Anything connected to planes fascinates me and terrifies me in equal measure. Which is slightly inconvenient, considering I am an aerophobe.

You know the routine. You stare at the seatbelt sign. You listen to every captain's announcement, trying to read the tone of voice behind it. The hardest part, though, isn't the turbulence or the strange noises. It is trust.

The moment an aircraft door closes, you hand over control to people you have never met and simply hope they know exactly what they are doing. Part of that is probably something to discuss with a therapist. The other part can be solved in a much simpler way: by speaking to a pilot. So that is exactly what we did.

Meet Max, a captain with thousands of flight hours behind him, who agreed to answer the questions many of us have quietly wondered about at 35,000 feet — and to be refreshingly honest about what actually goes on behind that cockpit door.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard.

— When you board a plane as a passenger, are you actually able to switch off and relax, or does it still feel a bit like work?

— I would answer that more broadly. For most people, the feeling of a holiday begins the moment they take a suitcase out and start packing. Even the atmosphere of an airport brings positive emotions on a subconscious level. It is a reflex we have developed over the years: airport equals holiday.

For me, though, it is part of everyday life. Flying is my routine, so I don't really get that same emotional boost from airports anymore.

— There is a popular belief that pilots and cabin crew essentially "scan" passengers as they board, quietly sizing up potential risks. So is there any truth to it?

— There is no formal training dedicated to profiling passengers as such, though there are certain criteria that can inform a decision to deny someone boarding. Ultimately, that call rests with the crew, led by the captain. That said, when hundreds of people file past you every single day, you naturally develop a feel for things — who is likely to cause trouble, who probably shouldn't have another drink, who isn't feeling quite right. It becomes second nature.

My role as captain is slightly different. Rather than just reading people, I am already thinking several steps ahead — working out how I would handle a situation if it escalated mid-flight. And that means looking beyond whatever the senior flight attendant has flagged to me. I am factoring in the length of the route, the time of day, and frankly, where we are headed.

A slightly worse-for-wear passenger on a late-night flight to a non-resort destination will most likely sleep the whole way without anyone batting an eyelid. That same passenger — or two of them — on a long afternoon flight to a popular holiday spot is quite another matter.

I once had a passenger who was so intoxicated he couldn't even make it up the aircraft stairs. While we were waiting for the police to arrive, we got talking, and it became clear that he was dealing with some serious personal difficulties and had been through a very tough period in his life.

Rather than making the situation more confrontational than it needed to be, we suggested that he withdraw from the flight voluntarily. That is usually a much easier outcome for everyone involved, especially the passenger. After talking it through, he agreed. The police officers who arrived were understanding as well, and in the end the whole situation was resolved calmly and without any further issues.

— Are there situations where passengers never realise something has gone wrong?

— Modern aircraft are designed with multiple layers of redundancy, so if one system fails, another takes over. Most of the time, passengers never notice anything has happened because the aircraft continues operating exactly as it should.

The same applies to many situations that have nothing to do with the aircraft itself. These days, for example, airspace restrictions and sudden closures are becoming increasingly common. When that happens, there is often a huge amount of work taking place behind the scenes. Pilots are assessing alternative routes and airports based on fuel and operational limitations, dispatchers on the ground are helping work through the options, and air traffic control is involved as well.

From the flight deck's perspective, it can be a fairly busy situation. From the passenger's perspective, it is often nothing more than a slightly longer route or a small delay on arrival.

— Have you ever had to deal with an emergency on board? What happened, and what did the situation demand of you?

— These days, unfortunately, we regularly have to deal with situations involving sudden and unpredictable airspace closures. There are times when both your destination and your alternate get shut down at once, and sorting it out falls entirely to the two people in the cockpit. Every flight, we are looking well beyond the airports in the flight plan, running through every realistic option along the route, military fields included. On shorter flights, my approach is often simpler — if things start becoming uncertain, I would rather turn around early and head straight back.

Not every emergency is operational, though. Sometimes it is a passenger who suddenly becomes the centre of attention.

