Hello,
How tiring is flying for you? When you answer, please provide a bit context (i.e. low hours/high hours pilot, years of experience, private/comm. etc).
I’m asking because I find it surprising how tiring even small flights (still?) are. Before I took up flying, I was imaging all sorts of day trips with activities in-between that I now shy away from because I don’t want to be knackered when flying back – for example, take some rock climbing buddies, fly to a nice climbing area, do some routes, have a meal, fly back. This works easily when driving, but in flying, it seems a bit “too much” for a day. That reduces the utility value of the whole concept of flying privately quite a bit. ;-)
Especially when taking passengers, the whole process including the preparations, taking care of people, well “carrying” responsibility throughout the event – even though I may feel relaxed – seems to create some tension deep below the surface that consumes a lot of my energy…
I’m wondering if others experience the same thing and if they’ve found this vanishes after they’ve had some (years?) of flying experience or so many hours.
Cheers
I (1300 h tt, ppl/ifr) find flying less tiring than driving. But i usually fly to places in the morning and stay there over night if i plan to actually DO something at the destination. I can imagine beeing tired after ROCK CLIMBING and i remember how tired i was driving home when i still used to go hiking … after skiing or hiking i would not want to fly OR drive.
I find day trips to Germany from the UK to be a bit tiring. Trips with passengers are always harder. My level of tiredness tends to be cumulative on multiple days/multiple trips per day.
Rhino
Tiredness depends upon several things.
Your expiriance
The aircraft
The weather
The workload
The first and the last are connected, the less expiriance you have the higher the workload, this will increase our tiredness level, once you gained expiriance things will become much easier and automatic.
Flying a C-150 for 2 hours are nothing like flying B36, PA24 or a TB20. The tourer aircraft is much easer to fly and usually better equipt, if the air is bumpy it will require higher level of concentration lto keep your correct heading and altitude, the tourer will cope much better, either it is more stable or better equipt.
I started touring with a PA28-180 that had no A.P, then an Arrow IV, Multi engines and then a PA24. Most of my flying was conducted without using A.P, some in poor weather or in IMC, also the vast majority were VFR. In one case I had to plan a diversion due to weather around airspace, P zones and then fly the VFR route around Marseilles (spelling?) and calculating the heading and time to the VRP’s usually about 2min. Apart. This was hard work and the T.T of the flight was 5 – 5.5h, can’t remeber, at the end I was tired but not shuttered. Don’t worry, time and experience will make it easier.
Ben
I’m wondering, is it more a function of overall experience (which is likely to grow) or a function of currency (which, for the average private pilot with a few flights per month hopefully, is likely to remain rather constant)?
I am relatively inexperienced but also quite current and 5 hours of flying in two legs in a day is noticeably tiring for me. I am not shattered but I know I have used a lot of mental energy.
Maybe commercial pilots get more used to it.
For me it depends on workload. I recall doing my PPL QXC and getting home and crashing out big time. It felt comparable driving London to Scotland and back in a car non-stop, which I haven’t actually done, but I can imagine. On the other hand I did UK to La Rochelle (4 hour flight) and it was low workload (flew FL080 vfr on top, had GNS430 route setup, had SkyDemon, had an autopilot for tracking if I wanted, had a good ATC service from the French. Then another day you do a 45 minute flight in and around cloud OCAS, the viz below cloud is poor, and even with aforementioned electronic gadgets, you just cant see the airfield, there’s gliders nearby – and its quite tiring.
Some (generally not on this forum though) might say using all this kit isn’t flying, but you would be exhausted doing it the very traditional way. Having it makes distance flights less tiring.
The above post brings back memories. Following my PPL QXC it seemed I slept solidly for about two days.
Good questions…
I think that for a trip of say 200nm plus, flying is much less tiring than driving the same distance. But then I always fly on autopilot, GPS, etc. Hand flying is probably 10x more work even in smooth air and VMC.
The things which make flying particularly tiring are the constant noise and – if above a few thousand feet – a reduction in oxygen.
The noise needs to be addressed with the best possible headsets i.e. a Bose X as a minimum, and the A20 is a lot better still. I cannot understand why so many people fly with €150 cheapo headsets yet they spend many times the cost of an A20 on fuel in any given year. The cheap headsets are truly crap but one doesn’t realise just how crap they are until one tries the proper ones. In a club / rental situation cheap headsets are used because they get smashed or stolen, which is why anybody planning to fly long term should buy their own one. It also protects your hearing – many pilots develop hearing problems over the years. While there now appears to be a route for those pilots to get and keep the JAA/EASA IR by flying a hearing demonstration flight every year, it is an extra hassle.
The oxygen issue is easy to solve with a portable oxygen kit. I find that after an hour or more at even “low” levels like 10000ft it makes the difference between arriving fresh and arriving shagged for the rest of the day. Airline cabins are usually set to 8500ft or so but then one isn’t flying the plane and one probably gets pissed at the destination anyway 
Too many pilots fly Eurocontrol routes (which get quite difficult below 10k) without oxygen. Today I am off to Le Touquet at FL080, IFR, but on that I won’t bother with oxygen (maybe 30 mins). Anything more, I would use it.
An autopilot dramatically reduces the workload – even a simple heading-only one. But if you are installing one, get the whole lot: LNAV VNAV and the full ILS capability. Even the old STECs can do all of that.
Another huge workload reducer is an IR – suddenly, ATC work for you. I know ATC tend to work “for” you when VFR too, but not always, and you never quite know when you are going to get the next “surprise” – unless you just stick to Class E-G all the time.
One needs to minimise stress. Plan the trip, print everything off and have it in the right order on the kneeboard before departing.
Other sources of stress are passengers. For a long trip I’d choose them carefully 
If possible, fly above cloud. The air is usually totally smooth up there, and almost nobody (in the UK, for sure) flies above cloud so there is a lot less work looking out for traffic. Anyway, nearly all VFR traffic in the UK flies below 2000ft so getting above say 3000ft is always worth it – providing one is VMC.
I also think vibration is a big tiredness factor. Not much you can do about it on a rented plane, but if it is yours, get the prop dynamically balanced.
I have done many 7hr flights and wasn’t particularly tired afterwards – no more than after say a 1hr drive.
I also find that flying in any training/exam environment is vastly more stressful. The PPL was very hard work.
I think currency must help with tiredness but really mainly indirectly, via a better cockpit organisation. Having a plane in which everything works is a big help too…
Done 4:20h in a C172 last year with strong headwind and marginal VFR from Croatia to Germany, no autopilot and family of 4 on board. That was the mother of all tiring flights. Compared to that, an IFR flight on autopilot is very relaxing. I usually read the newspaper during IFR flights.
