A Pilot Explains: 1 In 8 Airline Pilots Are Depressed, Why We Hide It And What It Costs At Home

DESCRIPTION

One in eight airline pilots is depressed. More than half of us have avoided a doctor to protect our licence. This is why pilots stay silent, what it costs at home, and where to get help.

This is A Pilot Explains: one story, sixteen minutes, told from the flight deck. We are trained to report every defect on the aircraft, and nobody trains us to report one on ourselves. This episode is for the men who fly you home tonight: the contract pilot who walks through his front door and gets looked at like a visitor, and the local pilot who is at the dinner table every evening and not really there. South Africa held a National Aviation Gender Summit last month, and that is real progress. There is no summit for the other 80%, so Bryan does the one thing nobody else has scheduled.

IN THIS EPISODE

The homecoming nobody talks about, on a long-haul contract or a local roster

Why there is no summit for men, and the 120-year-old programme called wind your neck in and push on

The Harvard survey: one in eight airline pilots depressed, one in 25 with thoughts of being better off dead

The 2022 survey of 3,765 pilots: 56% have avoided a doctor to protect their medical certificate

Why the licence is not a qualification but an identity, and why that keeps pilots quiet

The Germanwings report, and the fear it named as a contributing factor

Joseph Emerson: six years of hidden depression, the jump seat over Oregon, and what he said afterwards

The family cost: what 300 pilots said about coming home, and the contract life nobody has studied