What are the best kept secrets that flight crews hide from us?

As an air traffic controller, we're constantly swearing and yelling at pilots when we're

not on the frequency, and when we get on the mic, we use our nice guy voices.

One of my all-time favorites is the captain accidentally broadcasting his passenger briefing,

welcome aboard, weather in Chicago, and so on and so forth,

on the frequency instead of aircraft PA system. He blocked up the ground, ramp, tower radios,

all of those for a solid 15 seconds. You automatically become the laughing stock of the airport

when that happens. I was learning to be cap and crew at college, and in the event that someone dies on

board, the cabin crew make it less obvious that they've passed. They put glasses on them, maybe a

has. Essentially, they dress them up as subtly as possible to not alert or panic the other passengers.

Please don't disturb, my friend. He's dead tired. I was only a month or two out of my I.O.E. or initial operating experience at my first airline job,

flying right seat in a regional jet. I'd just come back from the bathroom when the captain

pointed out that several flight instruments on his side had failed, and he had reverted to using

data from my side. He basically programmed his main flight display to start using data from the second independent

system.

Soon, however, that went bad as well.

The autopilot disconnected, and here we are at 25,000 feet or so, in icing, hand flying

off a tiny little combined last-ditch backup instrument called an IESI, an integrated electronic

standby instrument if memory serves. We declared an emergency, asked air traffic control to point us in

the direction of better weather, and tried to figure out what the heck was happening.

Icing on both primary pitot tubes, maybe? Though that shouldn't happen because they're heated.

In any case, we ended up

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