What is the more daring job than the commercial pilot?

Lol Flying is such a broad subject to cover, so I will not even try to dissuade you from your perception that pilots have to be "brainy"...because believe me, there are certain people out there in the wild blue yonder who doesn't deserve to really be up there. However, these sodden individuals are fairly few, and I hope their next check ride catches them in the buff. But to answer your question, and let's isolate the situation when being on "auto-pilot", since really...that's part of your question, or something that inspired you to ask.

It is actually a good funny question. Autopilot relieves aviators of the physically and mentally demanding task of manipulating the airplane, especially the larger commercial jets. But even so, it's not all fun and games in the cockpit.

We can get rather busy up there and totally opposite from what people might ordinarily think even when the airplane is pretty much flying itself. Pilots are constantly monitoring, analyzing and planning...both for what we're doing and for alternate plans depending on different scenarios. If and when something happens, a pilot wants to have a strategy already in mind.

We must always be prepared for any scenarios. We sometimes do a bit of an exercise commonly referred to as thinking out of the box...you know, the unthinkable. The out of the box thinking isn't done in every flight we man, but once in a while, we do it.

Not only that; there's a lot of technical manuals that we have to read, updates that we have to sign off, etc. But be that as it may, this doesn't mean we can't enjoy an occasional chat or some magazines during our breaks especially on long haul flights. Navigating and communicating with air traffic control take up a lot of our time. Over the ocean, even with precision satellite navigation, pilots still need to check...and double-check their route.

They also have to plot the aircraft's position on a chart as a backup to verify their location at all times. We also constantly monitor fuel to make sure the plane is flying as efficiently as possible. At various points during longer flights, we might change altitude several times after determining our "optimum" or most efficient height for fuel burn.

And calculating fuel burn is just one tiny aspect of the whole business...

Commercial pilots don't need to be geniuses, they only require a lot of specialized training. Anyone of normal intelligence can do the job if he completes the training successfully. Good health is also necessary, since pilots must pass regular medical exams.

Being a good pilot is more a matter of having the right type of personality than being highly intelligent. On average, pilots are slightly more intelligent than average, but that's true for just about any technical job, and it's more because commercial flying tends to attract intelligent people rather than because commercial flying requires any high level of intelligence. The correlation is lower when it comes to private pilots, who may be less attracted to the technical points.

Commercial pilots do a lot more than just engage the autopilot. While it is true that most of a flight is very heavily automated these days, there's still a lot of paperwork and procedures to complete, both for the airline operating the aircraft and for regulatory purposes. It takes a lot of training to learn procedures and regulations and to stay up to date on them.

Commercial flying is one of the most heavily regulated professions in the world—even more so than medicine and law, surprisingly.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.