Originally Posted by Sankaps

I didn't want to say this publicly, but here goes anyhow.

I used to work for a major airline, and several years ago was given the courtesy of an invite to the flight deck for a landing at Chicago O'Hare -- this was on an AI 747-400.

The captain was a really friendly guy, but what I witnessed on the flight deck was scary.

The aircraft was descending towards ORD, passing thru 10,000 feet, while the captain was sitting in the jump-seat having his meal.

The FO was flying the aircraft and I was in the observer's seat. The captain was chatting with me, and in-between shouting out instructions to the FO between mouthfuls of food: "increase the rate of descent", "ask the tower to repeat last instruction", etc etc.

This was on descent to what was then the world's busiest airport! I could not believe it. Just one pilot at the controls, and the other one on the jump-set having his meal, chatting with a visitor, and "back-seat flying".

I told the captain that I should leave, as clearly there was a lot going on. He insisted, with typical Indian hospitality, that I should stay and not to worry. I politely refused and headed out back to my seat, hoping this would help the captain be a little less distracted.

We landed safely of course, but forgive me for having a very poor impression of AI's cockpit discipline as a result of this. We are just lucky there have not been more major incidents!