树大招风三人结局:航空公司永远不会告诉你的十件事

除了隐形费用和你要坐在飞机上忍耐的时间，还有一些其他事情航空公司永远不会对你说。我们跟踪采访了三位美国飞行员设法让他们说出一些不可告人的小秘密。由于涉及到敏感话题，下文不会透露他们的名字。

10. Even Pilots Have to Pee 

10. 即使是飞行员也要嘘嘘

"Anyone who has sat near the front of the plane since 9/11 has surely noticed when the pilots are ready to take a bathroom break, or 'physiological needs' break, as the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) calls it. When nature calls we alert the flight attendants on the intercom. The attendants set up a barrier to the cockpit and give us an all-clear signal to open the door, as we don't have a separate bathroom and have to use the same one as everyone else. A few months back my fellow pilot picked up the wrong handset and accidentally asked the entire aircraft if we could 'come out and pee?'"

“9.11以来，所有曾经坐在飞机前部的乘客一定都注意到过什么时候飞行员会去洗手间，或者按照美国联邦航空局（FAA）的说法，去解决一些‘生理需求’问题。因为我们没有单独的洗手间，要跟乘客公用同一个洗手间，所以当需要去洗手间的时候我们会用对讲机通知乘务员。乘务员就会在驾驶舱前拉开一道屏障，然后给我们发送一个无人信号才能使用。几个月以前有一次我的伙伴意外拿错了对讲机，向全飞机的乘客询问我们‘现在是不是可以出去上洗手间了？’”

9. There Is Such Thing as the "Good Seats" 

9. 座位有好坏之分

"If you are susceptible to motion sickness, your best bet is to sit over the wing. An airplane is like a teeter-totter. When the pilot moves the nose of the plane up or down, the seats in the extreme front and back are going to move a greater distance. And as a rule, the tail tends to move more than the front, so stay away from the rear if motion is a problem for you."

“如果你很容易晕机，你最好坐在机翼附近。飞机就好像是一个跷跷板，当飞行员让飞机昂头飞行或者俯冲飞行的时候在最前面和最后面的位置就会有较大幅度的摆动。根据规律，飞机尾部的摆动幅度比前部还要大，所以如果你容易晕机就不要坐在飞机尾部。”

8. The Fasten Seatbelt Sign Is No Joke 

8. “请系好安全带”信号并不是玩笑

"Turbulence isn't dangerous to a jet aircraft, but it is to the people in it. Past incidents of severe turbulence have slammed people into the ceiling and then dropped them to the floor, causing very serious injuries. If your flight crew tells you to be seated because of turbulence, I highly recommend you heed their warning."

“对于飞机来说气流并不危险，但是对于飞机里的乘客来说可不是这样。过去曾有过强气流导致乘客撞到天花板上再摔到地板上使其严重受伤的事故。如果空勤人员告诉你前方有气流，请回到座位上并极好安全带，我强烈建议你还是听从他们的警告。”

7. There Are No Free Lunches 

7. 没有免费的午餐

"Thanks to the airline bankruptcies starting in 2000, few U.S. domestic airlines still provide food to its crews. As pilots we are allowed to eat in the cockpit once we're at cruising altitude, but we're usually eating something from the food courts in the airport terminal: pre-prepared wrapped sandwiches, slices of pizza. Not quite the glamorous lifestyle it used to be."

“由于2000年多家航空公司破产，现在很少有美国航空公司还为机组人员提供食物。作为飞行员我们只可以在飞行时在驾驶舱中吃东西。我们通常是在机场航站楼的快餐店买个三明治卷，几片比萨饼。生活没有以前那么让人羡慕了。”

6. And You Thought Filling Your Car Was Expensive 

6. 油费很贵

"The number-one expense for an airline is fuel, which isn't going to get any cheaper. And because the cost of gas fluctuates so much, so does the price of the flight. Your average two-engine, narrow-body aircraft burns about 15 gallons of gas per minute at cruising altitude. So you can imagine what the gas bill would be on a transcontinental flight."

“航空公司的最大消费是燃油，而且会越来越贵。由于汽油价格浮动较大，机票的价格也就随之波动。普通的双引擎窄体客机飞行时每分钟需要消耗15加仑汽油。所以你也能想象得出横贯大陆的航线需要多少汽油钱。”

5. The FAA Has a Sense of Humor, Sort of

5. 联邦航空局的幽默

"Airplanes follow an invisible map of highways and avenues in the sky in order to make it to their destinations. There are thousands of virtual points in the sky that pilots follow on their route, each with unique names so the air-traffic controllers can tell us where to go and how to get there. The FAA has gotten creative when naming some of these points (which must be five characters), like these over southern Florida—UFIRD, DONLD, and TRUMP over Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, or FINNS, PYRUT, and BUFIT for Florida native Jimmy Buffett. My favorites are at the Kansas City Airport, honoring its local cuisine on the arrival procedure with SPICY and BARBQ."

4. The Deal With Electronics

4. 关于电子设备

"Nothing has ever been proven, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that electronics really interfere with an aircraft's flight instruments. The most likely culprits are things that transmit a signal, like a cell phone or a computer operating in Wi-Fi mode, which emits an electronic pulse or wave. But new aircrafts are being engineered for the wireless age so you should see more and more allowance of electronic devices in the future."

“虽然还没有任何直接证据，确实曾经有过不少电子设备干扰飞机飞行的小事件发生。最有可能的元凶是手机或带有无线上网功能的电脑一类进行信号传输的设备，这些设备都发送电子脉冲或者电子波。但是新型飞机都已经开始按照无线通讯时代的标准设计制造了，所以将来会有越来越多的飞机允许使用电子设备。”

3. Your Co-Pilot Could be More Experienced Than You Think

3. 副机长也许比你想象的更富有经验

"The turmoil of the airline industry over the last 20 years or so has caused many airlines to go out of business or shrink in size, thus laying off massive numbers of employees. If an airline captain loses his job at one airline and goes to another, he or she will start over as a co-pilot at entry-level pay and will be given no credit for their experience."

“过去20年航空业的混乱导致很多航空公司破产或者减小规模，大量员工失业。如果一家航空公司的机长丢了工作然后被另一家公司聘用，他就会从副机长做起，拿刚入职员工的工资，他的工作经验并不能使他获得更高的职位和薪水。”

2. The Air Isn't Immune to Office Romances

2. 航空公司里也不能避免“办公室恋情”

"All the crew stays at the same hotel, but I remember a couple years ago the pilots' wives pushed for flight attendants to be at a different hotel than the pilots because they didn't want to make it easy for their husbands to cheat."

“所有的空勤人员都住在同一家酒店里，但是几年以前飞行员的妻子们会迫使乘务员住在不同的酒店里以避免她们的丈夫们出轨。”

1. Crews Are Trained in More Than Just Emergency Exits

1. 空勤人员的训练项目不仅仅包括紧急逃生

"Terrorism is a big deal nowadays. Most flight attendants and pilots are trained for those instances and taught self-defense as well as how to detect certain behaviors. Pilots are also able to sign up for a voluntary intensive program that is held at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. For one week they learn things like how to shoot a gun and disable someone carrying one. When they finish the program they're licensed to carry a gun into the cockpit with them."

“近几年恐怖主义是最重要的事。大部分乘务员和飞行员都为此受过自我防卫和侦查可疑行为的训练。飞行员也可以参加在联邦执法训练中心举办的志愿加强项目的训练。在一周的时间里他们怎样使用枪械和怎样制服持枪者。完成训练后他们会被授予驾驶舱内持枪证。”