Interested in becoming a commercial pilot? If you are then you should be prepared to handle the numerous responsibilities that these professionals are endowed with. Flying is not all about making the plane to take off and controlling it while it is in the air. A lot more goes into the airline business most of which is obscured from the public eye. In this post we will look at other responsibilities and duties of commercial pilots that are not usually seen or known by many but are very important in a commercial pilot's career.

The pilot is in charge of the plane and the passengers. This is the first responsibility that pilots have. They are required legally and morally to ensure that all the passengers and the plane land safely. While this might not seem like a huge task to a pilot who is in charge of a four seater plane, it is a much daunting task to pilots who are in charge of commercial jets that transport up to three hundred people or even more. For pilots to be able to handle this responsibility effectively they are required to undergo constant training. The training ranges from physical exercises to even mental exercises. The pilot- being the captain of the ship- needs to be of good physical and mental acuity. Vision tests are also performed routinely to ensure that the pilot does not fail in his responsibility and endanger hundreds of lives including his own.

Other responsibilities and duties include arriving at the airport hours before the departure time to ensure that the plane instruments, engines and other systems are fully functional, choosing the best route to take to a given destination based on the weather, communicating with fellow pilots and co-pilots that have been assigned to the job by the airline and even filing flight plans with air traffic control in that specific region so that they can coordinate with other air traffic stations to ensure the air space environment is controlled and safe. These are just but a few.

Each pilot has his own devised way of going about these responsibilities and duties. That said; with the help of technology these "chores" can be handled much more gracefully and efficiently. To be more precise; commercial pilots can choose to adopt scheduling software systems or online booking systems to help them manage their duties with much ease. Simply put, online booking systems are systems that run on electronic devices that can connect to the internet. Their purpose is to help professionals to be able manage hectic careers by enabling them to schedule, reschedule or even cancel meetings and appointments, enabling them to receive occasional reminders about tasks and duties that they need to tend to and even providing them with a communication channel that they and others (mostly strangers or people they're not familiar with) can use to chat with provided the unknown parties are looking to hire the pilot or have business related dealings in mind.

With that in mind, here are two practical ways that pilots can benefit from using online booking systems and scheduling software. Remember that these systems can be used on a cell phone or any other device that can connect to the internet and supports a browser. Pilots can use these systems to communicate with engineers about faulty instruments that were not attended to on the plane. The systems come in very handy when a given engineer cannot be reached by phone but the company he works for uses these systems to communicate with all the engineers. In such a situation another representative from the company who receives the message can simply show up and fix the problem saving the airline valuable time and money.

There is also the fact that pilots can be able to send vital written messages to other pilots without worrying that they might get lost in the airwaves. With the right settings and scheduling software, duplicates of a given message can be stored in the cloud where it can be accessed and sent again if the initial message was not received.