How Your Airplane Food Gets Made And Other ‘Cockpit Chronicles’

Perhaps humans are fascinated with airplanes because your everyday normal person can’t possibly comprehend all the idiosyncrasies and wonders of physics involved in the miracle of flight. As comedian Patton Oswalt explains, “This many people in a metal tube in the sky, this should not be happening. This is against nature and God and everything.” Or maybe the interest is an artifact of everyone’s childhood sense of wonder with big manmade things with wings.

Regardless of the reasons for why it exists, New York-based 757 and 767 commercial airline co-pilot, Kent Wien taps into our collective enchantment with airplanes in his original web series Cockpit Chronicles. Produced for Aol’s popular travel blog Gadlings, the program pulls back the curtain separating the passengers from the crew, and gives viewers a first-hand, sometimes fish-eyed look into the inner workings of a major airline and its pilots.

Wien started the series four years ago (here’s a look at all the paperwork required of the flight crew for a transatlantic flight from London to Boston) and has continued with sporadic installments ever since (like this recent ode to the much-maligned MD-80 aircraft). One of the best episodes, though, is his video from 2011 all about how the food you eat on an airplane actually hits your tray tables.

And you thought these people were efficient operating in small spaces! They got nothing on flight attendants. Stay tuned to Gadling for more Cockpit Chronicles with Kent Wien and safe travels.