360-View Video Shows Exactly What Your Pilot Does During Takeoff

Unless you're a pilot, know a pilot, or play a pilot on TV, you most likely have no idea what it's like to start the engines of an airbus. Spoiler alert: it's basically nothing like the movie Airplane!. In reality, the cockpit is a pretty serious place, as pilots are responsible for making a large metal tube with around 250 passengers soar 39,000 feet in the air. But for all those wondering what exactly it looks like behind that locked door, the German YouTube channel Blick published a 360-view video of the cockpit during take-off.

Produced last month but just emerging on Reddit, the video depicts a SWISS Airbus A320 on its way from Zurich to Geneva. You can watch clean-cut pilots do their thing and then turn to the front window to see the world from their point of view. Make sure to play around with the toggle in the top left-hand corner of the video to get the full effect. It's pretty crazy to be able to look out the window, then at the pilots, then back. Tons going on here.

Take it all in:

 

click to play video

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Kara King is a News Writer for Thrillist and would fly with this team again any day. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow her at @karatillie.