While passengers sit back and relax, the cockpit is a high-intensity workspace where pilots manage rapid mechanical, environmental, and air traffic changes. The Flight Safety Foundation defines the critical 11 minutes as the three minutes after takeoff and eight minutes before landing when the cabin crew is prohibited from entering the cockpit when an airliner has sterile cockpit conditions. Related What Pilots Actually Do During A 14-Hour Flight When The Autopilot Is Handling Everything Modern airliners are incredibly automated, but pilots remain fully responsible for every decision during a flight. Once those actions are complete, the pilots pull out the physical or electronic checklist to verify that everything was done correctly. They read an item aloud, and both pilots must visually verify the system's state before the monitoring pilot barks back the answer.