Flight attendant's viral video shows pilots landing in heavy rainstorm
It was a dark and stormy night when a video filmed from the cockpit of an airplane emerged on social media, showing the conditions pilots face when landing in heavy rain.
"This was the day I learned that planes have wiper blades," said TikToker @damailufta, who shared her front-row seat behind the pilots in the cockpit as their windshield wipers worked to clear the view for landing at Sola Airport in Stavanger, Norway.
Mina Farmen Bertheussen, 30, who said she's a Norwegian Airlines flight attendant based in Oslo, wasn’t working the night she filmed the video; she was a passenger on her own airline to visit family and requested a seat in the cockpit for part of the flight.
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"It was a short 40-minute flight, but it was raining so much," Bertheussen told Fox News Digital. "It wasn’t really a bumpy flight. But I found it so interesting and wanted to film it because you couldn’t see anything."
The seldom-seen glimpse of what goes on inside the cockpit during rough weather bewildered viewers, and the video garnered more than 3.5 million views.
"These guys are magicians," someone commented.
"Talk about trusting your instruments," another viewer commented.
As the plane approached for landing, the pilots can be heard counting down the number of meters the plane was from the ground, which Bertheussen says should debunk the idea that planes land on autopilot.
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"You can actually hear it during the video," she said. "Around 300 to 400 meters, you can hear a loud alarm. That's them turning off the auto autopilot. So from there, they are completely flying the plane themselves. Autopilot is only used in certain conditions."
Many TikTok viewers appeared to be as amazed by the average-looking windshield wipers as well as the smooth landing in unfavorable conditions.
"Those windshield wipers were fighting for their lives," one person commented.
"These wiper blades gave serious anxiety vibes," someone else wrote.
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"Wipers stole the show," another viewer commented.
Bertheussen said her cockpit perspective confirmed what she already knew about the training and professionalism of the pilots.
"You kind of get to see that they don't only rely on their eyes," she said. "They also rely on their [instruments] to land. The pilots are really in control. They know exactly what they are doing."
Flying during turbulent weather can be unnerving for passengers, but Bertheussen said, in her experience, there’s no reason to worry.
"The video looks very dramatic, but they are in full control," she said. "It wasn't really dramatic at all. It's normal for the pilots, and they have a lot of training. It's the same for us as flight attendants. When it's bumpy or when there’s turbulence, we're not scared because we have training, and we know what is safe."
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This isn’t the first time Bertheussen has offered a unique, behind-the-scenes view of a job most people will never experience first-hand.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, she made a career as a crane operator and posted a video of herself working in a small, glass-enclosed cabin high above a city.
"When you show a video from this kind of job, it's something people don't see as much, or they don't know what's going on in there," she said. "So it was probably interesting for people to see."
Fox News Digital reached out to Norwegian Airlines for comment.