Why when your talking about pilots they say they are captains 2 ???

Because they are not first officers, they are not navigators, they are captains. That is their rank.

Captain is their rank. Pilot is what they do, their job description.

A Captain holds the legal rank of aircraft commander for the purposes of a flight.

Airline pilots r promoted according to seniority and/or experience. A First Officer will be able to hold the rank of Captain after passing a Governing Authority approved course conducted by their airline after reaching the appropriate qualification criteria. The qualifications must include a valid Air Transport Pilots' Licence, specified minimum experience (eg. 6000 hours flying time) & a high standard of continuous achievement in their annual proficiency checks & flying career to date.

So not all airline pilots r Captains!

Well l like to call myself a captain, l mean captain means leader and when l fly l am the leader of the aircraft. So when l fly l make sure they call me Captain.

Captain is their rank, and the position they normally fly (left seat).

Just want to point out, two captains can be flying at the same time in the case of, say a check-ride, or an inspection, or if there is no first officer a right-seat qualified captain can fly as first officer (depending on company, other conditions may apply). The key is that the left seat captain is usually designated PIC, pilot in command, and is ultimately in command of the aircraft.

After the appearance of new jets like Boeing 757 and 767, there was no need for flight engineer. The flight engineer is job is to check hydraulic fluid amount and helping with checklists of landing and taking off. Old jets like DC-10, L-1011 and old series of Boeing jets (except 737, 717s does not required flight engineer). Now the new jets has computerized systems that handle fuel pump, and even with hydraulic pressure and the amount of hydraulic liquid.

Pilot is there job, captain is the highest rank, he is in charge of all, and is the legal ruler of the aircraft once airborne. First officer is the (co-pilot) he is in charge when something happens to the captain. He is a pilot. Named a co- pilot as a pilot is in charge. (befuddling l know). You then may have an engineer aswell. But the captains No 2 is the First Officer

Ranks such as captain, first officer, etc., r invented by airlines to maintain a pseudo-military transition that dates back hundreds of years to the crews of civil & military ships. Today, these ranks mean nothing, except within a company is human resources department. From a legal standpoint, there r only pilots. A pilot with the proper certification can fly an aircraft, no matter what rank (or lack of rank) his employer gives him. Conversely, if he does not have the proper certificates, he can not fly, no matter what rank he has been given.

Most airlines follow the pattern of captain (usually the pilot in command from a legal standpoint), first officer (usually a copilot, in aircraft that have two pilots), & possibly lower ranks, depending on the company, the aircraft they fly, etc. The highest (and best paid) rank is normally captain.

Simply put, the captain is the person in command of an aircraft and crew. It is also a rank within the airline hierarchy. Occasions happen when a pilot, qualified, ranked and paid as a captain, flies as first officer (usually because there is not a flight for him to command at the moment). He/she will not then be the captain of the aircraft and normally changes his shoulder slides from 4 bars to 3 bars to signify that.