- Staff Notice
Most of the time the plane is on autopilot so there's very little to do. I once heard that flying a modern jet plane is "Hours of boredom interposed by moments of terror"
If you're flying across the Atlantic, there's no chance of running into anything so apart from sudden failure of something or a bomb, close attention to the instruments or controls is not needed. I'm not excusing the behaviour but can understand to boredom.