortages of pilots. Some airlines are attempting to go on hiring sprees or pouring money into flying programs to catch up.
Amireh said the time that would be needed to get all pilots back and ready to fly was "not anticipated" by many airlines. But every decision they made was a gamble, because nobody had any insight into how the pandemic would play out, or when traveling would resume.
When travelers find themselves waiting in an airport for hours, only to find out their flights have been canceled, there is a great deal of frustration. This summer has been filled with horror stories of delays and chaos at airports. Thirdculturepilot and Amireh say they sympathize because they also want to be getting in the air and doing their jobs.
Thirdculturepilot said he wishes people would understand that pilots and airline staff are doing their best at their jobs with the resources they have available. When passengers don't get water, it's not the plane's crew that's at fault, it's the airline. When a flight is delayed, it's due to staff shortages, not a decision by the people flying the airplanes.
"I have to explain to them that it's not me who's deciding that, it's the people above us," he said.
When he operates a plane, he's there as a pilot responsible for everyone on board, as part of a crew. But he's also "just a normal person."
"What I really always find sad is that people lack empathy on a more human level," he said. "We are all just the same passengers as everyone around us, and we want to be home with our families at night as well."