Rodrigo David: The Man Behind Some of the Best A320 Flightdeck Videos

Cockpit videos shot by pilots and posted on YouTube were nothing new by 2014. Small, sharp, wide angle cameras like the GoPro were cheap and easy to find, so almost anyone could film a flight. Yet only a few of those videos stood out. Was it just the camera? And what did the videos do for the airline's image? To find out, The Flying Engineer spoke with Rodrigo David, a captain with Avianca Brazil. His YouTube channel was known for a video called SAIL, and later for a newer favourite, Higher. His work also promoted the airline in a relaxed and unusual way, without anyone planning it that way.

A passion that started early

Many people asked Rodrigo when he decided to become a pilot. His usual reply was that he had wanted it since he was a child. A short while before the interview, he saw a Facebook post about an old Japanese TV series called Ultraseven. That was when he realised the ships in that show had left a mark on him when he was only four years old. He said it sounded a little silly, but he was glad to have found the memory that explained where his love of flying began.

At 17 he went to flight school and never stopped. By the time of the interview he had been flying for 23 years, with around 11,000 hours in total and about 2,000 hours on the Airbus. His favourite part of any flight was the landing. He also enjoyed the short shuttle hops between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Those flights take about 40 minutes and are demanding because of short runways and terrain, and he felt lucky to operate at such unusual airports.

The camera gear

Rodrigo kept things simple. He used a single GoPro Hero3, and sometimes a Sony HX-9V Cybershot.

What makes the videos different

Anyone can fix a GoPro to a window and press record, so why did his videos stand out? Rodrigo believed it came down to letting his love of flying show through. He chose different camera angles and picked songs that fit the pictures. He was careful about production quality and always tried to match the clips to the music.

The editor added a note here. Many people who make flight videos fall short in three areas: clip editing, smooth transitions, and above all matching the beats, highs and lows of the music to the pictures. Rodrigo's videos change clips exactly where the music changes. He never lets a shot drag on. His popular videos use clips that are neither too long nor too short, and they stay in step with the soundtrack.

Twenty years of editing

Skills like that take time. Rodrigo had been editing flight videos since 1993, when he was an instructor at a flying school. Back then he connected two VCRs and a stereo to do the editing, which he described as fairly primitive.

His best video

His own favourite was SAIL. It was very well received and passed two million views. Sadly he decided to remove it from his channel because it showed an iPad in the cockpit, and Brazil's National Aviation Agency had not yet approved tablets for flight operations. At the time of the interview, another user had re-uploaded SAIL and it could still be watched.

How often he films

Rodrigo filmed quite often, but only on flights where he was not instructing.

Colleagues on camera

His videos featured some of his fellow pilots. Before mounting the camera he asked the first officer and anyone else present whether they minded being recorded, and then asked permission to use the clips that showed them. He said they liked it a lot.

The airline's view

Given how many views the videos drew, should the airline encourage them as marketing? Rodrigo said the company neither encouraged nor restricted the filming, as long as it was done safely and did not interfere with operations. Years earlier he had read an article saying the airline's marketing department welcomed the videos, which made him happy.

Camera positions

Asked whether he would share photos of the spots in the cockpit where he mounted his camera, Rodrigo happily agreed. The original article closed with those photos.

Reader reactions

Readers who commented on the piece said they had followed his channel since SAIL and that his enthusiasm came through even in words. The author agreed that Rodrigo was bursting with it.