There was a medical situation years ago that has always stayed with me. An elderly man lost consciousness on board, though he came round again fairly quickly. From that moment, my colleague and I spent the rest of the flight quietly preparing for the possibility of a diversion, assessing every suitable airport along the route just in case. The cabin crew checked on him regularly and kept us updated throughout the flight.

Situations like this are a good example of how aviation works behind the scenes. To the other passengers, it probably looked as though nothing unusual was happening. In reality, everyone was already thinking several steps ahead. We have a very clear set of symptoms to watch for — specific signs that could indicate a life-threatening condition. If any of those appear, diverting is no longer really a judgement call. At that point, the safest option is simply to get the aircraft on the ground as quickly as possible.

— How do simulators prepare pilots for emergencies, and can anything really prepare you for the real thing?

— I think it helps to separate ground training from simulator training, because they serve quite different purposes.

Ground training is what we call the classroom side of things. It comes in many forms — seasonal training, preparation before simulator sessions, briefings before operating into particularly challenging airports, and so on. This is where we go through both the normal operation of the aircraft and the things we hope never happen.

The focus changes throughout the year. In winter, when runways can be slippery, a lot of attention goes into landing distance calculations. In spring and summer, especially during thunderstorm season, the conversation shifts towards weather. Flying around storms is one thing during the day, but at night you are relying heavily on the weather radar, so route planning becomes particularly important. In some parts of the world, avoiding weather can also mean negotiating airspace restrictions and coordinating everything with air traffic control.

Then there is the simulator. The cockpit is effectively identical to the one in the real aircraft — every switch, display and control is exactly where it would be on the actual aeroplane. In fact, these simulators cost roughly the same as the aircraft they replicate.

The simulator is where everything comes together. We usually start with some manual flying, often in maximum allowable winds at a demanding airport, just to get settled in. Before long, though, something stops working.

And it is rarely just one thing. More often than not, it is a combination of failures, poor weather and time pressure — perhaps limited fuel on top of everything else. The first job is always to deal with the failure itself. Only the most critical memory items, such as an engine fire, are performed from memory and practised repeatedly in the simulator. Everything else is done using checklists. That is deliberate. In a stressful situation, checklists help avoid confusion and make sure nothing gets missed.

Once the immediate issue is under control, we can step back and look at the bigger picture: how the failure affects the aircraft, what limitations we now have, and whether it still makes sense to continue as planned or head for an alternate.

That is really what simulator training is about. Not teaching you how not to feel stress, because nobody is immune to that, but teaching you how to work through a problem in a structured way when several things are happening at once.

— Do you have a favourite route and a least favourite one?

— There is no shortage of candidates on both ends. Some routes are tricky because of the weather, others because of mountainous terrain where you are constantly buried in charts and approach plates. Certain airports have ground crews who operate at a pace that can only be described as deeply unhurried, which means keeping a close eye on every stage of the turnaround just to avoid delays. But honestly, none of that is really what determines my mood.

The one thing that can turn even a beloved route into something to endure is coming in to land at eight in the morning after a sleepless night. At that stage, even the most exciting destination loses some of its charm.

— Has the job had any noticeable effect on your health, your sleep, or your sense of time?

— It has done quite a number on my relationship with time. After a few years in the role, weekends stopped meaning anything. Public holidays went the same way. I often genuinely don't know what day of the week it is. Going to bed early to get up and go for a run at six or seven in the morning feels completely normal to me — early mornings and late evenings have essentially lost their meaning. What matters is when you went to sleep and when you woke up.

Sometimes I find myself doing the mental arithmetic almost without thinking. If I have been up since 4 am, I know I will need to be in bed again by 8 pm. You just learn to recalibrate around the numbers.

Sport helps enormously, though. My personal favourite before a night flight is waking up early, getting a good workout in, and then having a proper sleep in the afternoon. You wake up feeling genuinely ready for it.

— Do you have any superstitions or pre-flight rituals?

— People in this profession tend to be a fairly superstitious lot, yes. One of the most common quirks is avoiding the word "last" — instead, pilots use a word that roughly translates as "the most recent" or "the outermost," which sounds a little odd from a purely grammatical standpoint. But it is one of those things the profession has quietly adopted, and nobody questions it much anymore.