"3- Printing flight plan"
This must be "preparing" the flight plan 'cause printing is only one click but preparing takes time also in some cases we do not print it ... We can just send it to the FMS of an aircraft directly without printing it to paper if required (and approved by the company)
I assume in near future "printing" will be a historic event , we will put everyting on digital systems and all will be read by aircraft computers (also ATC computers) and the pilots will only need to touch a screen to turn the pages
"4 - prepare metar report"
This is just a part of our job and actually we do not prepare any metar/taf reports ... We read and study the reports prepared/published by the authorities , take nessecary actions like delaying and/or cancelling flights , finding other alternates , changing routes etc. For long flights we mainly focus on TAF reports (published every 6 hours normally) and SIGMETS, but for short ones we continously check METAR and SPECI reports (METAR published every 30 minutes, SPECI published anytime needed)
For a recent example I simply delayed a flight nearly 45 minutes due to destination aerodromes weather conditions after the first leg . A/C departed from base aerodrome , landed to destination on time and then waited for next departure , when I see that the METAR and SPECI reports show a good trend at planned second destination we (me and captain) calculated our estimated arrival to destination and decided to start the second leg After a short flight (1 hours aprx.) they landed to their second destination safely .
If you have any more questions about our profession and duties do not hesitate to ask ... It will be a great pleasure for me to answer .
